Scope and Content
The Maggie Holtzberg collection documents, through interviews and photographs, the occupational folklife and craft of hot metal typesetters, compositors, and printers. Holtzberg interviewed skilled craftsmen and women who experienced the disruptive technology and transition in the printing industry from mechanical typesetting, "hot metal," to computer-aided photocomposition or "cold type." She interviewed retired printers residing at the Union Printers Home in Colorado Springs, Colorado and craft printers at Heritage Printers in Charlotte, North Carolina, among others. Interviews were conducted between 1983-1988. The collection includes the production files for Holtzberg's book, The Lost World of the Craft Printer (University of Illinois Press, 1992); correspondence with folklorists Archie Green and Judith McCulloh, and notes from meetings with Holtzberg's dissertation advisors at the University of Pennsylvania -- Henry Glassie, Ray Birdwhistle, and with Ken Goldstein, whom she interviewed about his experience in the printing industry. The collection also includes two journals written while Maggie Holtzberg was a student from 1972-1973 at the Trailside Country School, based in Killington, Vermont. The Trailside Country School was a traveling high school run by Michael Cohen and Diana Cohen that taught cultural documentation. The notebooks include diary entries, song lyrics, music transcription, and ephemera from locations throughout the United States where the students traveled. Photographs include the 46 illustrations for Holtzberg's book, 31 slides, plus snapshots from Holtzberg's fieldwork with printers and a few from the Trailside Country School. One of the interviews with printers was conducted by folklorist Jan Rosenberg.