Research Resources

Men and Mail in Transit, a 1956 Post Office Department film available through the new Digital Public Library of America

Yesterday, in the middle of National Library Week, the Digital Public Library of America opened.

The DPLA provides a single point of access to millions of items from libraries, archives, and museums across the United States. I knew there must be items of philatelic interest among those millions, and a quick search yielded several examples, including a Lindbergh cover from the Smithsonian and several Post Office Department films from the National Archives.

The American First Day Cover Society has announced that the digital edition of its journal First Days will be available to all classes of membership, including online, regular, silver, gold, family, and youth. Previously, regular members did not have access to the digital edition. The exact date of implementation has not yet been determined.

“We’re pleased to offer this benefit to all members of the AFDCS at no additional cost, said webmaster Todd Ronnei. “Philatelic publishing is becoming increasingly digital, and this benefit is a reflection of that.”

Beginning tomorrow, the British Library is going to archive the web. Well, the UK portion of it, anyway. This will, of course, include several important philatelic sites.

Read more about the project, including media coverage, on the UK Web Archive blog.

The National Information Standards Organization (NISO) has just published a brochure with recommended practices for the presentation and identification of e-journals (click the link for the PIE-J Brochure). If you edit a journal that has a digital version, take a look at the brochure for recommendations on handling title changes, volume and issue numbering, and preservation. Following these recommendations will not only make your librarian happy, but it will help your readers and potential readers find and access your publication – now and in the future.

Toddler’s Sundress by Audrey Yankielun

The December issue of The American Philatelist included an article by Russ Hahn on postage stamp collage (PDF). In the article, Russ asked for additional contributions to an archive of information about stamp collage art and artists. We have received quite a few responses to that call for contributions, and will share them here and in the AP.

This morning, I received a message about some examples of stamp art that will be on display at the Westfield Stamp Show in Westfield, New Jersey on March 2 (tomorrow).

Artist Audrey Yankielun creates wearable art by stitching stamps together. You can see examples on her website, in an article on USPS News Link, and if you happen to be in New Jersey this weekend, at the Westfield Stamp Show.

Richard John, who presented the keynote at the 2009 Postal History Symposium and the author of Spreading the News: The American Postal System From Franklin to Morse, wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times on the USPS announcement that it plans to end Saturday mail delivery.

John writes: “The post office is a public service with a civic mandate central to American business, society and civic culture — not a business. But if it is to survive, Congress must allow it to start acting like one.”

The Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts highlights preservation work done on two sheets of stamps for the Smithsonian National Postal Museum in their fall 2012 newsletter (PDF).

CCAHA treated the Peace of 1783 and Byrd Antarctic Expedition II sheets from James A. Farley’s collection to remove them from secondary supports they had been mounted on. (Collectors will note they preserved the original gum on the stamps.) The conserved sheets will be on display in the William H. Gross Stamp Gallery when it opens.

The entire newsletter focuses on ephemera. “Challenges & Strategies in Preserving Ephemera” provides tips for archives, museums, and individuals with vulnerable material.

At the beginning of this year, the APRL released a digital version of The Postage and Telegraph Stamps of British India by L.L.R. Hausburg, C. Stewart-Wilson, and C.S.F. Crofton, originally published in 1907. The digital version of this rare book was scanned by Penn State University Libraries from the APRL’s fragile copy and made available for sale from the APRL. The APRL also scanned Supplement No. 2 (The Essays, Proofs, and Reprints of the First Issued Stamps of British India of 1854-55 by E.D. Bacon), and included it in the digital edition.

One of the people who bought this digital edition alerted us to a number of missing plates, as well as to the existence of Supplement No. 1 (New Discoveries in the British India Stamps of 1854-5, Printed in India by L.L.R. Hausburg, published by the Philatelic Society of India in October 1916) and “Appendix to the Third Edition of ‘The Essays, Proofs and Reprints of the First Issued Stamps of British India of 1854-55’” published in The Philatelic Journal of India in April 1933.

We looked at our original and discovered that we were, in fact, missing plates.

Our first step in locating images of the missing plates was to search the Philatelic Union Catalog. We discovered that  the Collectors Club, Greene Foundation, Royal Philatelic Society London, and Western Philatelic Library also had copies of this book. We contacted Roger Skinner at the Western Philatelic Library in Sunnyvale, CA, to find out if that copy of the book had all of the plates.

Roger confirmed that it did, and scanned the missing plates for us. Meanwhile, we located the first supplement and the appendix in the APRL collection and scanned them using our book scanner.

We are now pleased to offer a revised and expanded digital edition of The Postage and Telegraph Stamps of British India for sale in the APS Digital Publications shop.

If you purchased the original digital edition and would like to upgrade to the new edition, please contact Tara Murray for options.

Can you identify anyone in this photo? Click the photo to see a larger image.

The majority of the APRL’s APS Archives collection is organized into boxes chronologically and was inventoried by intern Robbin Zirkle in the summer of 2011. We have been publishing Robbin’s inventories in the Philatelic Literature Review, and the 4th quarter 2012 issue will include the 1950s inventory.

The APS Archives also include material that has not yet been inventoried, such as a collection of panoramic photos from APS meetings.

We recently received a photo of attendees at the 1959 APS Convention in Los Angeles from Eric Jackson. Eric was able to identify a few people in the photo. Are you able to identify anyone else?

We’ve numbered the most recognizable people in the photo. Leave a comment with the number and name of anyone you can identify.

Here’s what we have so far:

10.  Alexandra Scoville

11. Ogden Scoville

12. Frank Q. Newton, Jr.

13. Abe Hochman

14. Jeanne Hochman

43. Sherwood Springer

On the back of the photo, there are a few additional names, though without any clue as to where they are in the photo: Manley Hall, George Turner, Pat Herst, Joy Tinsley.

Last week, we asked in our trivia question which breakfast cereal lent its name to a postal forgery operation. William Harnish correctly guess cornflakes and pointed to a Wikipedia article about the operation.

I thought of the question because of a publication that we just cataloged called The Story of Cornflakes, Pig Iron and Sheet Iron. The report was published in Rome in May 1945 and contains a written report as well as photos.

You can also read more about the operation in an article in the August 1984 American Philatelist, “‘Cornflakes’: Using Postal Forgeries to Place Anti-Nazi Literature on German Breakfast Tables.”