Margaret Meehan Papers, 1961-1987 (MSS Meehan)

The Meehan Papers consist of materials created and assembled by Honors Program Director and History Department Instructor Margaret Meehan, a staff member at Oregon State University from 1970 to 1986.  The collection chiefly consists of materials relating to women in American history and culture and items documenting the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Robert Kennedy.  

Helen H. Marburger Photograph Album, 1920-1926 (P 341)

This album documents the interests and activities of a woman tentatively identified as Helen Marburger – an Oregon Agricultural College student – between 1920 and 1926.  The album includes images of Marburger’s friends and family, campus buildings and views, recreational activities, and Oregon landscapes and landmarks,  The collection includes about 400 prints and 50 nitrate negatives.  This album was formerly part of Harriet’s Collection and was separated in order to allow for enhanced description.

Oregon Agriculture, 1944-1972 (PUB 006-43d)

These publications consist of two groups of reports issued in the late 1940s-early 1950s and in the early 1970s that summarize the status of agricultur3e and other natural resources in Oregon, identify trends, and recommend future directions.  The reports were published by the Oregon State University Extension Service.  All of the publications are available online in Oregon Digital. 

Nuclear Science Technical Reports Collection, 1946-1979 (MSS Reports)

This collection includes papers issued by a variety of both government and government-contracted organizations focused on the research, application, and development of nuclear energy and reactor design.  The finding aid describes items held in original paper form and those that are available online.  The original finding aid (created in 2009) was substantially revised in 2017.

Hi!  I’m Anna and I am SCARC’s Lead Student Archivist.

I’ve had the pleasure of working in SCARC for almost three years, which have exposed to me to new ways to use my history of science background and just might have convinced me to pursue archival work when I complete my PhD studies!  SCARC is a great place to work as a student, but it’s hard to define what exactly that experience is or can be.  As student archivists, we’ve all had different experiences since we work a variety of different projects depending on which faculty member we work with.  (Which is precisely why we’re doing this blog series!)

While working at SCARC, I’ve had the opportunity to write for the Pauling Blog and also be involved in processing new collections or helping design and install exhibits.  Working on the Pauling Blog was a natural progression after completing my Master’s Thesis on Linus Pauling and Edward Teller’s 1958 fallout debate and associated books and I enjoyed the opportunity to explore Pauling’s collection in even more depth.  And saying there is a lot to explore in Pauling’s collection is an understatement!

Since becoming the Lead Student Archivist, my work has been more varied as I “float” between different staff members and their projects, helping where ever I am needed.  I love the variety that this position entails, but my favorite part is being involved more directly with the individual students we hire by scheduling their shifts and helping to train them and answer any questions they might have.

Stay tuned for more posts highlighting these projects and others from our students!

Have you checked out our rare book blog recently?  Our student archivist Ethan is highlighting some of our unique collections!  His recent posts include:

Papers for Peace: Vietnam, Linus Pauling, and Thích Nhất Hạnh’s Burning Lotus

The 1906 San Francisco Earthquake Scrapbook

The Art Journal of the Victorian Era 

Captain Cook’s Voyages

Enjoy!

Post contributed by Jalen Todd, SCARC Student Archivist

Every day is leg day when you work in the archives. Forget hitting the gym and lifting weights, I’ll probably have arms capable of wrestling a bear by the time I’m done here. Its actually amazing how heavy a box of magazines can get. But honestly, it’s the stuff in the box that’s interesting. I started cataloging the Olympia Brewery Library collection a few months before writing this. It’s a hodge-podge of periodicals, beer can collector’s mags, and lab communications. The marginalia is sparse but interesting. It feels like a treasure hunt, trying to find the notes these people left their coworkers in the brewery. There’s a whole story inside those notes.

The coolest thing in there—in my humble opinion—is a run of Scandinavian brewer’s journals, written in Danish. I don’t speak Danish, but I can do a mean Google translate search, but it begs the question: which one of those Olympia Brewers read Danish? It’s random questions like this that makes working here really enjoyable. That and my potential future as a bear wrestler.

The things these boxes can hide!

The Scandinavian Brewers Review…with a lot of text in English…

Brewers Digest with MBAA Convention Report

Post contributed by Kenzie Ross, Student Archivist

Delta Upsilon Fraternity, 1917. Terrance Gather Sr. and Linus Pauling (right). Oregon State University Memorabilia Collection.

Recently, I spent time researching and writing about Oregon Agricultural College in the year 1917, Linus Pauling’s first year of college. Aside from a surface interest in University history (it’s always fun to whip out tidbits concerning bygone eras to impress visiting family members) I knew little about the early years of Oregon State or the collegiate education of a young, eager Pauling. Excited, and a bit nervous, I set out into the stacks and immersed myself in the world of OAC circa 1917. Arriving with a certain set of expectations surrounding the time period and the college experience of the beginning of the twentieth century, I found some of my initial conjectures to be wrong. Convinced of the rigid social formalities of the era, I didn’t imagine I would see my own college experience reflected in yearbook photos and barometer articles. However, the materials of the archive fashioned another narrative, one that pulled a common thread of humanity into focus.

A facile assumption, and an epistemological disservice, is to hone in on the differences between today and previous eras. While there are obvious dissimilarities between Oregon State in 2017 and OAC in 1917, I was struck by the parallels. A prominent discovery developed from The Beaver, the student year-book, whose final section titled “The Disturber” made clear the timeless human desire to let loose and find humor in the world around us. Anticipating an ultra-proper and buttoned up student population, especially considering the global events of the time, I was delighted to find the students of OAC engaged in a lot of light teasing and enjoyed reviewing stories of their classic college antics.

During this project, another figure was thrown into relief. At SCARC, we’re enveloped by the possessions and relics of Linus Pauling, which I’ve come to regard as signifiers of his genius; this, remarkable and incredibly special, often roils a quiet feeling of intimidation. The immensity of a life well-lived permeates my research. In exploring his early diary and gleaning morsels of his youth, I related to him in a new way, empathizing with his banal ache of diffidence. Pauling, entering college at the underachieving age of sixteen, felt, as many of us do at one point or another, insecure and uncertain of himself. While it feels bit comic to think of such a brilliant and prominent scientist as harboring self-doubt, it was a small reminder that confidence is not always a static state.

Working with primary sources and archival material enabled me to find a new reverence for not only my University but for the lives imbricated in its history. It made clear the ways in which we have much more in common with people of the past than we typically assume, a realization that would not have been elucidated without the magic of archives.

Linus Pauling at the time of his 1922 graduation from OAC. Harriet’s Photograph Collection, 1868-1996 (P HC).

Four new oral history websites comprising more than 550 hours of content have been released by the Oral History Program at the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections and Archives Research Center (SCARC). Three of these websites were built using open source resources that are available to other repositories seeking to provide online access to their own oral history collections.

OSU 150

The largest of these sites, The OSU Sesquicentennial Oral History Project, celebrates 150 years of OSU history by presenting 276 interviews conducted with OSU alumni, faculty, staff, current students and supporters. The project’s web portal is comprised of more than 400 hours of media and over 3.4 million words of transcription. About 1.8 TB of born-digital content were collected in building what is the largest oral history project ever conducted at Oregon State.

The vast majority of the interviews presented on the site were video recorded and all are contextualized with full-text transcripts, interview abstracts and biographical sketches. Users also have the option of sorting interviews by interviewee affiliation or interview theme, and are free to download .mp3 audio files of all interviews as well.

OHMS/Omeka Sites

In addition, three websites using a combination of the Oral History Metadata Synchronizer (OHMS) and the Omeka web publishing platform are also now available. These websites are:

• Multicultural Voices of Oregon, which features interviews collected by the Oregon Multicultural Archives and the OSU Queer Archives, both programs within SCARC.
• Voices of Northwest Brewing, an outgrowth of the Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives, also housed in SCARC.
• Voices of Oregon Agricultural College, a project that presents digitized audiocassettes and transcripts that were originally created in the late 1970s. These interviews were conducted with alumni and faculty associated with OAC, as Oregon State University was known prior to 1927.

All three of these websites utilize a combination of OHMS, the Omeka Seasons theme, the OHMSObject plug-in, and custom .css and .php modifications that have been released by the OSU Libraries on GitHub. Additional details on how the sites were created are provided in Technical Notes appended to each project.

For more information on any of these initiatives, please contact Chris Petersen, Senior Faculty Research Assistant in SCARC.

Post contributed by Kassidy Benson, Student Archivist

As a student, working in the archives is one of the highlights of my time at Oregon State. The atmosphere is friendly and calm, and the materials we have available are riveting to study.

I first got involved with SCARC when my Medieval Literature class took a tour to see what materials this branch of the library had to offer. Among several other pieces of the main collection, the artifact that stood out to me the most was a Latin handwritten edition of the Holy Bible from circa 1400. The fact that I could hold this artifact in my hands, to look through it to see the water-coloring in the margins and the manicules drawn next to important passages, was one of the most moving experiences of my life. Though the Rare Books Collection was what initially caught my eye, it’s just the tip of the iceberg with this area of the Valley Library.

My own personal work has been organizing and filing materials from the Williams Collection, which consists of the personal papers and references of former national historian for the U.S. Forest Service, Gerald W. Williams. His papers date from 1970 to present and include his personal papers, reference documents, correspondence, many manuscript drafts for his several books, and ephemera from several different areas of his study. My duties with this collection include sorting materials into several of the main areas of Williams’ focus, such as: Army Spruce Production, Umpqua National Forest, Smokey Bear, Civilian Conservation Corps, papers on Gifford Pinchot, papers on Judge Waldo, and more. It has been insightful and interesting to go through this collection, as I’ve learned so much about the nature and history of the National Forest Service, the history of the Pacific Northwest, and how the NFS has changed in the last 40 years.

My time working with the rest of SCARC has been both educational and transformative. Direct contact with patrons in the Reading Room and viewing their research first hand has been a great experience; watching students and non-students alike utilize our resources and marvel at our collections is inspiring. Learning to page and circulate materials is also enjoyable–I feel knowledgeable about the various collections we have acquired, and it’s refreshing to learn something new about our archives every day. The staff is a delightful bunch, each student or staff member with a passion about the work they do and the materials they work with.

Fort Rock, Lake County, Oregon. Gerald W. Williams Regional Albums (P 303), Album 16- Southeastern Region- Oregon.

We’ll be scaring up some toothsome aromas and flavors from the files of International student organizations at OSU this upcoming Halloween for this year’s Taste of the ‘Chives Recipe Showcase!  Lemon rice, aloo gobi, minted tabouli, postre de nues, and many other dishes were featured in campus cultural celebrations over the years.  These are now archived and we want to try them out!

When?  Tuesday, October 31, noon to 1:00

Where?  Willamette Rooms-Library 3^rd Floor  

To bring these flavors to life, we always need some extra cooks to help out, so if you’re willing to share your culinary skill, please let Karl McCreary (karl.mccreary@oregonstate.edu) know or check out our Facebook event!

You can find other recipes used by international student organizations here in the “Food Fair: International Cookbook.” Our own Melissa Hartley helped to put together this publication!

Looking forward to seeing you there and enjoying some tasty times!

Oregon State University has released the largest oral history project ever conducted at OSU. The product of more than four years of work, The OSU Sesquicentennial Oral History Project consists of more than 400 hours of fully transcribed video and audio recordings with well over 200 alumni, faculty, staff and current students. The entire collection is available online at http://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu/oh150/index.html

The project team, which was housed in the OSU Libraries Special Collections and Archives Research Center (SCARC), traveled near and far to collect regional perspectives on Oregon’s Land Grant university. In addition to a great many interviews captured in Corvallis, Portland and the Willamette Valley, project staff traveled to Bend and Newport as well as Pendleton, Hood River, Sutherlin and Klamath Falls to record the stories of a wide variety of alumni and faculty, particularly those associated with OSU’s branch campuses and Extension and Experiment Stations. The oral historians likewise visited locations out of state including San Francisco, Denver, Norman (Oklahoma), Houston and Washington, D.C. to meet and interview a selection of high-profile Oregon Staters.

The completed collection consists of more than 100 interviews with OSU alumni from every decade beginning with the 1930s; over 100 additional interviews with OSU faculty, both current and emeritus, representing all of OSU’s colleges; another 20 interviews with OSU staff (current and retired); and 10 more with current OSU students (undergraduate and graduate). A total of 111 majors, departments or thematic points of emphasis are represented within the collection.

Included among those interviewed are three OSU Presidents (Ed Ray, John Byrne and Paul Risser); an assortment of prominent OSU athletes (Terry Baker, Yvenson Bernard, Dale Story, Joy (Selig) Petersen and four individuals connected with the 2006 and 2007 College Baseball World Series-winning teams); and internationally known alumni including National Geographic editor Chris Johns, groundbreaking clergywoman Katharine Jefferts-Schori, NASA astronaut Don Pettit, and National Medal of Science recipient Warren Washington. The collection also features interviews with 24 OSU Distinguished Professors as well as the three individuals who served as co-chairs for the $1 billion Campaign for OSU. Likewise included are interviews with a retired carpenter, a greenhouse worker and union activist, an E-campus student located on the Confederated Tribes of the Umatilla Indian Reservation, and the head of the OSU Motor Pool.

“Our ambition was to provide as full a portrait of the university and its history as we could,” said project director Chris Petersen, senior faculty research assistant in SCARC. “I’m quite certain that there are pockets of OSU that are not especially well-represented in the finished product, but my hope is that anyone associated with Oregon State will see at least a piece of themselves somewhere within the collection.”

A total of 276 interviews have been made available on the custom-built project website, each of them fully transcribed and contextualized with biographical sketches and abstracts for all those who participated. In total, more than 3.4 million words of transcription have been released on the site. Some of the collection’s most significant topical strengths include the Advancement of Women, Athletics, Entrepreneurship, Environmental Sustainability, Extension and Experiment Stations, International Studies, Journalism, Military Service, Multiculturalism, Oceanography, and Public Service. OSU’s Land Grant heritage and mission are documented throughout the project. Specific interviews focusing on Sea Grant, Space Grant and Sun Grant at OSU are included as well.

Commissioned in anticipation of OSU’s 150^th anniversary in 2018, the oral history project was sponsored by the OSU Office of the Provost, University Marketing and Relations, OSU Libraries and Press, the OSU Foundation, the OSU Alumni Office, and The Oregon Stater alumni magazine. All told, thirty-eight people contributed in some form to the creation, development and online representation of the project.

This term we’re starting a new blog series where we highlight the perspectives of our student archivists.  Our students are essential in doing the work that we do, from processing collections to helping pull items from our stacks for researchers.  Their involvement also means that they get to see a lot of cool things, so we thought we would share their experiences with you!

Post contributed by Helena Egbert, SCARC Student Assistant

I am currently going through the manuscript collection of the OSU Mother’s Club Records. Accessions, or additions have been made to this group of records a few different times over the years. Many of the accessions haven’t been arranged in any understandable or meaningful way, so at times sorting through it been at times overwhelming and confusing. Within any archival chaos however, there are chances for fun discoveries.

I came across several pictures of two women, one of them holding what appears to be a very large Raggedy Ann doll. Without context, these photos don’t really mean anything. I decided to look for mention of a doll as I continued to look through these documents. It didn’t take long until I came across a flyer for a “Scholorship Doll” raffle (spelling mistake included!), proceeds going to the OSU Mom’s Club scholarship fund. The flyer listed the drawing as taking place at the Annual Salad Bar Luncheon in Hermiston.

With a little bit of digging, I found documents related to this event. This event was held in the spring of 1982 on April 16^th for the Umatilla branch of the OSU Mother’s Club. A correspondence dated April 17, 1982 includes thanks to Sherry Johnson for “another darling doll,” leading me to believe that Sherry Johnson made the doll for the raffle. This same document describes that over 1,300$ had been raised for the scholarship program.

After these discoveries I found another photo of a different, but similarly styled doll, labeled as “1980 Doll, made by Sherry Johnson for OSU Mom’s Luncheon” leading to an educated guess that at least for a couple years, the OSU Mom’s Luncheon included the raffle of a homemade doll.

When this collection is done being processed and is available to the public, these photos and documents will be available in the MSS OSU Mother’s Club Records, Series 10: Pendleton (Umatilla County) Unit.