Nina Mason Pulliam Indianapolis Special Collections Room

The Nina Mason Pulliam Indianapolis Special Collections Room is the archival collection of the Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library. The Indianapolis Special Collections Room houses a variety of archival adult and children’s materials, both fiction and nonfiction books by local authors, photographs, scrapbooks, typescripts, manuscripts, autographed editions, letters, newspapers, magazines, and realia. The collection features Kurt Vonnegut, May Wright Sewall, the Woollen family, James Whitcomb Riley, and Booth Tarkington.^[1]

Nina Mason Pulliam, 1906-1997

Nina Mason Pulliam was born in 1906 in Martinsville, Indiana. She lived in Indiana during most of her childhood except at the age of 16 she traveled to the Arizona desert to recover from tuberculosis. When she returned to Indiana she attended college at Franklin College (Indiana), Indiana University & at the University of New Mexico. She majored in journalism. After college she began her career in the publishing industry by working for Farm Life Magazine and then the Lebanon Reporter. At the Lebanon Reporter she met Eugene C. Pulliam. In 1941 the couple was married. They were married for 46 years. During this time the Pulliams purchased The Indianapolis Star, The Indianapolis News, The Arizona Republic & The Phoenix Gazette. After the death of Eugene C. Pulliam in 1975, Nina became President of Central Newspapers Inc., and publisher of the Arizona Republic & the Phoenix Gazette until 1978. Nina was the first woman admitted into the Society of Professional Journalists.

Mural

A new mural has been installed in the Indianapolis Special Collections Room on the Sixth Floor of Central Library. The artist Tom Torluemke has given it the working title, The Book of Life: The People We Know, the Experiences We Have, and the Conditions under Which We Live. More information and photographs of this mural can be found at http://www.imcpl.org/arts/?tag=mural

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  Nina Mason Pulliam Special Collections Room Sign

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  Nina Mason Pulliam Special Collections Room October 2007

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  Nina Mason Pulliam Special Collections Room - Reading Room October 2007

Featured collections

Indianapolis Collection Materials include Indianapolis history, city directories, church histories, college and high school yearbooks, biographies, the Indianapolis 500, theater programs, and audio-visual materials.

Indianapolis Authors

• A collection of first editions of Meredith Nicholson, James Whitcomb Riley, Booth Tarkington, and others. This collection has a variety of items beyond books.
• The Kurt Vonnegut Collection consists of many signed first editions in foreign languages as well as representative artwork. In addition, there are over forty loose magazines that carry his articles and stories over the years and copies of screenplays for two works (Slaughter House Five and Slapstick).
• The James Whitcomb Riley Collection has letters, photographs of his last public appearance, his college diploma, and unpublished recordings of him reading his own poetry.
• The Meredith Nicholson Collection contains letters and manuscripts.
• The Booth Tarkington Collection holds an original manuscript of Kate Fennigate, typed pages showing corrections, and the final typed copy of the book.^[2]

Children’s Literature Collection Collection of about 2,000 volumes, ranging from Indiana authors, illustrated editions, some award-winning titles, and a variety of historical materials such as prominent Indianapolis children’s authors Eth Clifford, Mabel Leigh Hunt, Jean Brown Wagoner, and Guernsey Van Riper.^[3]

Fine Printing Collection This collection began with a substantial gift by G. Harvey Petty. Over the years additional items have been added to this collection, not only in examples of fine printing, but in works about typography and the history of fine printing. A number of examples of local private printing exist, including those from the Grabhorn Press (originally the Studio Press) and Press of the Indiana Kid.^[4]

Cookbook and Menu Collection The cookbook collection was a gift of the family of Mr. Wright Marble, a local collector. The original donation included a number of 17th and 18th century English and Italian works, along with German, some Oriental, French, English and United States books published in the 19th century. The oldest title in the collection was published in 1542. Other locally published titles have been added over time.

Another collector, Arthur H. Rumpf, donated a collection of approximately 100 historic menus, including those from railroad dining cars, hotels, and testimonial-recognition dinners. Local menus have been added over the years.^[5]

Digital Collections The Library offers free access to digital versions of increasingly valuable, fragile and hard-to-use originals at http://www.imcpl.org/resources/digitallibrary/

References

1. ^ Central to Our History: Indianapolis Special Collections Room, n.d., brochure, Indianapolis, IN: Indianapolis-Marion County Public Library.
2. ^ Ibid.
3. ^ Ibid.
4. ^ Ibid.
5. ^ Ibid.

External links

• IMCPL website
• Nina Mason Charitable Trust website
• Indianapolis Star Website
• Arizona Republic Website