VISUALIZING DR. LOGAN'S "LIBERAL DONATION"
Mapping the literature library of the head of the English department in 1929
By Elizabeth Andrzejewski and Maxwell Gray

Preface
John Daniel Logan was head of the English department at Marquette when he died in 1929. He left to Marquette his personal library of four large cases of fifteen hundred books. The library included many volumes of Greek and Latin classics and modern philosophy. In 1932 the library was estimated to be worth only $12 (circa $250 in 2024). But it was a valuable donation to the university library, Logan's books representing 1 out of every 20 books in the university library at the time. This data visualization project maps what we can reconstruct of Logan's literature library from bookplates found in books from P call numbers in Raynor Library over the summer of 2023. The maps are interactive, so viewers can click and drag, zoom in and out, and click on individual elements to view their metadata.

Introduction
Logan was born in Nova Scotia in 1869. He studied at Dalhousie University in Halifax and Harvard. He taught at many colleges and universities including Harvard and South Dakota University. In 1926 Logan came to Marquette from Arcadia University in Nova Scotia where he lectured on French, English, and Canadian literature. In the following year he was made head of the English department where he reorganized the first-year English course. He also founded the Marquette Poetry Society that was renamed the John D. Logan Poetry Society after his death. He himself was regarded as the poet laureate of Canada.

Before he came to Marquette, Logan gave his papers and collection of Canadian literature to Acadia University. His papers include correspondence and manascripts of Logan and other Canadian authors. Readers can view some of these papers at the digital collections of the Esther Clark Wright and Atlantic Baptist Archives: https://archives.acadiau.ca/collections/john-daniel-logan.

In 1981 Toby Avard Foshay submitted a thesis that includes a biography of Logan and bibliography of his writings: https://scholar.acadiau.ca/islandora/object/theses%3A3828.

Visualizing publication information
Logan's literature library included books from major centers for book publishing like New York and London. But it also included books from peripheral cities for book publishing like Halifax and Melbourne. Most of Logan's literature books (visualized in this map) were published in New York, London, Boston, Oxford, or Toronto. This map also visualizes the publication dates of Logan's literature books: lighter color blues represent earlier publication dates and darker color blues represent later publication dates. Many of Logan's oldest books were from London, while many of his newest books were from New York.

Visualizing national literatures
Logan was a great collector of Canadian literature, especially poetry. But he donated most of his collection of Canadian literature to Acadia University before he died, so the library he donated to Marquette seemingly included few books from Canadian authors. Instead, it included many books from American and English authors, as well as some books from Irish and Scottish authors. (It also included many Greek and Latin books.) This map visualizes Logan's modern literature books organized by the nationalities of their authors together with their Library of Congress Classifications. Logan seemingly collected few books of literary criticism from authors who weren't American.

Visualizing genders and genres
In his teaching and criticism, Logan was a strong adovcate of women poets, especially from Canada. But he was seemingly less interested in women authors of other genres. This map visualizes Logan's literature library in terms of gender and genre. Here his literature books are organized by their different genres, and color coded to represent the different genders of their authors. Other than poetry, he was also an active collector of literary criticism.

Acknowledgements
We want to thank Raynor Library's archivists whose archival collections and digitized collections helped make this project possible. We especially want to thank Katherine Blank who helped us find and access records from university archives.

How to cite this project
Elizabeth Andrzejewski and Maxwell Gray, Visualizing Dr. Logan's "liberal donation": Mapping the literature library of the head of the English department in 1929 (Kumu Inc, 2024): https://maxgray20.kumu.io/visualizing-dr-logans-liberal-donation.