Jessy Randall, Curator of Special Collections (and writer)
Contact me
Email me
phone: 719-389-6668
IM: tuttjessy (AIM and Yahoo!)
office: Special Collections, Tutt Library 2nd Floor South
Personal website: http://personalwebs.coloradocollege.edu/~jrandall/
What I do
I manage Tutt Library’s collections of old, rare, valuable, fragile, and other special materials, along with the college archives. I also serve as the liaison librarian for Classics and for Feminist and Gender Studies.
I help students, faculty, and visitors with their research, hold workshops in Special Collections, build the collections, answer questions at the reference desk, and more.
Current Colorado College activities
Library Programming Committee, 2005-present
Press at Colorado College Oversight Group, 2007-present
Professional activities
Selected presentations
- The Promotion and Marketing of Helen Hunt Jackson’s Ramona (Air Force Academy, 2009).
- “Netcessary” Literature and Online Magazines (presented at several venues).
- In Lieu of Taste-O-Vision: Why and How to Build a Modest Collection of Menus at Your Library (RBMS 2007).
- Big Old Stone or Naked Patriarch: Pikes Peak in Poetry from 1868 to the Present (Pikes Peak Posse of the Westerners, 2005).
- Going Over to the Dark Side: Librarianship and the Book Trade (RBMS 2005).
- Panel Chair, You’re Only Immortal Once: Preserving Popular Culture in Libraries (Southwest Popular Culture Association conference, 2003).
- Wizard Words: Language in Harry Potter (Young Adult Literature conference, 2000).
- I Can’t Get a Date: Dating Undated Materials (RBMS 1998).
Selected publications
- Forthcoming: “Case Study: The History and Future of the Book, a Half-Block Course at Colorado College” (with Steve Lawson) in Past is Portal: Teaching Undergraduates Using Special Collections and Archives (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2011?).
- “Rip-Roarin’ Hospitality: Menus at Colorado College” in Colorado Libraries, Vol. 34, No. 2, 2008. Reprinted at ALA’s “I Love Libraries” showcase, May 2009.
- “Survey Survey” (with Steve Lawson), College and Undergraduate Libraries, August 2007.
- Several entries in The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink (Oxford University Press, 2007).
- Guest editor, Snakeskin libraries issue, February 2005.
- Drinking Songs and Girl Drinks in Alcohol and Temperance in Modern History: An International Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2003).
- “Wizard Words: The Literary, Latin, and Lexical Origins of Harry Potter’s Vocabulary,” in Verbatim: The Language Quarterly, Spring 2001. Reprinted as “The Fascinating Language of Harry Potter” in Readings on J.K. Rowling (Greenhaven Press, 2004). I write regularly for Verbatim and have articles published or forthcoming on a number of topics, including rhyming reduplicative compounds, Battlestar Galactica, and Dr. Seuss.
Research interests
Language and slang, “netcessary” literature, Elizabeth Blackwell, The Wizard of Oz, culinary history, history and future of the book, book design of the many editions of Helen Hunt Jackson’s novel Ramona, Shirley Jackson, Daniel Pinkwater, zines and zine culture.