Events at the Libraries

October is American Archives Month, and the University Libraries' Special Collections Department is commemorating the month by hosting an open house in Special Collections, Mullins Library room 130, on October 29, from 3:00 PM to 5:00 PM. The event will include refreshments and a reception at 3 p.m., an overview of the past year from head of Special Collections Tom W. Dillard at 3:30 p.m., and a presentation based on material in his book The Afterlife of Leslie Stringfellow: A Nineteenth-Century Southern Family's Experiences with Spiritualism by Stephen Chism, local author and a reference librarian at the University of Arkansas Libraries.

In The Afterlife of Leslie Stringfellow, Chism provides a reprinting of "Leslie's Letters to His Mother" (Fayetteville, Arkansas: Democrat Publishing Co., 1926), one of the many unusual treasures of local history preserved in Special Collections. Following the unexpected death of their only son, Leslie, in 1886, Alice and Henry Stringfellow turned to spiritualism for comfort. In 1911, the family moved to Fayetteville, Ark., where the Stringfellows built the house at 329 Washington Ave. as an exact copy of their previous home. "Leslie's Letters" recounts their experiences with "automatic writing," a form of communication with the dead through the use of a planchette, an instrument that holds a pencil or pen above the surface of a piece of paper on which the letters of the alphabet are printed. The letters themselves (as allegedly written by Leslie through the planchette) are a fascinating introduction to the vision of the afterlife held by nineteenth century spiritualists.

American Archives Month is a collaborative effort by professional organizations around the nation to raise awareness of the value of archival materials and to encourage persons and organizations to preserve records of enduring historical value. The Special Collections Department of the University of Arkansas Libraries was created in 1967 to foster research and writing in the history and culture of Arkansas and the surrounding region. It is an archival repository of more than 13,500 linear feet of documents in the Manuscripts Collection, more than 28,000 cataloged titles in the Arkansas Collection and the Rare Books Collection, and more than 150,000 photographs, broadsides and maps.

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