Dwight Barstow Collection : Photocopy Compilation and Notes by Thellie Lovejoy, 2000

I was given 70 boxes and 17 large filing cabinet drawers full of unorganized papers and periodicals that belonged to a Mr. Dwight Barstow, then deceased about 15 years. This is a large private Baha'i archive. Dwight became a Bahá'í and moved to the Los Angeles area in the late 1940s. He began to collect old Bahá'í periodicals and started an operation he called the Bahá'í Periodical Exchange (BPE). In his effort to collect old Bahá'í periodicals, he made a habit of befriending "little old ladies" in the greater LA area. He befriended in particular the ones who had no Bahá'í heirs to whom to leave their Bahá'í papers, books and periodicals. The Project: One of the most surprising items I found while sorting through his boxes was hundreds of typed copies of Tablets from `Abdu'l-Baha to the early American believers. I created a system of numbering the documents so that it is easy for me to identify them within the collection, in order to correspond with others regarding the documents, and to keep them separate from my other collections. I assigned each photocopied page a different number, and I marked the same number in pencil on the back side of each original, corresponding document. This allows me to refer directly to the original of any photocopied document, and to easily refer to any document with others to whom I have given copies. Every page I numbered starts with "BC#" (Barstow Collection number). That way, there is no confusion with other numbers found on some of the documents made by previous owners. If a document has more than one page, each page of it is marked with the same document number, with different letters behind it. For example, document #200, a multi-paged document, is marked, BC# 200-A, BC# 200-B, etc., until end. Behind the last page of the document, I put a dash behind the letter to indicate that is the last page, as it is not always obvious.