Tulane University's
Louisiana Research Collection

LaRC has created a new souvenir bookmark featuring artwork in the Carnival Collection. This graceful composite image, which is also used as the collection's online banner, is derived from artist Bror Anders Wikstrom's "the throne of Saturn", a float design from the 1905 Krewe of Proteus parade in New Orleans. The banners and also many of the library’s digitization projects result from a collaboration between the Louisiana Research Collection and the Web Services Department. We hope you will make a personal visit to the Special Collections Reading Room soon. From your computer, you may browse the large and growing number of digitized images from our Carnival Collection artwork by visiting the freely accessible LOUISiana Digital Library . Posted by Susanna Powers

LaRC Manuscripts Collection 809 holds the records of the planning of a multi-purpose playground on the uptown New Orleans campus of Robert M. Lusher Elementary School (7315 Willow St.) in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Lusher Playground Project, also called the Lusher School Community Recreation Area Project, came about because of a common need of the school’s enrolled students and other children living in adjacent neighborhoods of New Orleans, for a supervised play area after school hours. Racial tensions involved in this discussion are apparent in the collection's correspondence. The school leaders and students, parents, the school board, the city recreation agency (NORD), Tulane University School of Architecture, and other community members all collaborated successfully on this project, opening the grounds for community use in 1971. Included in the collection are handwritten and typed letters, printed newsletters, financial records (such as accounts, contribution records an...