I recently completed processing the Horace G. Richards papers at the Academy of Natural Sciences, my last collection here for the PACSCL project! Richards was Chair of the Geology and Paleontology Department at the Academy from 1960 to 1972, although he worked here from 1937 till his death in 1984. He also taught courses at the University of Pennsylvania and was a Research Associate at the Lamont-Doherty Geological Observatory of Columbia University. He frequently was a guest lecturer at various institutions. He did several radio interviews, presented papers, wrote articles, compiled comprehensive bibliographies and performed research that took him all over the world!

His papers were relatively in order. At the start, the materials were mostly grouped into series, but series or subseries were not necessarily always identified or arranged. At pre-processing, the collection measured 47 linear feet and at post-processing 41 linear feet.  The arrangement of the correspondence took the most time, as there were seven preexisting subseries.  The preexisting divisions were various spans of time, sometimes five years, sometimes full decades. Although the correspondence for each time had been pulled out alphabetically, the dates often overlapped, were not in order and were often incorrectly labeled on the folders.

Richards’ main area of expertise was the Quaternary Period, which is the past 1.8 million years.  He studied invertebrate fossils, geologic formations and the changing shoreline of coastal plains, primarily the Atlantic coastal plain from Long Island to Florida.  He started a project called the Atlantic Coastal Plain Project (ACPP), in which he studied deep water wells and oil wells along the Atlantic coast.  As part of his work, he wrote a Bibliography of the Geology of the Atlantic Coastal Plains. He was also actively involved with International Union of Quaternary Research (INQUA), a society devoted to studying environmental and climate change.  As I surveyed the materials of the ACPP and INQUA, which were in large boxes together, I discovered that he also worked on an Annotated Bibliography of Quaternary Shorelines, which was unrelated to ACPP and INQUA.  Once identified, I created a series for the additional material.

Richards’ papers have an extensive amount of visual materials: photographs, negatives, lantern slides, scrapbooks and photo albums, but most especially slides! The slides are pictures from his expeditions and field work which led him to travel all around the world. The slides are housed in neat looking slide boxes, however, they are not archival. Sadly, due to minimal processing, I was not able to rehouse the slides. I was able to create a usable intellectual order and organized the existing boxes into a more convenient physical order.

Among the many amazing aspects of working at the Academy (namely head archivist, Clare Flemming), we have been lucky to be able to consult with subject specialists as needed.  For example, while processing this collection I came across a few negatives of unidentified insects. Although I knew I could just write “unidentified insect,” I also knew an Academy entomologist, Greg Cowper, who would be able to and did come by to tell me what the negatives were of.  What I found really neat was: although 8 of the negatives looked essentially exactly the same to me, Greg was able to identify that the images were of various species of grasshoppers! So with the exception of two of the negatives, they were of different insects!

While working on the scope and content note, I had the privilege to speak with Invertebrate Paleontologist, John Sime, who kindly looked over the collection and discussed with me the potential research value of the materials.  It was amazing to  hear about how salient Richards’ work still is today. The Quaternary period and especially Richards work on the changing shorelines and climate change is of special interest.  Some raw data exists in the collection related to Richards’ work with the ACPP. The extensive images from his expeditions depict shorelines all over the world throughout the 1930s through the 1970s, and these images could provide evidence of past shorelines and geologic formations.  Richards’ papers may also help catalog some of the specimens of invertebrate fossils that he collected for the Academy.

It was also interesting to discover how remarkable a figure Richards is.  Richards kept thorough scrapbooks, which chronicle his career and activities at the Academy, as well as notable happenings of his colleagues and students.  I feel very fortunate to have had the opportunity to get to know him through his papers and make them available to researchers.