New Collection at UA’s Hoole Library Provides Researchers New Tools to Understand Alcoholism, Addiction

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — A new gift to the W.S. Hoole Special Collections Library at The University of Alabama will be unveiled officially on Friday, Feb. 23 at 10:30 a.m. in the Hoole Library lobby on the second floor of Mary Harmon Bryant Hall.

The Jeanne N. & Joseph M. Smith Collection on Alcohol and Addiction Studies will provide researchers with a broad spectrum of published materials that help further the study of alcoholism and addiction. UA English Professor John W. Crowley and his wife, Emily Smith Crowley, presented the collection to the library in honor of her parents, Jeanne N. and Joseph M. Smith, who died a month apart late in 2005. John Crowley assembled the collection over two decades.

According to Dr. Louis A. Pitschmann, dean of UA Libraries, “The Crowley gift is exceptional in that it reflects 200 years of American thinking regarding problems associated with alcohol abuse, from the days of George Washington to the last quarter of the 20th century. We are honored to be the recipients of such an important body of works.”

The Smith Collection consists of several hundred volumes, published from the late 18th century to the present, that document facets of drug and alcohol use and abuse in the United States. Holdings represent such historical phenomena as the Temperance Movement (especially the role of the Washingtonian Society during the 1840s), Prohibition, and the rise of the modern Recovery Movement (especially the origins of Alcoholics Anonymous).

“Receiving such a distinctive collection adds significance to the University Libraries’ reputation for supporting teaching and research in new emerging fields,” noted Clark E. Center, curator of the W. S. Hoole Special Collections Library.

“On the premise that so multifarious a subject demands the differing perspectives and methodologies of various academic disciplines, the Smith Collection places narrative histories beside medical texts, political and moral polemics, psychological and sociological investigations, biographies and autobiographies, as well as literary expressions in fiction and poetry,” John Crowley said.

Jeanne N. and Joseph M. Smith were married for more than 50 years and they had four children. The acquaintance of Timothy Caton Smith, the youngest and only boy, with drugs and alcohol resulted in his death at 39. The tragic loss of a son and brother underlies the dedication of this collection to the memory of his parents.

The younger daughter of an entrepreneur, Jeanne Smith (née Nolin) grew up in Auburn, N.Y., once the home both of William H. Seward, Lincoln’s Secretary of State, whose purchase of Alaska was dubbed “Seward’s Folly,” and of Harriet Tubman, heroic escaped slave and abolitionist leader known as “the Moses of her people.” Joseph M. Smith, raised within the immigrant Irish community of Yonkers, N.Y., seemed destined for the priesthood. But after a decade in training for the strict Capuchin order, he left the monastery for what would be distinguished service as a naval officer during World War II.

Crowley noted that the collection is an ongoing project. “The Smith Collection, already rich and diverse, is regarded nonetheless as essentially incomplete: a living body of knowledge, the heart of an ever-expanding archive to be augmented by future contributions,” he said.

An exhibition of selected materials from the Smith Collection is on display in the Hoole Library through the spring semester.