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HemisFair '68 History and Resources

Provenance of the San Antonio Fair, Inc. (HemisFair '68) Records

In August of 1968, Marshall T. Steves, President of HemisFair '68 approached Dr. James Laurie, President of Trinity University about the possibility of Trinity becoming the official repository for the records of the world's fair. Despite a shortage of manpower, funds and facilities for the collection, Robert Hoze, Director of the Trinity library advised Dr. Laurie to accept. Immediately after the fair closed on October 6, 1968 the records were shipped from the HemisFair executive offices at the German-English School to the Trinity University library in over 700 moving company boxes. The head archivist at Trinity at the time of the transfer was Jay B. Clark. The records were very roughly arranged by office of origin and inventoried. Clark left at the end of 1968 shortly after the records came to Trinity. He was succeeded by Nancy B. Crane who remained for a few more years and who was in turn succeeded by Virginia Mounce.

The first few years the archives were at Trinity archives staff was able to begin processing records of executive officers and do some indexing of photographs. Because of the massive size of the collection and limited space and staff it was almost impossible to provide adequate reference access to the collection. As early as 1971 Trinity wanted to turn the records over to the city. Over time the records were largely forgotten and ignored as a new library administration with different goals and objectives came in. They were stored under a large tarp on a dirt floor during library renovations. Unfortunately because of this neglect many of the records were lost or destroyed by mold.

In May of 1985 the records were formally transferred to the San Antonio Public Library and were stored in the Hertzberg annex. There, under the supervision of librarian Jo Myler the records were cleaned, fumigated, rehoused in 660 archival storage boxes, and reinventoried. A computer listing of boxes by office of origin was created using a key which was found with the records. The records again languished for several years because of lack of personnel and processing funds.

In the fall of 1992 the records were transferred to the University of Texas at San Antonio Library's Special Collections and Archives Department under the direction of Dora Guerra. The following March part-time archival processing began on the collection through a one year grant provided by Marshall Steves. The grant was extended for three months but expired in August of 1994. An additional source of grant funding was provided by TexShare, a consortium of Texas research libraries which allowed for continuation of the archival processing from September 1996-December 1997 in the UTSA Archives at the Institute of Texan Cultures building. The remainder of the work was done voluntarily from January-March 1998. Processing was completed in time for the commemoration of the 30th anniversary of the opening of the fair on April 6.

Processor's Acknowledgements

Special thanks to Dora Guerra who hired me to work on this project over 5 years ago; to Jo Myler, now Manager of the Texana/Genealogy Department of San Antonio Public Library who produced the computer printouts that gave me a point of reference when I first began working on the archives; and to Jill Jackson, Archivist and Acting Head of the UTSA Special Collections and Archives Department and her Archival Assistant Kathy McCabe who provided me with invaluable assistance.

T. Matthew De Waelsche, C.A.
April 6, 1998
Processing Archivist
March, 1993-August, 1994;
September 1996-March 1998

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