“What is required of us is that we love the difficult.”—Rainer Maria Rilke
History of this Exhibition
(Website Content & Design by Kirsten Painter)
These books were collected by Pamela Harer over a period of several years. During her lifetime she donated numerous books to Special Collections at the University of Washington. Just before her death, an exhibit of her personal collection of Russian children's books was mounted at Special Collections, entitled "From the Lowly Lubok to Soviet Realism" (June 30–October 24, 2014). Later her family decided to donate her collection of Russian children's books to Special Collections.
Soon thereafter, Sanda Kroupa, Curator of Book Arts & Rare Books at Special Collections, and Michael Biggins, Librarian of the Slavic & East European Division, invited me to create an online exhibition of the collection. I began working on this project in 2016, when I wrote synopses of all the Russian books in the Harer collection for the Rare Books Cataloger. In 2017 I selected 50 books from the collection to digitize for this exhibit, scanned them, and entered their metadata into the CONTENTdm database. During the final phase of this project (2018–19), I researched the context of these books (literary, artistic, and historical background), and wrote all the essays on this website. I also took a web design course with Nick DeNardis at UW, which inspired me to create my own website of this material, using GitHub and the HTML/CSS that we learned in his course. You are looking at the product of that project. There will also be an official UW-version of this exhibit material, as created by a UW web designer, and that URL will be posted here as soon as it is available.
This project is still in progress. I know that I have barely touched the surface of this immense topic. For scholars of this field: if you notice mistakes in my texts, or if you have any comments on the essays, please let me know. I welcome all comments and suggestions.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to those people at the University of Washington who made this project possible. Michael Biggins, Librarian of the Slavic & East European Division, first suggested I work on these books, and funded my work on this project for the first year. Sandra Kroupa, Curator of Book Arts & Rare Books, oversaw and mentored my work on this exhibit for the last 4 years, and granted me access to all these books. Kris Kinsey, Digital & Visual Materials Specialist, facilitated the technical aspects of the project, including the scanning and metadata creation. Crystal Clements, Rare Books & Book Arts Project Cataloger, cataloged all the books. I would also like to thank Helene Williams, Senior Lecturer at the Information School, Alan Michelson, Head Librarian at the Built Environments Library, and Traci Timmons, Head Librarian at the Seattle Art Museum, for mentoring and advising me throughout my graduate career at UW. Their enthusiastic support for my diverse projects meant an enormous amount to me and helped me persevere through obstacles and complete this project. Thank you also to the late Pamela Harer for collecting these beautiful books, and to her family for donating these to Special Collections.
About Me
I received my PhD from Columbia University and my MLIS from the University of Washington. At Columbia my focus was on Russian Literature with an emphasis on Comparative Literature (American/English, French, German), and in particular, a comparison of Russian modernist poetry with Western poetry of the same era. I published a book on that topic with Stanford University Press: "Flint on a Bright Stone": A Revolution of Precision and Restraint in American, Russian, and German Modernism.
Within librarianship, my specialties are digital humanities, special collections, children’s librarianship, museums, and online exhibitions. I served as the head librarian at Odyssey (K-6 elementary school) on Bainbridge Island, WA, for 4 years (2015–19). In 2020 I served as the Special Collections & Digital Humanities Librarian at St. Paul University in Ottawa, Canada, then as a volunteer for the Seattle Art Museum Bullitt Library. I have also worked for several years as a freelance editor for institutions such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Harriman Institute at Columbia University.
Other Projects — Contact
To see my other digital projects, please visit my portfolio here: http://tinyurl.com/kpainterportfolio
Contact Me with questions or comments: kpainterportfolio at gmail dot com
