Kinsey and the Wasps: Mapping a Journey

Part Twelve, in Which We Look to the Horizon

This project has been a fascinating adventure. Looking ahead to what remains to be done, I feel a lot of excitement, particularly about some of the sleuthing activities that may present themselves. In particular, I want to determine where the original maps and charts are stored for Kinsey’s The Gall Wasp Genus Cynips book. Whether they are at IU or another repository, or held by the Kinsey family, it would be good to be able to point researchers to their location and determine what the level of access may be. I am also looking forward to the next time I am searching the physical maps and am surprised by a Kinsey signature, as happens now and then.

As for wrap-up tasks, there is still metadata to be entered and, when possible, more maps to be scanned and added to the online collection. There is a web page about the GIMMS Department’s Kinsey map holdings that was well done but has not been updated since 2004, so that is another task to put on the list. During the coming academic year, I expect we should be able to host an exhibit, an event, a pop-up library, or some combination of those to highlight the collection. All exciting prospects! The blog posts for the internship will end, but the work will continue. Thanks for reading!

Heather Sloan is an ILS Master’s student with a specialization in Digital Humanities. She is a full-time staff member in the Media Services and Government Information, Maps & Microform Services (GIMMS) departments of Herman B Wells Library. She has a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Percussion Performance from SUNY Stony Brook, and her interests include Caribbean folkloric music, Latin music, record collecting, and design in popular culture. Her Digital Humanities work focuses on intersections between digital and humanitarian mapping, the environment, and arts advocacy. She is a 2019-2020 HASTAC Scholar.

Kinsey and the Wasps: Mapping a Journey

Part Eleven, in Which Kinsey Enters the Meme Stream

I’m not sure what got me started thinking about this, possibly publicity brainstorming combined with having teenagers in the house, but I began to wonder whether there were Alfred Kinsey memes making their way through cyberspace. So I decided to take a look, and indeed, they do exist. As one might guess, many of the memes featuring a world-renowned sex researcher are Not Suitable For Work. And though I suppose not all memes are humorous, an inordinate number of the Kinsey ones I discovered contained earnest warnings, either that Kinsey himself or the “free love hippies” who responded to his research had intentionally set about to damage society. Again, not all that surprising, given that Kinsey remains a controversial figure.

To me, Kinsey’s most memorable look—1950s sport coat, bow tie, unruly, bristle-brush hair—is a little goofy, and I found one fairly neutral meme that played off that:

I had just about given up on finding one built around Kinsey’s identity as an entomologist when I came upon this little gem on a Facebook page devoted completely to entomology memes (yes, that’s a thing):

As you might guess from the source (actual entomologists), the meme was accompanied by nerdy and well-documented information about Kinsey’s wasp research. The Entomology Memes Facebook page became one of my new favorite things when I later found this meme:

I like to think that Kinsey would get a kick out of the insect humor being circulated by his modern entomological counterparts, but the world will never know.

Heather Sloan is an ILS Master’s student with a specialization in Digital Humanities. She is a full-time staff member in the Media Services and Government Information, Maps & Microform Services (GIMMS) departments of Herman B Wells Library. She has a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Percussion Performance from SUNY Stony Brook, and her interests include Caribbean folkloric music, Latin music, record collecting, and design in popular culture. Her Digital Humanities work focuses on intersections between digital and humanitarian mapping, the environment, and arts advocacy. She is a 2019-2020 HASTAC Scholar.

Kinsey and the Wasps: Mapping a Journey

Part Ten, in Which All Faces are Seen Through Interfaces

My second supervisor meeting for the internship was a Zoom meeting, one of seemingly hundreds by now. Theresa and I regularly have one-on-one meetings face-to-face about all things maps, and we have kept this up. When we met about the project, we talked about what could and could not be done toward its completion. I had done a primary batch of maps from among those we identified as being of highest priority, and my plan was to take those through the entire process of digitization, uploading, metadata entry, etc., so that if there were questions at any point in the process, we would know about them as soon as possible. However, that left many maps unscanned as I took the first batch through. Those maps are still sitting all by their lone in Wells, waiting their turn. My plans to tour the Kinsey Institute are postponed, of course, as are the in-person interviews with  archivists  at Wells about the specifics of working with digital images.

However, I do have some of my primary and secondary research sources at home, so I can continue to learn about Kinsey’s wasp research, and I can also brainstorm about exhibits, collection publicity, and education and outreach options. I am also going to take the opportunity to watch both a PBS documentary on Kinsey and the eponymous feature film starring Liam Neeson, as I never had the opportunity to watch either before now. And since I have access to the map image files via remote network connection with GIMMS department computers, I can finish inputting those metadata fields for which the information comes directly off the maps themselves. A pretty good situation all things considered.

Heather Sloan is an ILS Master’s student with a specialization in Digital Humanities. She is a full-time staff member in the Media Services and Government Information, Maps & Microform Services (GIMMS) departments of Herman B Wells Library. She has a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Percussion Performance from SUNY Stony Brook, and her interests include Caribbean folkloric music, Latin music, record collecting, and design in popular culture. Her Digital Humanities work focuses on intersections between digital and humanitarian mapping, the environment, and arts advocacy. She is a 2019-2020 HASTAC Scholar.

Kinsey and the Wasps: Mapping a Journey

Part Nine, in Which We are Flummoxed and in Flux

It is at this point in our journey when what seemed far away began to draw near, and what was of mild concern quickly became dire indeed. I went from talking with Theresa one day about what parts of my job I might be able to do remotely— just in case—to banned from the building, in what seemed the blink of an eye, And almost all of the inhabitants of Wells Library, IU, Bloomington, the nation, and the globe did the same. My children came home from school, to stay, and we all began a new chapter in which we sheltered in place and fretted about those who had fallen ill and those who were caring for them.

The wasp work had to take a back seat to all of this, naturally, since the time and attention I did have went to multi-level work and life reconfiguration. I am grateful that the decisions were made to truly shut down. It is almost unthinkable for such a thing to happen, given that IU usually doesn’t even close during ice storms, tornadoes, and the like. There is a Hoosier heartiness that, as a California transplant, I have grown to admire. Though I confess I was much less enthused about this quality when it meant going to the soccer field on frigid Saturday mornings for kids’ soccer games. Matches were NEVER cancelled, no matter how hideous the weather….

The sheltering-in-place has now endured long enough to acquire a rhythm and flow of its own, so it has been possible to revisit the internship project, or parts of it at least. In the next installment, I will outline what the project’s “new normal” looks like.

Heather Sloan is an ILS Master’s student with a specialization in Digital Humanities. She is a full-time staff member in the Media Services and Government Information, Maps & Microform Services (GIMMS) departments of Herman B Wells Library. She has a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Percussion Performance from SUNY Stony Brook, and her interests include Caribbean folkloric music, Latin music, record collecting, and design in popular culture. Her Digital Humanities work focuses on intersections between digital and humanitarian mapping, the environment, and arts advocacy. She is a 2019-2020 HASTAC Scholar.

Kinsey and the Wasps: Mapping a Journey

Part Eight: Moving Parts #3, in Which We Leap Online With the Grace of a (Photo)Cat

Creating a collection for Indiana University’s Image Collections Online is a multi-step process that begins with conceiving of an online collection, taking the images through the digitization process, and determining metadata fields, steps I have outlined in previous posts. The culmination of that work is to gather it all together and enter it into Photocat, the background-level platform that holds all the data and translates it into a (mostly) user-friendly, public-facing online image collection.

For someone like myself with no prior experience with the inner workings, it was a little intimidating, and I confess it was the step that inspired the most procrastination and avoidance on my part. In truth, instead of leaping online with the grace of a cat, I was more like a short-legged puppy trying to navigate tall stairs for the first time. Lots of hesitation, little initial success. However, it was not for lack of access to thorough documentation: the Image Collections Online Guide contains a wealth of clear, helpful information, and after a few false starts, the process began to feel much more comfortable.

But there were some technical issues, including  images that had loaded successfully but did not appear, as shown below:

Photocat generates an email report for each image uploaded; it confirms successful uploads and gives error reports for those that did not load properly. The image files for all the records shown above had resulted in a “Successful” report, yet they did not appear. There is an expected delay in the appearance of images, as ingest takes a while, but these images remained unavailable for days, prompting an S.O.S. from me to the experts (aka Kara Alexander in her liaison role with the programmers). I felt fortunate and relieved that I did not have to solve this technical difficulty myself.

Some of this detailed work in ICO remains incomplete, because as we learn in the next installment, the whole world is about to go haywire.

Heather Sloan is an ILS Master’s student with a specialization in Digital Humanities. She is a full-time staff member in the Media Services and Government Information, Maps & Microform Services (GIMMS) departments of Herman B Wells Library. She has a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Percussion Performance from SUNY Stony Brook, and her interests include Caribbean folkloric music, Latin music, record collecting, and design in popular culture. Her Digital Humanities work focuses on intersections between digital and humanitarian mapping, the environment, and arts advocacy. She is a 2019-2020 HASTAC Scholar.

Kinsey and the Wasps: Mapping a Journey

Part Seven: Moving Parts #2, in Which We Enter the Metadata Maze

This was my first time creating metadata for an online digital collection, so I needed a lot of help. Luckily, I work in a building where humans with incredible amounts of highly specialized knowledge are a couple floors away at most. My internship supervisor Theresa had done this type of work before, and her first step was to get everyone into the same room who would need a say in the metadata decisions. Theresa and I had met beforehand to go over the many possible metadata fields available for Image Collections Online, and to develop a basic idea of which ones would be helpful to different user demographics (e.g., entomology types, map researchers, etc.). We then met with Jennifer Liss and Kara Alexander, who, in their cataloging and online digital collections capacities respectively, have a deeper understanding of which fields are required for catalogers, programmers, and for legal reasons (copyright, use statement, etc.). In addition, they had really helpful advice about structuring the data, using controlled vocabularies, and best practices for discoverability. Having concluded our meeting, I created a spreadsheet containing the proposed final set of metadata fields with an explanation of what specific information from the maps would fill each one. If the information required did not come directly from the maps themselves (e.g., rights information), I noted where we would look to get it.

I shared the spreadsheet with Theresa, Jennifer, and Kara, and once they all gave feedback and a thumbs up, the information was handed over to Kara, so she could work with the programmers to customize the fields. In the meantime, the actual digital collection (still empty), had been created and was waiting for content. In the forthcoming installment, I will give a few details about the online collection itself. Tune in next time!

Heather Sloan is an ILS Master’s student with a specialization in Digital Humanities. She is a full-time staff member in the Media Services and Government Information, Maps & Microform Services (GIMMS) departments of Herman B Wells Library. She has a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Percussion Performance from SUNY Stony Brook, and her interests include Caribbean folkloric music, Latin music, record collecting, and design in popular culture. Her Digital Humanities work focuses on intersections between digital and humanitarian mapping, the environment, and arts advocacy. She is a 2019-2020 HASTAC Scholar.

Kinsey and the Wasps: Mapping a Journey

Part Six: Moving Parts #1, in Which We Start Scanning

Scanning was done with two different machines, both capable of producing the high resolution (600 dpi) ideal for digital-collection images. The first scanner, pictured below, is located in the GIMMS Department and is frequently used for large-format scans. This scanner was also used to capture images of the Russian maps that were digitized and georeferenced as part of a CLIR grant project headed up by Theresa Quill and Michelle Daumau (see a National Geographic write-up of the project here). The presence and proximity of such sophisticated equipment , already configured to send images to the nearby workstation, made for scanning conditions about as ideal as one could hope for. The workstation itself was configured to automatically open the large .tiff files in Photoshop, so that an RGB (red-green-blue) color profile could be created. Digital images for online collections are meant to represent the original as faithfully as possible, so beyond the color profile and any straightening of the image needed, the only other adjustment made is to crop the image such that the entire map is visible, with a narrow border of blank margin (1/4 inch or so) retained around all four sides of the map edge.

The other machine is a tabletop scanner on the 5th Floor of Wells Library, West Tower. I used this one for maps that might not do well between the rollers of the GIMMS scanner. The tabletop model scans the image using the same method, which I believe has to do with lasers but beyond that the rest is magic to me. On tabletop-style machines, the scanning mechanism captures the image from above, so the only part that touches the map is the scanner cradle, made of a soft material that is easy on fragile paper. I was trained on the workflow for that scanner by the capable and wonderful Kara Alexander. Like the GIMMS scanner, the tabletop model is configured to send files directly to a nearby workstation, and though some of the steps differ, the essential steps of modifying and saving the file remain the same.

In the next blog post: Marvelous Metadata. Same Wasp time; same Wasp channel.

Heather Sloan is an ILS Master’s student with a specialization in Digital Humanities. She is a full-time staff member in the Media Services and Government Information, Maps & Microform Services (GIMMS) departments of Herman B Wells Library. She has a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Percussion Performance from SUNY Stony Brook, and her interests include Caribbean folkloric music, Latin music, record collecting, and design in popular culture. Her Digital Humanities work focuses on intersections between digital and humanitarian mapping, the environment, and arts advocacy. She is a 2019-2020 HASTAC Scholar.

Kinsey and the Wasps: Mapping a Journey

Part Five, in Which We Develop the Project Idea

As the Map and Spatial Data Librarian and the Maps Assistant, respectively, Theresa Quill and I are the people at Wells that tend to have the most contact with the physical and digital map collections. It will come as no surprise that the two of us are big fans of these collections, and we are often looking for ways to feature the many hidden gems housed within so that more people can use and enjoy them. Having gotten approval to do an internship in the Government Information, Maps & Microform Services (GIMMS) department where we both work, the next step was to develop a project that would highlight some aspect of the maps collection and could reasonably be accomplished within the course of one semester.

Full institutional memory of how and when the Kinsey maps landed at Wells Library may exist but is no longer readily available. My understanding is that at some point, someone at the Kinsey Institute sent the maps over to be housed at Wells since they were not part of the institute’s main focus, that is, Kinsey’s sex research. Theresa and I had both handled the odd reference request for the gall wasp maps here and there, usually from a fellow Wells inhabitant who was aware of their existence. But mostly they sat on a shelf, many still uncataloged, in the back room near the Rare Maps. As I mentioned in the previous post, there were also assorted maps that had been signed but not created by Kinsey, some known to us and others as yet undiscovered, scattered throughout the main maps collection. Every once in a while we would pull a map for some other reason, only to find Kinsey’s unmistakable signature somewhere on it—on the back, in the margin, in light pencil or dark ink. Occasionally we would laugh about how we could discard a duplicate of a commonly held topographical map if only Kinsey hadn’t gone and signed the darn thing.

I think it was Theresa who first suggested the Kinsey collection as a good candidate for digitization, during a meeting in which we were establishing map collection priorities. When the time came for my internship, it was still in our minds as a project, and we both agreed that it fit the bill. Once established, there were a few decisions to make in terms of project scope:

1) Would all maps be digitized, including those created by hand, the base maps annotated by Kinsey, and those merely signed by him?

2) If so, how would the work be prioritized?

3) Should we attempt to get all items cataloged first, or digitize them all and then send those that needed it to cataloging?

4) What metadata fields would we need for the digital collection we would create, and what steps, contacts, meetings, and permissions were needed to set up the digital collection and allow me to develop it (including copyright considerations)?

5) Once completed, how could we best publicize and support the launch of the new digital collection so that those who might be interested in engaging with it would be likely to hear about it?

6) In what ways could we extend the work to get further benefits from it, for example could we do some type of collaborative effort with the Kinsey Institute, or perhaps a Wells Library exhibit, or use the digital collection as part of educational outreach?

What we decided, in short: The entire collection of Kinsey maps of all types (handmade, annotated, signed) will eventually be digitized, but I will focus first on the handmade and annotated items. Due to a gap in the presence of a full-time map cataloger, we decided to digitize first and hand the uncataloged maps over to cataloging later. This will limit some of the metadata we can enter right away (those items that a cataloger would best supply) but it eliminates the potential need to adjust the project timeline for cataloging. We set up meetings with Jennifer Liss (Head, Monographic Image Cataloging) and Kara Alexander (Digital Media Specialist), along with a consultation with Copyright Librarian Naz Pantaloni, to cover metadata, setup of the digital collection, and rights concerns respectively. These will be detailed in future blog posts.

In terms of the launch, publicity, and associated events, we decided that we would allow the research and process to guide some of that, and that those activities will likely comprise a post-internship second phase. Toward the end of the internship, we would evaluate options. In the meantime, I reached out to staff at the Kinsey Institute to schedule a tour.

That about covers the big picture of project development. The next few blog posts will be brief explanations of smaller moving parts of the project as they unfold. Stay tuned!

Heather Sloan is an ILS Master’s student with a specialization in Digital Humanities. She is a full-time staff member in the Media Services and Government Information, Maps & Microform Services (GIMMS) departments of Herman B Wells Library. She has a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Percussion Performance from SUNY Stony Brook, and her interests include Caribbean folkloric music, Latin music, record collecting, and design in popular culture. Her Digital Humanities work focuses on intersections between digital and humanitarian mapping, the environment, and arts advocacy. She is a 2019-2020 HASTAC Scholar.

Kinsey and the Wasps: Mapping a Journey

Part Four, in Which Kinsey Wields Writing Utensils

Alfred C. Kinsey autographed lots of things. In addition to the items one would expect him to sign, such as copies of his own books and other publications, he signed lots of other things as well, seemingly willy-nilly sometimes. I had a chuckle when I checked eBay and found a number of items being sold at fairly high prices in relation to their value, simply because they had been signed by Kinsey. I found myself wanting to warn the buyer: “Listen, pal, I hate to break it to you, but that signature’s near worthless, because it’s all over the place!”

For purposes of this project, Kinsey’s signature was important mainly because it was present on many maps in the IU collection that were either peripherally related or completely unrelated to Kinsey’s wasp research—they were simply maps he had signed because he owned them. This required internship supervisor Theresa Quill and me to consider whether or not to include them in the collection. I will explain our decisions in the next blog post, focused on project development.

Kinsey’s signature (last name only), shown at left, on the bottom-left corner of the map pictured at center (partial view only). It is a 1933 Spanish-language map of Guatemala and El Salvador owned by Kinsey.

In truth, Kinsey didn’t sign everything. Just almost everything. As it happens, some of the most unique and irreplaceable items Indiana University owns he did not sign. Some manuscript maps, of which there is only one known copy, bear no signature, nor do many of his painstakingly annotated base maps. What to infer? Were his research maps so clearly and unmistakably his that he felt no need to sign? Did he loan his topographical and other maps to students or fellow researchers, with the signature there to remind the borrower of the map’s rightful owner? I cannot answer these questions with the research I have done so far, but I imagine there are some good anecdotes to be found out there somewhere.

Heather Sloan is an ILS Master’s student with a specialization in Digital Humanities. She is a full-time staff member in the Media Services and Government Information, Maps & Microform Services (GIMMS) departments of Herman B Wells Library. She has a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Percussion Performance from SUNY Stony Brook, and her interests include Caribbean folkloric music, Latin music, record collecting, and design in popular culture. Her Digital Humanities work focuses on intersections between digital and humanitarian mapping, the environment, and arts advocacy. She is a 2019-2020 HASTAC Scholar.

Kinsey and the Wasps: Mapping a Journey

Part Three, in Which Kinsey (and His Maps?) Find a Home at Indiana University

Kinsey had wowed his Harvard mentor and thesis adviser, the freewheeling William Morton Wheeler, so completely that the latter took it upon himself to land Kinsey some choice opportunities. The first was a Sheldon Traveling Fellowship, awarded for the year 1919-1920, that Kinsey received largely due to Wheeler’s influence. The fellowship allowed Kinsey, an Eagle Scout, to spend a year doing field work across the United States, an experience he took to immediately:

“Collecting in remote areas required superior outdoor skills, courage, and self-reliance, and Kinsey possessed each in full measure….wearing khaki, getting close to nature, surviving in the wild, meeting people from different backgrounds, and dealing with them in their own habitats—these were experiences no bench scientist could expect to know….For a man with his interests, taxonomic entomology was the right choice.”¹

While Kinsey was on his life-changing Sheldon Fellowship journey, Wheeler discovered that there was a job opening in the Zoology Department at Indiana University in Bloomington. He essentially convinced IU to hire Kinsey based on his recommendation, because he could not directly reach Kinsey, whose exact whereabouts were unknown at the time. Once Kinsey resurfaced, he was met with the news that a job was basically being held open for him, thanks to Wheeler. He interviewed at IU in May, 1920, and started work on August 1st. Starting salary: $2,000/yr.²

The arrival of Kinsey’s handmade and annotated maps at Indiana University is more difficult to discern. It seems likely that his original research documents would have moved with him when he arrived. However, many of the maps and charts that appear in his main research volume, The Gall Wasp Genus Cynips: A Study in the Origin of Species, are not among those currently housed in the map collection at Wells Library. Tracing the maps’ journey is one of the long-term goals of this project.

Footnotes

¹Jones, James H. Alfred C. Kinsey : a Public/Private Life. 1st ed. New York: W. W. Norton, 1997, p. 150-1.
²Ibid., p. 155.

Heather Sloan is an ILS Master’s student with a specialization in Digital Humanities. She is a full-time staff member in the Media Services and Government Information, Maps & Microform Services (GIMMS) departments of Herman B Wells Library. She has a Doctor of Musical Arts degree in Percussion Performance from SUNY Stony Brook, and her interests include Caribbean folkloric music, Latin music, record collecting, and design in popular culture. Her Digital Humanities work focuses on intersections between digital and humanitarian mapping, the environment, and arts advocacy. She is a 2019-2020 HASTAC Scholar.