Saint Louis Manuscript Collections

The Elaine Viets Papers contains correspondence, copy-edited manuscripts, photographs, books, and newspaper clippings pertaining to her career as a columnist for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch (1972-1997) and mystery writer of the Francesca Vierling, Dead-End Job, and Josie Marcus, Mystery Shopper series. Materials of interest include correspondence from fans of Viets’s mystery novels wishing her well after her stroke in 2007, as well as photographs from Viets’s book tours and the set of Viets Beat, a KMOV talk show Viets hosted in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Also included in this collection are scrapbooks containing Viets’s columns for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, written between 1972 and 1995. The newspaper clippings are incomplete, however, as they do not contain her St. Louis Post-Dispatch columns written from 1996 to 1997.

The Organization for Black Struggle Records (OBS) contains correspondence, press releases, flyers, and newsletters pertaining to the group's mission to address the needs and issues of the Black working class in the St. Louis Metropolitan Area. Topics of interest include housing and job discrimination cases, criminal justice reform, and apartheid in South Africa.

This collection contains meeting minutes, property appraisal cards, annual reports, VHS tapes, and photographs pertaining to the Mercantile Bancorporation’s mission to provide financial services to customers in the Midwest. Materials of interest include property appraisal cards for residential homes in the St. Louis Metropolitan Region. The cards contain information about the lot size, construction material, and estimated value for each individual property. The materials in this collection date from 1936 to 1999.

The River des Peres Watershed coalition contains photographs and glass slide negatives the organization collected chronicling the construction of the River des Peres Sewerage and Drainage Works. The photographs in the collection primarily depict the construction near the Missouri History Museum.

The Optimist International Records contain board and convention meeting minutes, club files, publications, grant files, newspaper clippings, and photographs documenting the organization’s mission to promote the common good in communities, traditionally supporting youth through various programs. Materials of interest include files on individual Optimist Clubs throughout Missouri and the world, which include membership lists and club reports sent to Optimist International. The materials in this collection date from 1919-2019.