Historian is honored for his work to preserve the record of
California's
newspapers and historical documents of the English-speaking world.
(November 14, 2007)
RIVERSIDE, Calif. - Henry Snyder, director of UC Riverside's Center
for Bibliographical Studies and Research and a tireless advocate of
preserving and cataloging California's historical newspapers, will receive a
National Humanities Medal on Thursday, Nov. 15, in a ceremony at the White
House.
He is the first professor from UC Riverside and the sixth faculty
member in the UC system to receive the medal since the award was created in
1997.
The medal, to be presented by President Bush, honors individuals or
groups whose work has broadened citizens' engagement with the humanities or
helped preserve and expand Americans' access to important resources in the
humanities, according to the National Endowment for the Humanities Web site.
The NEH is an independent grant-making agency of the U.S. government that
supports research, education, preservation and public programs in the
humanities.
Among the previous 95 winners were California historian Kevin Starr,
novelists Tom Wolfe and Toni Morrison, "Miss Manners" (Judith Martin), actor
Hal Holbrook, sociologist Robert Bellah, composer Quincy Jones and
film-maker Steven Spielberg.
Snyder, 78, is one of 10 National Humanities Medal recipients for
2007. He was recognized for his work on three extensive research projects -
one lasting nearly 30 years - that document the output of the press of the
British Isles and North America in the early modern period.
"The thing that makes us human beings is memory. This is printed
memory," Snyder said of the projects. "It's how we recall our heritage. As
we try to recover our past and try to understand what happened and how
cultures evolved, we need to have access to these records."
The projects include:
- The English Short-Title Catalogue, a searchable database of every
known publication in England and its dependencies from the birth of the
printing press in 1473 to 1800. It is the largest bibliography of its kind
ever attempted, Snyder said, and lists nearly 500,000 items, including
books, handbills, fliers, pamphlets and warrants. The catalog, whose
American component is funded by the NEH, is a joint effort of UCR's Center
for Bibliographical Studies and Research, the British Library and the
American Antiquarian Society.
- The California Newspaper Project, which began in 1990 to preserve
and index the state's newspapers from 1846, when the first publication
appeared, to 1922. It is part of the larger United States Newspaper Program,
funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities to preserve and
inventory the nation's newspapers.
- The Catálogo Colectivo de Impresos Latinoamericanos hasta 1851, a
searchable database of Spanish- and Portuguese-language publications printed
in North and South America, the Caribbean and the Philippines from about
1539 through 1850. The latter project began in 2000. It has been funded by
the National Science Foundation.
"Henry Snyder is richly deserving of this award," said Stephen
Cullenberg, dean of the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at
UCR. "He has toiled relentlessly over many years to preserve some of the
most important print archives that we have. His research has been supported
by millions of dollars in federal and private foundation grants. He has been
innovative and cutting-edge in his efforts to digitize these archives.
Generations of scholars and citizens alike will have him to thank for the
preservation of the cultures that his archives have brought to light."
Snyder, a scholar of British history and UCR professor of history
emeritus, became the American director of the English Short-Title Catalogue
in 1978.
"It's been a marvelous odyssey," said Snyder, who with teams of
researchers scoured libraries around the world for printed documents
produced over a span of three centuries.
"We're recovering the culture of the English-speaking world," he said.
"You never know where you'll find something."
For example, the Academy of Sciences library in Estonia had 112 items
to list in the catalog, 17 of which were new entries.
Another discovery was an important 1710 election tract that prompted
satirist Jonathan Swift to start the Examiner to defend the Tories. No copy
was known previously to exist. The English Short-Title Catalogue now lists
20 copies of four different printings of the tract. Snyder purchased a copy,
which is now at UCR's Tomás Rivera Library.
In another case, researchers combing the British National Archives -
which date back 1,000 years - found 15,000 copies of 9,000 items, 6,000 of
which had never been reported.
"In almost every library we go into we find something new," Snyder
said.
Directing the California Newspaper Project led Snyder to tiny Gold
Rush towns, stifling attics and musty archives.
"California has the second-largest number of published newspapers in
the United States, even though the first one wasn't published until 1846,"
he said. "Newspapers are the single most important record of local history,
yet also the most ephemeral. They don't survive. People read them one day
and burn them in the fireplace the next."
On one hunt for historical newspapers Snyder inventoried 25 years
worth of eight Fresno County weeklies stored in the attic of the publisher's
office, an old house. The heat was stifling as the lanky Snyder - too tall
to stand up straight in the cramped attic - dodged decades of pigeon
droppings as he logged the newspapers.
"A few weeks later he called me and said they'd had a fire," Snyder
recalled. "Everything was destroyed."
The project identifies more than 9,000 newspaper titles and expanded
as Snyder realized that millions of pages stored on microfilm also were at
risk. He acquired one publisher's archive and four commercial microfilm
archives. One he rescued from a jobber who had acquired it from the filmer
when it went out of business. It was stored in a garage on the High Desert.
With film belonging to the California State Library, for which the Center
for Bibliographical Studies and Research has taken custody, the total
collection is now 100,000 hundred-foot reels, the largest in existence.
Snyder's team so far has digitized 200,000 newspaper pages in a free,
searchable online database. The California Digital Newspaper Collection
debuted at a conference in Riverside last month. The collection so far
contains more than a half-century of issues of the Daily Alta California and
the San Francisco Call as well as runs for the first decade of the last
century of the Los Angeles Herald, Amador Ledger and Imperial Valley Press.
The historian also has visited libraries in every major city in South
America as he attempts to do with the Catálogo Colectivo de Impresos
Latinoamericanos hasta 1851 what has been accomplished with the English
Short-Title Catalogue.
Snyder earned his B.A., M.A. and Ph.D. from UC Berkeley. He came to
UCR in 1986. He has written more than 30 scholarly articles; co-authored a
text on English History, "The English Heritage," and "Cataloging of the Hand
Press: A Comparative and Analytical Study of Cataloging Rules and Formats
Employed in Europe"; co-edited "The Scottish World" and "The English
Short-Title Catalogue: Past, Present, Future"; and edited "The
Marlborough-Godolphin Correspondence."
News Media Contact:
Name: Bettye Miller
Phone: 951.827.7847
Email: bettye.miller@ucr.edu