WKU Libraries Blog

Mary Kay consultant

Most of us think of an “itinerant seller” as an encyclopedia salesman, Fuller Brush man, tinker, peddler, drummer or other transitory vendor of goods.  But in the 21st century, the term can also describe the “independent beauty consultants” of Mary Kay Inc., who buy a reported $2.2 billion worth of skin care products and cosmetics and resell them at “Mary Kay parties.”

The Folklife Archives of WKU’s Special Collections Library holds tapes of 3 interviews conducted in 1985 with Brenda Venable, a Mary Kay consultant.  She talks in detail about the company, its products and distribution system, her sales strategies, and what her work is like.  Transcripts of the interviews are also available.  “Mary Kay’s company structure shouldn’t work according to accountants, lawyers and finance,” Venable observed.  “So she took the bumble bee as her symbol because aerodynamically speaking the bumble bee shouldn’t be able to fly.  But it does fly and so does Mary Kay.”

A finding aid for the collection can be downloaded by clicking here.

Church Records at WKU’s Special Collections Library

Among the holdings of WKU’s Special Collections Library are records relating to scores of churches in Kentucky and even a few in other states.  These records typically include church constitutions and articles of faith, minutes of church meetings, and lists of pastors and members.  Membership lists can be helpful to genealogists because they may reveal the names of other family members, and sometimes include notations about baptism, marriage and death.  Lucky researchers might even discover extra tidbits of information about an ancestor–for example, a reprimand (or worse, expulsion from the flock) for poor attendance, fighting, gambling, profanity or adultery.

A new web page now allows researchers to gain easy access to information about our church records, and to download a finding aid from TopScholar, WKU’s digital repository, that describes the records in more detail.  The page will be updated whenever more records are donated or acquired.  Click here for a look.