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This report on the activities related to the Papers of Katherine Anne Porter and other Porter-related manuscript collections at the University of Maryland at College Park Libraries will cover the period between May 1995 and December 1996. While there were fewer researchers who travelled to College Park to consult our Porter holdings during this period, the demand for information about and access to the collections, particularly for photocopies of materials in them, continued to rise. Although the majority of these researchers were professors and graduate students from academic institutions across the United States, the entire group included undergraduates, independent scholars, and members of the general public from North America, Europe, and Asia as well. On-site researchers included residents of the states of Maryland, Nevada, New York, Texas, and Washington and one scholar from Austria. Telephone, mail, and e-mail inquiries have also been received from California, Colorado, Connecticut, Georgia, Iowa, Illinois, Louisiana, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Virginia, and Washington as well as from Austria, Canada, England, Japan, Mexico, and Spain.

Popular interest in Porter also remained high. During the last year and a half, there have been more than 500 visitors to the Katherine Anne Porter Room. The room continued to be open on Monday and Thursday afternoons during the academic year thanks to the efforts of an enthusiastic group of volunteer docents. Dorothy Galvin and Freddy Baer, who with Shirley Bauer initiated the program in November 1993, have provided uninterrupted loyal service for three years. Shirley Bauer, now retired from college teaching, returned to the program in September 1995. Beverly Lewoc and Elizabeth Warner, also retired professionals, joined the group in spring 1995. In September 1995, Esther Birdsall, one of my former professors, and Sy Gettman, our only male to date, swelled the ranks to eight. Although Mr. Gettman was forced to withdraw in January 1996 because of family concerns, the remaining seven have provided stalwart support to me and the Libraries. A highlight for the docents occurred on December 15, 1995. A visit of Barbara Thompson Davis, Literary Trustee of the Estate of Katherine Anne Porter, coincided with the date scheduled for our end-of-semester celebration. Mrs. Davis generously hosted the luncheon for the docents and myself at the Rossborough Inn. Both she and Shirley Bauer regaled us with their personal recollections of Miss Porter.

Groups that have visited the Porter Room included those invited to events sponsored by the Libraries. Receptions following these events took place in the Porter Room, enabling me to introduce Katherine Anne Porter to some new audiences. On November 7, 1995, Phillip Herring, author of a new scholarly biography of Djuna Barnes, delivered a lecture that was followed by a book signing and reception in the Porter Room; after the Porter collection, the Papers of Djuna Barnes are the Libraries' most valuable literary manuscript holdings. Hodding Carter, III, former official in the Jimmy Carter administration and holder of UMCP's Knight Chair of Journalism, spoke at the kick-off for the Friends of the Libraries event on December 5, 1995. Two events related to the Libraries' Gordon W. Prange Collection of Japanese publications were held in the Porter Room in 1996: the visit of the Librarian of the National Diet Library of Japan on April 29 and a special program to celebrate the opening of the children's publications in the Prange collection on August 1. On May 2, 1996, members of Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference, who were meeting in College Park, toured the Porter Room, where the organization was born in June 1972. In addition, I made presentations in the Porter Room for seven members of a University Park book club in November 1995 and five members of the UMCP Undergraduate History Association in November 1996.

The Porter Room, the Porter collection, and several of the Porter-related collections were significantly enhanced by gifts since my last report. Miss Porter's nephew Paul Porter was prominent among the donors. His gifts included a copy of a book formerly owned by Miss Porter, copies of family photographs of his father and one of his sisters, and a small group of correspondence and manuscript material. These materials have been incorporated into the papers of Katherine Anne Porter and the Paul Porter papers.

Bill and Fern Wilkins, who became intimate friends of Miss Porter in the 1970s, contributed two memorabilia items for display in the Porter Room. The first is one of the last typewriters Miss Porter used; the second is a blue wool Christian Dior suit. A photograph of Miss Porter wearing this suit accompanied newspaper coverage of the December 1972 "Voyage Beyond Apollo" cruise during which Miss Porter observed the launch of Apollo 17. (For example, see Tom Buckley, "Caribbean Cruise Attempts To Seek Meaning of Apollo," New York Times, 12 December 1972.)

Carole Neal and Margaret Frost, daughters of former president of the University of Maryland, Wilson Elkins, and his wife Dorothy, donated eleven letters written by Miss Porter to their late father and mother, as well as some additional manuscript and memorabilia materials. Professor Ray Lewis White of Illinois State University donated his nearly 400-item collection of clippings about Miss Porter and her work. Both of these gifts have been added to Miss Porter's papers.

Clark Dobson, who became a close friend of Miss Porter late in her life, donated the pine coffin that Miss Porter bought in 1974. Now housed in the Porter Room, the coffin is painted with large flowers that were executed by Joe Mayhew, the son of one of Miss Porter's neighbors at the College Park apartment where she was living at the time. The coffin figured prominently in Henry Allen's 31 March 1974 Washington Post piece "Katherine Anne Porter: The Vanity of Excellence." Dobson, a dean at George Mason University in nearby northern Virginia, also donated three 1974-1975 photographs of Miss Porter and others from his personal collection; they have been incorporated into the Libraries' collection of Miss Porter's photographs.

Margaret Doherty Neal, the niece of Miss Porter's friend Mary Louis Doherty, has continued to augment the Libraries' collection of her aunt's papers as she locates additional items among the Doherty family papers. These gifts included nearly eighty photographs, twelve items of correspondence and other manuscript materials, and ten legal documents. Perhaps the most interesting among them are several of Miss Doherty's passports and Mexican Alien Registration cards.

The Libraries were also able to acquire through purchase four letters written by Miss Porter to her sister Gay Porter Holloway. The dates of these letters are 10 December 1947, 12 February 1948, 31 May 1961, and 15 January 1966. They have been interfiled with other correspondence between Miss Porter and Mrs. Holloway in Series I of the Porter papers. Another acquisition of interest in the last eighteen months is a videotape copy of a short interview with Miss Porter filmed by the university in the Porter Room in 1971.

The reporting period also saw the arrival of three large exhibit cases, two cubes to display three dimensional objects, four leather and walnut benches, a lectern, and display panels for use in the Porter Room. This furniture and equipment has enhanced the ambience of exhibition space and has allowed us to mount more professional exhibits.

There have been no new preservation initiatives this year, but the grant-writing activity of June 1996 (described below) may ultimately result in large scale preservation of the most valuable portions of the Porter collection. The deteriorating manuscript materials from the Porter and Grace Delafield Day Spier papers that were sent out in 1995 have received treatment and have been reintegrated into these collections. Other preservation news includes the conclusions of the report of the furniture conservator. I was dismayed to learn how much it will cost to conserve and restore Miss Porter's antique furniture housed in the Porter Room. The conservator estimates that $12,000 to $15,000 will be necessary to repair and restore just the eighteenth-century upholstered sofa.

The most important accomplishments of the last year and a half are a direct result of the return of Jodi Allison-Bunnell to the Archives and Manuscripts Department. She had formerly served as a graduate assistant from March through August 1994. In September 1995, she returned to work on a part-time basis as my principal assistant. Her two most important initial assignments were beginning the reprocessing of the Porter papers and researching possible sources of funding to microfilm the collection. After completing her degrees in February 1996, she became a nearly full-time employee. One of her first tasks was to help me devise a new arrangement scheme for the collection. Her work was also essential in preparing the collection and information about it for an appraisal that was completed in February 1996. By December 1996, reprocessing of all of the collection except for the correspondence, photographs, and Miss Porter's manuscripts was virtually complete. Initial reordering of the correspondence, constituting more than sixty percent of the paper portion of the collection, has also been finished.

Ms. Allison-Bunnell's research on funding sources enabled us to focus our efforts on the most promising among them. We made initial contact with the Division of Preservation and Access of the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Pforzheimer, Summerlee, Mellon, Luce, and Delmas foundations. We were encouraged to submit grant proposals by the Summerlee Foundation and NEH. Both of these proposals were submitted by early July. In mid-July, we learned that the Summerlee Foundation of Dallas, Texas, had awarded us a grant of $10,000 to help defray the costs of completing the reprocessing of the collection and of writing an entirely new guide to the collection. This grant allowed us to hire Ms. Allison-Bunnell in an entry-level professional position as a project archivist. We expect to complete this work by the time the Katherine Anne Porter Society meets in Baltimore in late May. We hope to make a presentation of the completed guide at one of the society's gatherings at the American Literature Association Conference.

Notification of our success with the NEH proposal will not come until Spring 1997. We have asked the Endowment to fund a project archivist, student support, and microfilming of 100,000 of the most fragile and valuable pages of the collection. The effort to complete this grant was truly Herculean. Almost 150 pages in length, the grant benefitted from the wise counsel and supporting letters of friends and scholarly colleagues. These included Barbara Thompson Davis, Literary Trustee of the Estate of Katherine Anne Porter; Paul Porter; Darlene Unrue; Janis Stout; Joan Givner; Jackson R. Bryer; and Lewis Lawson. I also received valuable help and advice from my colleagues at the Libraries: Acting Director Anne Scott MacLeod; Desider Vikor, Associate Director for Collection Management and Special Collections; Mary Holland, Development Officer; Doug McElrath, Curator of Marylandia and Rare Books; and my departmental colleagues, Lauren Brown, Curator of Archives and Manuscripts; and Anne Turkos, University Archivist. If successful, the grant will run eighteen months. Portions of the collection will be closed to researchers at different periods during the time the preparation and actual filming take place. The proposal calls for a third of the 100,000 images (clippings; financial, legal, and personal materials; manuscripts and notes) to be closed to researchers in order to prepare for filming in September 1997, the second portion (half of the correspondence) in January 1998, and the third portion (remaining half of correspondence) in June 1998. If our proposal is not successful, we will actively seek funds for microfilming from other sources.

Outside of Ms. Allison-Bunnell's efforts, there has been additional progress in processing Porter and Porter-related materials in the last year and a half. Volunteer Bill Wilkins was able to sort through the various drafts and carbons of Porter's Cotton Mather manuscripts to determine which were duplicates. Two interns from the UMCP College of Library and Information Services, Tara Reise and Scott Leonard, made good headway on a new arrangement scheme for the large collection of photographs. Student intern Jennifer Pitts completed the revision to the guide to the papers of Donald Elder begun by former docent Jackie Wintle. Graduate assistant Michelle DeMartino processed and wrote a guide to the papers of Mr. and Mrs, John Prince, which had been donated to the Libraries in 1982. At present, docent Esther Birdsall is working on a guide to the papers of E. Barrett Prettyman, Jr. In January 1996, Mr. Prettyman removed the restriction on access to these papers. Although the guide is not completed, these papers are now available to researchers.

I regret to report that Jodi Allison-Bunnell will be leaving the Archives and Manuscripts Department in mid-March 1997. She has accepted the position of Archivist of the K. Ross Toole Archives of the Mansfield Library at the University of Montana. Without her exceptional work, both in processing the collection and researching and writing the grant proposals, I would not be recording these valuable accomplishments. She thoughtfully arranged to begin her new position in Montana in order that most of the work of reprocessing and writing will be complete when she leaves. Some of you may be interested in reading her article, "Access in the Time of Salinger: Fair Use and the Papers of Katherine Anne Porter," which will be published in the next issue of the American Archivist (dated October 1995, to be published January 1997). It is a great blow to lose her, and I will miss both the support and intellectual stimulation of working with her every day. However, all of us in the department wish her and her husband success and happiness as they return home to the West.