New Additions to Our Collections

January - June 2000

The Library/Archives recently received The Santa Fe Diesel, Volume One: Dieselization-1960 and The Santa Fe Diesel, Volume Two: 1960-1995 by Dr. Cinthia Priest. Since March 2000, Cinthia and her husband Stephen Priest have been scanning color transparencies from Series 8 of the Society's Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe photograph collection. They have been saving the scans and entering pertinent information into a database and will produce CD-ROMs for the Society's use.

Click on the thumbnail image at right to view the cover of The Santa Fe Diesel, Volume One.

The James Malone collection of correspondence, printed pamphlets, and newspaper clippings is a recent addition to the Society's manuscripts. The collection contains materials written and collected by James Malone, Kansas state legislator, lawyer, Kansas Historical Society Board member, and State deputy of the Kansas Knights of Columbus. It primarily relates to the Ku Klux Klan and other extremist groups and their activities in Kansas in the early 1920s, which the Knights of Columbus were monitoring. A finding aid for the Malone collection was prepared by Holly Wright, the 2000 Lela Barnes Intern.

Click on the thumbnail image at right to see an enlargement of this KKK pamphlet.

Around January 1, 2000, museum curators began collecting a sampling of the millennium products available in local stores. Before the holiday, retail outlets around the country filled their shelves with eye-catching products aimed at commemorating this momentous event and increasing store sales. The artifacts collected include Y2K plush toys and countdown clocks, a time capsule (pictured at right) and New Year's Eve party favors.

Other contemporary items collected by museum curators during the first half of 2000 include ephemera celebrating Census 2000 (fan, badge, pin, magnet) and the 50th anniversary of the Korean War (stickpin, brochures, bookmark, stickers).

Also added to the museum collection was a 1956 child-sized car Pontiac Junior Star Chief manufactured specifically as a marketing tool for the Pontiac division of the General Motors Corporation. In addition to its relative uniqueness, the car is electric. his grandfather bought the car at an auction and gave it to him in 1959. The car had been used as a promotional model at Bates Pontiac and Implement in Louisburg, Kansas.

The Society has been engaged in a wheat harvest collecting project. These efforts have coincided with research for the exhibit, Wheat People: Celebrating Kansas Harvest. This photograph of the Farmer's Elevator, Mitchell County, was one of the images collected during the project.

Click on the thumbnail image at right to see a larger version of this photo.

Back to the most recent New Collections page.