We look forward to welcoming you to Special Collections.

Please don't hesitate to contact us if there is any way we can help you. Our staff members are listed alphabetically by name and by department. The personal name listing includes department, phone, and email. The department listings include the full mailing addresses for each department.

Wilbur E. Meneray
Assistant Dean of Libraries for Special Collections
Special Collections, Jones Hall
Tulane University Libraries
New Orleans, LA 70118
ph: 504-865-5685
fx: 504-865-5671
meneray@tulane.edu 

Staff News

Mary LeBlanc retired February 1, 1999, after devoting almost thirty years of service to Special Collections. Instead of leaving us completely adrift, Mary remains as a volunteer working with our Carnival collection.

Mary is also volunteering to help organize the records of the St. Vincent dePaul Society. The records will then be transferred to the Archives of the Archdiocese of New Orleans. The society is a charitable organization devoted to helping the poor and needy in Roman Catholic parishes.

Special Collections is delighted to welcome Melissa Smith as our newest staff member. Melissa is working in the Manuscripts Department.

In addition to her duties as Assistant University Archivist, Ann E. Smith Case (left) is the newly elected Recording Secretary of the University’s Staff Advisory Council.  She also provides computer support for Special Collections by functioning as an Area Technical Liaison.

Bill Meneray, Assistant Dean of Libraries for Special Collections, attended the August 2004 annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists in Boston.

Bill spoke at the January 21, 2001, meeting of the Daughters of the Confederacy on foreigners who chose to fight for the South, and in December 1999 Bill was chosen serve on the Board of Directors of the Amistad Research Center. The Amistad is one of this country's most important research centers for the study of the  African and African-American  experience.

Bill was also recently chosen to serve on a committee to oversee a $50k planning granted awarded to Tulane by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The grant is to create a Regional Humanities Center at Tulane. It will be one of ten regional centers throughout the country. The grant was awarded to Tulane based on its ability to collaborate with other cultural institutions in our region, support research on regional topics, document regional history, preserve cultural resources, develop K-12 learning opportunities, build college-level degree programs in regional studies and foster cultural tourism.

Bill also presented "150 Years of River History at Tulane" March 14, 1998, at the 45th annual Tulane Educational Conference in New Orleans. Bill provided a lively history of the Mississippi river using documents from Tulane's vast holdings in waterways history.

Bill also recently edited The Favrot Family Papers: A Documentary Chronicle of Early Louisiana. 1988- . Vol. 4, 1803-1809. In March 1997 Bill presided as President of the Louisiana Historical Association over the LHA's thirty-ninth annual meeting in Boosier City, Louisiana. His presidential address concerned colonial Louisiana social history.

Leon C. Miller, Leon C. Miller, Manuscripts Librarian, organized the session "The Curatorial Curse: Understanding, Recognizing, and Avoiding Conflicts Between Archival, Library, and Curatorial Methods" at the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists, August 18, 2005, in New Orleans. The session included David Gracy from the UT-Austin School of Information, Michael Fox from the Minnesota Historical Society, and Sue Hodson from the Huntington Library. As part of the session, Miller presented the paper "The Allure of Wine and Cheese: Exhibits and the Dilettante Ethic." A survey of meeting participants ranked it among the highest-rated meeting programs

Lee also co-chaired the Local Arrangements Committee for the Society of American Archivists annual meeting in New Orleans and is a nominee for SAA Council.

Lee received the Academy of Certified Archivists Distinguished Service Award at the Academy's August 2004 annual meeting in Boston. The award recognized Lee's work as past president and past Regent for Outreach of the Academy.

Lee presented the paper "The Allure of Wine and Cheese:  Exhibits and the Dilettante Ethic" May 23, 2003, at the Society of Southwest Archivists' annual meeting in New Orleans. Lee also served as co-chair of local arrangements for the annual meeting.

On November 15, 2002, Lee spoke about online archival exhibits at the annual meeting of the Louisiana Archives and Manuscripts Association (LAMA) in Lafayette. In August 2002, Lee ended his term as president of the Academy of Certified Archivists. The Academy is an international organization that promotes fundamental standards of archival practice. 

In August 2001, Lee presented the paper "The SAA Mentoring Program 10 Years Later: The Founder's Perspective" at the annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists in Washington, DC.

Also in 2001, Louisiana Governor Mike Foster appointed Lee to the state's Historic Records Advisory Board. The board coordinates efforts to preserve and make available historic state records.

Kenneth Owen has completed indexes to the Louisiana Collection's holdings of the reports generated by the Bureau of Governmental Research, the Office of the Louisiana Inspector General, and the Louisiana Legislative Auditor. These are the only known indices to these reports and are an invaluable resource for studying a wide variety of Louisiana subjects.

Ken completed a thorough reorganization of the Special Collections Division's extensive Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection. A guide to the collection is now available in the reading room.

In 2001 Ken completed a year-long project to revise, update, and index the division's vertical files. The project was extremely successful, resulting in a new, heavily cross-referenced, over 300-page index for the vertical files, a new index for the newspaper clippings files, new housing for both sets of files, and much easier access.

The vertical files are now among the division's most heavily used resources. As part of that project, Ken organized the division's political ephemera, with a separate index. An online exhibit explains how researchers may use our political ephemera holdings and highlights some examples from the collection. 

Ken is the former Louisiana Collection and State Documents Librarian at the University of New Orleans. He founded the UNO Louisiana Collection and retains Librarian Emeritus status in the LSU system.

Bruce Boyd Raeburn, curator of the Hogan Jazz Archives, has returned from a sabbatical which ran from May through November 1999.

Bruce recently published three articles:

• "Menage a Trois New Orleans Style: King Oliver, Jelly Roll Morton, and Sidney Bechet," in Jazz: A Reader’s Companion, ed. Bill Kirchner (New York: Oxford University Press, forthcoming)

• "The Atlantic New Orleans Jazz Sessions," liner notes booklet for boxed set, Mosaic MD4-179 (April 1998)

• "The Musical Worlds of Bill Russell," The Southern Quarterly, vol. XXXVI, No.2 (Winter 1998), 10-18.

He also recently published reviews in the Journal of Southern History and the Gulf Coast Historical Review.

Bruce maintains an active schedule of presentations. In November he gave an audio-visual presentation to the Algiers chapter of AARP, and in October presented "Jazz: The Sicilian Connection" at a conference sponsored by the New School for Social Research and La Centrale dell’Arte in New York.

In September Bruce was invited to participate in the Tulane’s new "Freshman Experience Program," for which he gave the audio-visual presentation "Second Lining in the City of Dreams." Also that month, he served as moderator and commentator for the program "Louisiana’s Forgotten Blues Scene—Thibodeaux, Louisiana," as part of the Roots Music Gathering, Cutting Edge Music Business Conference, in New Orleans.

Robert Sherer, Tulane University Archivist, attended the August 2004 annual meeting of the Society of American Archivists in Boston and the May 2004 annual meeting of the Society of Southwest Archivists in San Antonio.

In 2001 he completed a two-year term as a board member of the Society of Southwest Archivists. Rob also recently presided as President over the fall meeting of the Louisiana Archives and Manuscripts Association, held in Baton Rouge November 13, 1998, and served as program chair for the Southern Archives Conference biennial meeting held in Selma, Alabama, in March, 1998.

For the quadrennium, 1996-2000, Rob chaired the Commission on Archives and History for the Louisiana Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. Nationally, he is on one of the teams evaluating petitions for re-certification for the Academy of Certified Archivists. He continues as treasurer of the Greater New Orleans Archivists.