The Elulsaive Roman Jakoson Archive

[Henryk Baran]

The Jakobson archive is Manuscript Collection 72 at MIT. Period. All the
rest is irrelevant.  One of the previous messages had the contact points for
Institute Archives and Special Collections; not everything is on the web
yet, thank God.
Henryk Baran
University at Albany, SUNY
hebaran at ibm.net; hbaran at cnsvax.albany.edu
hbaran at mail.fipc.ru

----- Original Message -----
From: Jim Curtis <jcurtis at ezol.com>
To: <SEELANGS at CUNYVM.CUNY.EDU>
Sent: Sunday, August 01, 1999 8:36 PM
Subject: The Elulsaive Roman Jakoson Archive


Hello All--
    I thanked everyone on this listserv the other day for quick responses to
my inquiry about the Roman Jakobson archive.  I think it's the least I can
do to update you.
    Several people said that that Jakobson archive was at MIT.  So I visited
the MIT Library website. However, there were no e-mail addresses at the
website and only one general information number.  However, visitors
(intruders?) are sternly warned that "telephone inquiries are discouraged."
Nothing daunted, I called the only number available to me as someone who
doesn't teach at Harvard of MIT.  Needless to say, no live person answered
the phone and I left a message, which no one has yet returned.
    But several people also said that the Jakobson archive is at UCLA.  I
even got the e-mail address of someone whom I don't known but who has a
perfectly delicious name--Olga Yokoyama.  So I e-mailed Professor Yokoyama
with my request for information.  She e-mailed me back and said that she
didn't know where it was, but that she was forwarding my request to Brent
Vine, whom I also don't know, and who is President of the Roman Jakobson
Society.
(Incidentally, Sic transit gloria mundi--when I initially called the AAASS
office, the person who answered had never heard of Roman Jakobson and wanted
to know what field he was in.)  Brent Vine didn't know where the archive
was, either, and advised me to contact Steven Rudy at NYU, who is writing a
biography of Jakobson.  I visited the NYU website and was not surprised to
learn that it, too, contained no e-mail addresses.  However, Professor Vine
had kindly given me Professor Rudy's number.  So I called that number
and...he doesn't have an answering machine.
    This is the "Stand der Forschung" at the moment.  I have enough
questions that perhaps I could apply for research support in my quest, for
that is what it has become, to find the archive: How many Roman Jakobson
archives are there?  Is there only one?  If there is only one, why do so
many people think that it's in at least three different places--MIT, UCLA,
and NYU?  If there is only one, how would I find out where it is?  If there
is more than one, what is the relationship between them?  Are they divided
by genre, time period, or what?

Best Wishes to All,

Jim
James M. Curtis, Ph. D.
5531 Doral Drive
Wilmington, DE 19808
302/366-0545
jcurtis at ezol.com