Spartan Daily - Serving San Jose State University since 1934

Issue date: 9/17/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Daniel Powell An example of some of the items displayed in the John Steinbeck Center on the fifth floor of the Martin Luther King Jr. Library.

With more than 25,000 items, the Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies in the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Library is a resource that is known worldwide, but may not be known among students on campus.

"We are an organized research unit," said Sstoz Tes, the administrative assistant of the center. "Our primary purpose is to provide research assistance on the life and works of John Steinbeck to whoever needs it. Our ISP told us that, since we put our bibliography online, we have had visitors from over 100 countries."

"Currently, I am working with an Azerbaijani gentleman, another in the Republic of Congo and a couple of researchers from the former Soviet Republic of Georgia," Tes added. "As far as people coming to the center, we have an international presence there as well. This summer we had a Norwegian gentleman here for a week-and-a-half and a Brazilian as well."

Tes added that when a Steinbeck class is taught on campus, the number of visitors goes up. And a lot of usage comes from local high schools and middle schools.

Joseph Jin and Joshua Swan, seniors at Los Gatos High School, were doing research on a thesis for their English class.

"We are trying to find a literary criticism on the works of Steinbeck," Jin said.

"The characters in his books try to make connections," Swan said. "But Steinbeck makes them inherently predatory, so those bonds can't be formed."

The students were directed to the library by their teacher, "and we found out when we got here there is a whole center devoted to him. To have all this information in one place is really nice," Swam said.

The center's bibliography has nearly 7,000 entries of secondary sources and literary criticism, but also articles on Steinbeck. It provides bibliographical annotations and summaries of articles, which give people a brief summary of the work and can state whether the article or book is valuable for research purposes.

The bibliography is constantly being updated and Tes said there are about 6,000 entries to go to get caught up.

"We are rich in ephemera," Tes said. "Those are fragile items like movie posters and original newspaper articles. We are an archive, but we also have a lot of pieces that a museum would have."

Continued...

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