Matt Francis, the new part-time rare books cataloger in the Toppan Library, has recently finished cataloging the Louise A. Jackson Juvenile Western Book Collection.  The collection contains one hundred and two Western children’s books from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, as well as eight reference books on juvenile literature.  These books represent early children’s book series and boys’ and girls’ adventure books.  A sampling of the books represented in the collection include: Chicken Little Jane, Honey Bunch: Her First Trip West, Zigzag Journeys in the Occident, The Bobbsey Twins in the Great West, and The Boy Scouts in the Rockies.  Entries for these titles, and the others in the collection, will now be available on the University Libraries’ online catalog  and in federated databases like WorldCat.

The collection was generously donated by former University of Wyoming professor and children’s writer Louise Jackson and was supplemented by a donation from recently retired University of Wyoming professor Barbara Chatton.  Dr. Jackson has also committed to supporting the growth, curation, and research use of the collection through a significant bequest.

Toppan and its books are accessible to undergraduates and members of the public as well as to established scholars.  If you would like to make use of any of the books from the collection (from 9 to 5 during the week), please make an appointment with the rare books curator, Anne Marie Lane, at etoppan@uwyo.edu or (307) 766-2565.

–Matt Francis, Assistant Archivist, Arrangement and Description