FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE June 9, 2000 CONTACT: Lisa Lacher, (515) 271-3119 'DING' DARLING CARTOON COLLECTION NOW AVAILABLE ON SEARCHABLE CD AT DRAKE'S COWLES LIBRARY Christopher "Kip" Koss, grandson of Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Jay Norwood "Ding" Darling, has produced and donated to Drake University's Cowles Library a searchable CD that contains approximately 6,800 Darling cartoons. Koss, president of the J.N. "Ding" Darling Foundation, will discuss his grandfather's work and demonstrate the searchable CD at 4 p.m. Sunday, June 25, in the first-floor reading room of Cowles Library, 28th Street and University Avenue. A reception will follow the presentation. Both events are free and open to the public. While in Des Moines, Koss also will conduct the annual meeting of the J.N. "Ding" Darling Foundation, a non-profit organization comprised entirely of volunteers and specializing in conservation education. Noted for his passion for conservation and politics, Darling chronicled such momentous events as two world wars, the Great Depression and Prohibition as a cartoonist for The Des Moines Register from 1906 to 1949. His cartoons were syndicated in 130 daily newspapers across the country. He was awarded Pulitzer Prizes in 1923 and 1942, and in 1934 he was named the best cartoonist by the country's leading editors. After Darling's death in 1962, Cowles Library received a collection of 6,800 printer's proofs of the Darling cartoons from John Henry, an editor at The Des Moines Register. The proofs, which are prints made from Darling's original drawings from 1915 to 1949, fill 12 file cabinet drawers in the library. "They are truly a historical treasure, but they have been nearly unusable," Koss said. "Searching for a particular subject, person or event among 6,800 cartoons is a daunting task." The new CD enables researchers to search the collection in general subject areas ranging from baseball to marriage to war. The CD also can be searched by keying in the names of specific people, places and events. One copy of the CD remains on reserve at Cowles Library while another copy can be checked out. Production of the CD began with Koss donating a desktop photocopier to Cowles Library for staff members to use to make photocopies of all the printer's proofs. The staff would photocopy a year's worth of the proofs and send them to Koss in Key Biscayne, Fla., for scanning and indexing. "It took a couple of years to get through the entire collection," said Mark Stumme, a Drake reference librarian who collaborated with Koss on the project. "It's a lot more accessible now that we have the searchable CD." Koss, a retired airline pilot, is now in the process of creating a CD for the original Darling cartoons held in Special Collections at the University of Iowa Libraries. "There is an overlap of roughly 60 percent between the two collections, meaning that both the printer's proof exists at Drake as well as the original at the University of Iowa," Koss said. "Therefore, we expect to only have to scan about 2,000 cartoons from the University of Iowa." There are at least another 2,000 Darling cartoons that are not in either collection. Koss said he hopes to acquire these cartoons from other sources. "The State Historical Society has a small collection, as does the Hoover Presidential Library," Koss said. "Various publications from the first half of the 20th century will also be a resource. We may publish these collections separately, but at some point we'll probably pull them all together into a master of all the collections." For more information about the Darling Collection at Drake's Cowles Library or the discussion and reception on June 25, call (515) 271-3233.