Adventures in Description and Discovery: Who was Miss Mix?

Smithsonian Libraries was digitizing a book to make available online. While reviewing the book’s description (the MARC encoded catalog record) to check for any errors, a question came up about the author. The mystery related to her authorship of the natural sciences text, when everything else by the same author seemed to relate to music. Was it the same Miss Mix?

Image of Jennie Irene Mix from page 343 of Broadcast Radio, volume 7. Source: Internet Archive. 

The book in question was Mighty animals; being short talks about some of the animals which lived on this earth before man appeared. It primarily discusses dinosaurs and uses colorful language, photographs and illustrations to appeal to young readers. The illustrations, as seen below, are dramatic. According to the author’s obituary in Radio Broadcast, the text was also used as a supplementary reader in public and private schools. The Director of the American Museum of Natural History, Dr. Frederic Lucas, wrote the introduction.  He commented:

…It is a very interesting history, “for there were giants in those days of old” and Miss Mix tells us how they swam through the seas, splashed through the marshes, and tramped over the hills of the ancient world. More than this, Miss Mix shows us how they looked, these strange beasts that lived in a time when there was no human being to look at them.

He ended the introduction with a warning to save the few animals we have now, for “there may be no Miss Mix to tell about them” in the future. But who was Miss Mix?

Her writing is easy to find, but her biographical details are not. It required more research that usual to discover Miss Mix’s basic information. I went down a rabbit hole, deciding that Miss Mix was giving me an opportunity. She did not have a name authority record in several of the emerging and existing systems we work with at the Smithsonian. I decided to complete my research and create records in some of the systems.

“How a dinosaur was buried in the rock” [page 31 and page 43] from Might Animals. Source: Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Researching Miss Mix
I began my research with a Google search, and learned that Miss Mix was involved in numerous areas of mass media, including radio in the 1920s. She was a trained classical pianist, worked as a music critic for the Toledo Times and Pittsburgh Post, was an editor of the Radio Broadcast (Magazine), and a radio critic. She also penned a novel, At Fame's Gateway; the Romance of a Pianiste. She has been quoted in some more recent publications, relating to women in journalism and early radio broadcasting. They are clues to a fascinating life. Beyond these professional details, her personal history is surprisingly hard to track down.

For someone so visible professionally, why was there so little personally? No Wikipedia page? It felt like there was a story to reveal. I next learned that she was likely born during the Civil War, worked at the dawn of radio until her death at age 63. In order to confirm basic details like birth and death information, I searched Ancestry Library Edition and found seemingly confusing results: a Jennie Irene Mix born circa 1862, 1872, and 1882. It appears at some point she decided not to age past 40; in the 1910 and 1920 census, she listed her occupations as journalist and music critic but listed “40 years old” as her age, decades apart. Through Find a Grave, an online database of cemetery records, I confirmed birth and death years for her, 1862 – 1925. Additional online searching uncovered she was born in Cleveland, Ohio. One year after becoming editor of the Radio Broadcast (Magazine), she passed away in 1925. It appears she never married.

Cover of Broadcast Radio, volume 7. Source: Internet Archive.

Creating records for Miss Mix
First, I created a Library of Congress Name Authority record for her; each piece of information in the record must be cited. This made it very easy to re-purpose the information to create records for her in other platforms like…

Smithsonian units have been involved in Wikipedia for several years now, hosting Wikipediathons to improve the quality of information in the online source. Miss Mix did not have a page, so I learned how create a stub biographical page.

Though Wikidata has only been around six years, it has been working quickly to develop relationships with institutions like the Smithsonian, to test out and strengthen its data and organization. Institutions are studying its structure as they look at ways to manage collection description as Linked Data. I created a Wikidata record for Miss Mix.

VIAF is a project managed by Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) which aggregates name authority records from institutions around the world, including Library of Congress. VIAF is particularly appealing because it creates a “name cluster” with multiple variations of a name, assigned to an Identifier. Records from institution contributors are ingested weekly, but the process of ingesting and quality control with existing records can take varying amounts of time. Through Miss Mix, I began to understand how long this process could take.

Smithsonian is one of several institutions that are involved in the formation of a new archival name authority called the Social Networks and Archival Context. I edited an existing record for her in SNAC.

According to Miss Mix’s obituary in Radio Broadcast:

A woman of striking personality, Miss Mix had a peculiar talent for transferring her personal charm to her work, which was one reason for her great popularity with the readers of RADIO BROADCAST. It is interesting. To note, also that, in the newspapers, her writings were almost as widely quoted as those of Professor Morecroft in 'the March of Radio.'

I look forward to seeing who else might be intrigued and document more about Miss Mix.

Interested in Learning More? 
Here are some resources:

• Exhibit on Miss Mix’s book (Rare Book School) 
• Women and Radio: Airing Differences, edited by Caroline Mitchell  (Google Books)
• The Music Magazine-musical Courier, Volume 81 (1920) (Google Books)
• Obituary, Radio Broadcast, page 343 (americanradiohistory.com)

Lesley Parilla, Cataloging and Bibliographic Access Librarian

Smithsonian Libraries