Grants and Acquisitions

David Free

Acquisitions

The papers of H. H. Kung 孔祥熙 are now fully digitized and accessible for the first time via the Hoover Institution Library & Archives Digital Collections. Kung served in several high-ranking positions in the Kuomintang (KMT), such as the minister of finance, governor of the Bank of China, and as premier of the Executive Yuan throughout the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945) era, a period of intense struggle for the early Republic of China. These roles, along with his intimate relationships with influential figures such as Chiang Kai-shek, Sun Yat-sen, and the powerful Soong family, make this collection an invaluable asset in understanding the history of modern China and Taiwan.

Photograph of H. H. Kung (Atlantic Photo, Berlin-SW), between 1933 and 1937.

The Kung papers have undergone an impressive journey since they arrived at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives in 2006. Mold and water damage hindered access to the frail materials contained in this significant collection. For over a decade, approximately half the materials were available to researchers but only via microfilm in the Library & Archives Reading Room. Now, with full-text searching enabled for both typewritten and printed text in English and Chinese, the Library & Archives’ digitization of the H. H. Kung papers has ushered in a new era of research possibilities for scholars of modern China and Taiwan. Learn more at https://www.hoover.org/news/open-research-h-h-kung-papers-now-available-digitally.

A partnership between the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s University Libraries and the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) will create an online searchable public depository of roughly 4 million internal documents from the state of North Carolina’s $47.8 million settlement with electronic cigarette maker Juul Labs. In 2021, North Carolina Attorney General Josh Stein reached a settlement with Juul Labs over its alleged marketing to teens, which fueled a surge in teen vaping. The two-year lawsuit uncovered internal documents from Juul Labs that offer insight into the company’s strategy and practices. The documents date from 2015 through 2019 and contain a wide range of records, including business correspondence, reports, marketing plans, advertisements, sales data, internal research, and multimedia files. As part of the settlement, Juul Labs is required to make public many of these documents. The first 280,000 documents are now available online as part of the UCSF Industry Documents Library at https://www.industrydocuments.ucsf.edu/tobacco/collections/juul-labs-collection/. UNC-Chapel Hill and UCSF will publish the remaining documents monthly, concluding the project in 2025.

The University of Arizona Libraries Special Collections has received a sizable trove of material related to the USS Arizona from the family of a sailor who served aboard the battleship prior to the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Lowell and Wendy Franklin of Hobart, Wisconsin, discovered the mementos earlier this year in a box with the name of Lowell’s father, Arthur, on it that they had stored in their basement since receiving it from the estate of Lowell’s late older brother. Inside, they found dozens of items: photos, scrapbooks, handbooks, and other official documents, plus official and personal correspondence, newsletters, and other memorabilia, such as the ship’s newspaper, menus, and event programs.

The university holds one of the largest collections of USS Arizona materials in the world, with more than 100 boxes of material containing hundreds of thousands of materials, including photographs, newspapers, correspondence, and other documents that help tell the story of the ship and the men who served on it. The collection even includes a steel girder salvaged from a scrapyard, much like the battleship’s bell, which has held a place of honor at the university for decades—it now hangs in the Student Union clock tower. Learn more at https://news.arizona.edu/story/trove-uss-arizona-memorabilia-donated-university-libraries.