History of the Collection

Burton Blatt died on January 20, 1985.

On February 6, 1985 the Syracuse University Archives received the first installment of Blatt's papers from his widow Ethel, followed by additional accessions on February 29 and March 13. On May 2, 1985 two boxes were received from Louis Heifetz, Associate Professor of Special Education. This brought the total number of Burton Blatt boxes to 49.

In addition an 11 box set of files was later received from the Office of the Dean, much of which contained personal materials from Blatt himself. In the end the Archives had 60 boxes of records assigned to Blatt in its database.

The papers were stored in the Archives' off-site storage facility as an unprocessed collection awaiting the financial resources to fully process the collection for research use. Requests for information were received and handled over the years, often regarding Blatt's Christmas in Purgatory.

Early in 2006 the Archives' was approached by staff of the new Burton Blatt Institute [BBI] who wanted to look through the boxes. They were excited by what they found and identified a number of papers and media that they recognized would be of great interest to those researching Blatt and disabilities.

Discussion ensued and the BBI offered to fund the processing of the collection and the construction of a web site. Two Syracuse University graduate students, Brian Burtt and Maude Falcone, were hired to work full-time for the summer to process the collection, and an individual with web experience, Elwin Yerdon, was hired to construct the basic web site.

The Project

The project began in June 2006 and ran through the end of August. All 60 boxes were brought from the remote facility to the Archives main work area in Bird Library on campus. The Archives also had an extensive clipping file, photograph file and faculty file on Blatt which were consulted as background to Blatt's productive life. The Archives' collection had a rudimentary index, supplemented by the review done by the BBI. The students used all of this to construct a basic schema or series outline for the collection. That schema became the basic outline for the collection. It is now available on-line as the Burton Blatt Papers Index.

The boxes and folders were sorted - many of which had not been used since Blatt's death over twenty years earlier. New acid-free folders and acid-free boxes were purchased and the collection was listed in the Archives' database. Utilizing smaller boxes for future ease of movement from the remote facility, the collection now numbers 127 boxes of records.

Future Work

Processing a major collection not in solid original order is very difficult and time-consuming. The two month timeframe was done to coincide with plans for the official opening of the Burton Blatt Institute in the early fall of 2006. Therefore, additional work still needs to be done. Many folders need additional full citations for the articles and reports included. A number of Blatt's writings have been digitized and are available as full-text documents on this web site, but more will be added in the coming weeks. In addition audio and videos of Blatt are being digitized and will be added to this site as well.

The staff of the Syracuse University Archives and the staff of the Burton Blatt Institute invite researchers to use this valuable collection and provide us with any additional thoughts or ideas that would make this site even more useful.

University Archives:

archives@syr.edu
315/443-9760

pblanck@syr.edu
315/443-9703