Resources of interest at the Stanford University Libraries: Unique collections, difficulties in collecting and providing access

Abstract

This paper discusses unique (at least in the United States) Polish resources in the collections of the Stanford University Libraries, including books, ephemeral publications, documents and the difficulties involved with the collection development, processing and conservation of Polish materials in American academic libraries. The first part of the presentation addresses collections related to émigré subject, in particular ephmera published by the Polish émigré community in Paris in the years 1830-1840 and related to the post-war émigré literature and the publishing market in the United States, Europe and Poland: the Zygmunt Haupt Archive, the Zdzisław Ruszkowski Correspondence collection, and the Roy Publishers Archive. In the second part of the presentation other examples of items of potential interest  to researchers of Polish history and culture are discussed, including: a series of photographs by Allen Ginsburg (1926-1997), an icon of American poetry and a foremost representative of the so-called Beat Generation, from his travels in Poland (1986, 1993) and the typescript of a text by film director Agnieszka Holland about the state of Polish cinema in 1984, with corrections in her own writing.