Eaton Collection Puts Jay Kay Klein Photos Online

Nearly 6,000 photos taken by Jay Kay Klein at eight Worldcons in the Sixties were made available for viewing online today by the UC Riverside Library.

The digitization of these photos was covered by Inside UCR on August 10 —

The California Digital Library and the UCR Library recently partnered to digitize nearly 6,000 photographs from the Jay Kay Klein papers – and completed the task in less than two days.

“If we had done the same project in-house, it would have taken us several months to do,” said University Librarian Steven Mandeville-Gamble.

UC Riverside is the first among the entire UC system to employ this specialized workflow with proprietary object holders designed by Pixel Acuity. The company has used the process with previous clients that include the Smithsonian Institution and Stanford University.

Klein contributed his photo collection of 66,000 images of sf fandom and authors to UC Riverside’s Eaton Collection prior to his death in 2012, a collection valued at $1.4 million. His estate also donated $3.5 million and helped create the UCR Library’s Jay Kay and Doris Klein Librarian for Science Fiction.

The eight Worldcons documented in the photos are: Pittcon (1960), Chicon III (1962), Discon I (1964), Tricon (1966), Nycon 3 (1967), Baycon (1968), St. Louiscon (1969), Noreascon (1971).

Unfortunately, the names of the people in most of these pictures have not been included, which impairs their usefulness to fanhistorians.

An overview of everything in the Jay Kay Klein papers is here.

(Doll and Alexis Gilliland, and their son.)

[Via Locus Online.]

18 thoughts on “Eaton Collection Puts Jay Kay Klein Photos Online

  1. I’m guessing having done the digitizing so quickly they’ll go back and tag the subjects, since as John Hertz noted in his File 770 article linked above “Since seven years were needed for a preliminary index of the Pelz collection, Eaton librarians delighted in finding Klein’s photos carefully identified. “

  2. Michael J. Walsh: I’m guessing having done the digitizing so quickly they’ll go back and tag the subjects

    I’m hoping that’s the case. Just a nagging worry that since they did identify some people in the photos, is that because they were famous or they’re the only ones with name data?

  3. Um, Noreascon 1 (or One, but definitely not I) was in 1971, not 1970. (The table entry in the Long List is wrong; the Notes are correct. See its retrospective site.) I can use a drink after today’s archery results; homemade blueberry cordial seems appropriate.

  4. And that doesn’t look like Harlan in 1966 to me … Could be wrong but …
    Anyway, I attended 60, 62, 64, 66, and 69 and be glad to help in attempts to identify attendees. Is there a mechanism via which I could help?

  5. And, yes … A quick look through PittCon photos shows several with misidentifications: a supposed Forry Ackerman photo that shows someone holding FMOF but no sign of Forry himself. And so on. An “Earl Kemp after the Masquerade” – but Earl (who, if I recall, won “Most Beautiful”) doesn’t seem to be in the photo and (again, if I recall) was rushed to his hotel room to have his pore-clogging body-paint scraped off after the Masquerade… Is there a crowdsourcing mechanism?

  6. Yeah … “carefully identified.” As in a DisCon “Fans” photo that features Fritz Leiber. And a DisCon “Bar” photo with a lovely shot of George Scithers. And there’s a nice Hal Clement unidentified photo. Enough wallowing for the evening – This is a treasure trove that would benefit even more from having the diamonds named. And now I’m coming across as really cranky when all I’d like to do is help.

  7. Several of these were originally scanned and displayed at Chicon 7. We included the scans we did when we sent the collection on to Eaton.

    Some of the photos had IDs on the back of them, although many did not. It was common to see them labeled “Isaac Asimov, Harlan Ellison, ?, Frederik Pohl” (or whichever names were appropriate), so that might have something to do with which ones have names attached.

  8. The photo from the Tricon of the woman in a Star Trek costume – that’s a professional model, not a fan. Star Trek hadn’t even been aired yet – the pilot and one episode were shown at the convention. (I vas there, Sharlie.)

    I apologize for laughing unkindly at the identification of “Harlan Ellison” in 1967. He was an entrant in the Nycon masquerade. (I was there, too.) I’m not sure you could call this “cosplay,” as the term and the concept didn’t exist yet. (But as I recall, there were numerous entries as Mr. Spock, so maybe the concept was busy being born.)

  9. JKK’s index prints had the people mostly identified on the back. One of the ones above is one of the ones I worked with for Chicon 7, and the index print scans I gave UCR from that had the ID information tagged as metadata.

  10. And the “Star Trek Fan” shown above is identified as “E. Pickering” in the Tricon photos (M09AE, and also BB34; I hope UCR has maintained JKK’s notation system at least as *one* index into the collection.

  11. There’s been a tremendous amount of discussion of the photos and the incredibly wrong captions on FictionMags. Apparently such wonderful stuff as Phil Dick being identified as a nameless fan, hundreds of wrong attributions, etc.

    Hopefully someone will actually go over there or call them on the phone and get all this stuff corrected.

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  13. Pingback: How To Add Identifications to Jay Kay Klein’s Digitized Photos | File 770

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