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The period between May and October 1997 was marked with much activity related to the Porter holdings at the University of Maryland Libraries. The announcement that the National Endowment for the Humanities fully funded the Libraries' proposal to microfilm the most valuable and heavily used portions of the Papers of Katherine Anne Porter resulted in a surge of researcher requests and visits. This response came as a reaction to the announcement that the papers would be closed to researchers as the microfilming takes place. The papers were closed on October 10 so that preparations for filming can proceed unimpeded by on- and off-site research requests. Portions of the collection will become available as the microfilming proceeds. Researchers will be able to consult the microfilm in College Park or at the library at their home institution via inter-library loan. At present, the Libraries are developing policies for loaning the microfilm. Announcement of the policies and availability of the microfilm will appear on the Libraries' Literary Manuscripts home page, in various scholarly journals, and in this newsletter. Notification will also be mailed to those on the Libraries' Katherine Anne Porter mailing list. Anyone wishing to be added to that mailing list should contact me.

During this six-month period there were twelve on-site researchers, eight of whom were graduate students. Researchers travelled to College Park from Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and Texas as well as from Mexico and the Netherlands. Telephone, mail, and e-mail inquiries have also been received from California, Connecticut, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia, and from Great Britain, Israel, the Netherlands, and Spain. The bulk of these requests came from graduate students and scholars, but there have been a number of requests for information and photographs from the media and from high school students.

The Libraries continued to receive the stalwart support of the seven women who serve as docents in the Porter Room: Freddy Baer, Shirley Bauer, Esther Birdsall, Dorothy Galvin, Rose Ann Jackson, Beverly Lewoc, and Betty Warner. During the six-month period covered by this report, the room was open to the public nineteen afternoons, and there were a total of 184 visitors.

Bill Wilkins continues to support the Porter holdings at Maryland both with his volunteer efforts and with additional gifts. Drawing on the expertise he developed working with Miss Porter on her Cotton Mather manuscript, Bill culled and sorted the Mather materials in Series II of the Porter papers. At present, he is reviewing the arrangement of Miss Porter's clippings (Series VI). Bill and his wife, Fern, have donated additional Porter memorabilia, photographs and negatives, as well as some Porter-related ephemera. The memorabilia includes a bottle of Florida water (cologne) that had been used by Miss Porter in the 1970s and two charming painted Mexican pottery doves. The thirty-four photographs and negatives represent twenty-three separate images including Eugene Pressly, Miss Porter, and other individuals and places relating to her. Several of these appear to be unique, not duplicating photographs in the existing collection in any way.

Although not fully processed, the Papers of George and Toni Willison, comprising all of the Porter materials formerly owned by Mrs. Willison, are now available to researchers. This collection includes Miss Porter's letters to the Willisons that were purchased by the Libraries and also the Willison family's bequest of the remainder of Mrs. Willison's Porter-related collection. This bequest includes notes by Mrs. Willison and her son Malcolm on Miss Porter and drafts of Mrs. Willison's letters to others about Miss Porter (1967-1992) as well as letters from Paul Porter to Mrs. Willison (1980-1992). There are also letters from Jim Wayne Miller to Mrs. Willison about Miss Porter and a signed agreement indicating that Miller would write a book on South Hill (1983-1985). Photographs of South Hill, including two in which Miss Porter and Mrs. Willison appear, and clippings and other ephemeral materials by or about Miss Porter (1932 to 1980) comprise the memorabilia in the collection. The collection also includes letters from Bill and Fern Wilkins to Florence Willison (1977-1996). The Willison family wishes that the Wilkinses' further contribution, approving the donation of their letters, be gratefully recognized. The family also pointed out a few errors in the account in the last issue of the newsletter. "George Willison's book reviewed by KAP was Saints & Strangers, not Sinners--because the pilgrims, to round out the Mayflower's company brought in nonmembers of their little sect, calling them 'strangers.'" Also George Willison had already left the WPA Writers Project by 1943, before Saints & Strangers was published, to work at the Civil Aeronautics Administration and then as a speechwriter for the Democratic National Committee in Washington, DC.

My efforts in the last six months have focused on the NEH-funded project to microfilm forty-eight linear feet of the paper portion of the Porter collection. The grant enabled the Libraries to hire Rachel S. Vagts as the project archivist. A recent graduate of the master's program in Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin, she holds an undergraduate degree from Gustavus Adolphus College. Her experience includes two years at the Archives Division of the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. From April 1996 until accepting the Libraries' offer, she was an archivist at the society working on a project to microfilm scrapbooks of the advertising firm of Foote, Cone, and Belding. Since September 2 when Miss Vagts joined the Libraries, we have concentrated on securing a microfilm vendor; we expect to select the vendor by December 1. In the meantime, Patty Rettig, the graduate assistant who has been hired to support the project, has continued the work of final arrangement of the collection and guide revision begun this summer by former graduate assistant Rebecca Zeltinger. Miss Vagts has made great headway in preparing targets for the microfilm edition, and I have continued my work reviewing the arrangement and description of the collection. We expect to have the arrangement of the collection and the new guide completed in January. The schedule for the actual microfilming and availability of portions of the microfilm edition of the papers will not be finalized until arrangements have been made with the successful vendor. Those details will be publicized in the next issue of the newsletter as well as through the channels mentioned in the first paragraph of this report. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have further questions about the microfilming or any other matter relating to the Libraries' Porter holdings.