August 26 is National Women's Equality Day and the September-October issue celebrates the women of Kansas. Look for articles in this next issue on women's suffrage, writers (several of KanColl's selections, some dating back to the 1850's, are written by women), and of course that intriguing and endlessly complex relationship women have with men.

Connie DiPasquale noticed the "Mystery Photos" in the last issue of Voices and kindly wrote, "These look to me like photos of the 1951 flood of the Kaw River. And judging from the first photo that shows the Railway Ice Co., I would guess that the majority of them were from the Topeka, KS. area." Many thanks, Connie!

The EKIS workshop has been bustling! In the corner where many volunteers are working on Cutler's History of the State of Kansas, Sandra Harris just finished the huge Jefferson county chapter. (That's Sandra, over there, leaning back in her chair with the rest of the volunteers fanning her after this tremendous effort!) Rosana Whitenight meanwhile has continued to march through the state history chapters of the book. Most recently, she completed an astonishing number of large complex tables of statistics that will be invaluable to those doing research on Kansas. John Matthews, coordinator for the project with Bob Mills, has worked his usual magic with the coding needed to install all of these in the History..

Meanwhile, over by the window, Debra Parminter has completed transcribing the extremely long Lancaster chapter for the EKIS project, Andreas' History of the State of Nebraska, and project coordinator Connie Snyder added all the coding needed to present this material on the Web. (If you ask, I'm sure they'll share some of the rum cake Connie baked to celebrate!)

Teresa Lindquist (the one with the pretty roses on her desk) has been working hard on web design for several KanColl selections. Fresh from designing Kate Stephen's Life at Laurel Town in Anglo-Saxon Kansas, Teresa just completed the renovations on what we understand was the first EKIS project, Ms. Stephen's American Thumbprints. Teresa is already busy with her next project, renovating another of the older KanColl selections.

Meanwhile, John Maier and Alice Allen have been working on transcribing McCoy's Cattle Trade of the West and Southwest, which had been started by Janet Duncan. John has finished his section of the book and Alice has only a few more chapters to go. John has already started working on Ropes' Six Months in Kansas while Mary Scherer is beginning the transcription of Thomas H. Gladstone's An Englishman in Kansas.

Gary Martens has been smoking his scanner, turning out extraordinarily clean scans of Last of the Great Scouts by Helen Westmoreland Cody and Topeka Pen & Camera Sketches by Mary Jackson. Mary Ann Thompson is editing the Great Scouts text while Jeanne Bloom has taken on the Topeka book.

Many more projects are underway -- oops, look out! here comes a book on early Methodist missionaries that Linda Morgan Clark said she'd transcibe for us. Maybe we'd best go over to KanColl and leave the volunteers to their work.....

A number of new selections have been added to KanColl. Chief among them is the in-progress work, Twin Hells by John Reynolds. This exceptionally well-written book will hold your attention from the very first; Mr. Reynolds was imprisoned in the Kansas Penitentiary in the 1870s and then wrote a book about his experiences. The account is both absorbing and instructive -- you shouldn't miss it!

This is has been a very busy spring and summer for KanColl. And there's much more to come -- be sure to check the KanColl "What's New" page frequently to see the latest additions!