Monday, May 23, 2011

Tour of the University of Arizona’s Special Collections

From University of Arizona

Introduction
During my April trip to Arizona, I looked forward to touring the University of Arizona’s Special Collections (in the Main Library whose exterior is shown above), especially the school’s book collections and the photographs. However, my time to visit shrank to 30 minutes due to an accident on the only major road between Phoenix and Tucson. An overturned tractor trailer had spilled a container-load of strawberries onto the freeway and caught fire about two miles ahead of me.

Once all the local radio stations had announced that the freeway was closed and I had been sitting in the desert sun for 25 minutes, I took out my cell phone and hoped for coverage. I saw a single, small bar on my phone and called my tour host, Chrystal Carpenter, who was very gracious and understanding. Unfortunately, by the time I arrived in Tucson (more than 2 hours late for our appointment), we didn’t have much time because her guest speaker for that night’s event was about to arrive at the airport and she needed to leave to collect him.

Despite the major snag, Chrystal gave me a great short tour and inspired me to return when we both have more time for a visit.

Background on the School
When I read the early history of the University of Arizona, I thought, "This is a story of the wild, wild West." It begins in 1885, when the Arizona Territorial Legislature convened in Prescott, the then-capitol, to discuss a variety of topics including where the territory’s insane asylum would reside and where the University of Arizona would be established. Those early settlers must have been very confident that Arizona would eventually become a state to start planning its university. Statehood didn’t occur until 1912.

The Tucson delegation intended to petition the Territorial Legislature to have the capitol moved from Prescott to Tucson. However, their wagons had gotten stuck in the mud from torrential rain, and they didn’t arrive until after the monies had already been divided. (Today, it takes between 4 and 5 hours to drive north from Tucson to Prescott – imagine how long it must have taken with a horse-drawn wagon on dirt roads and paths.) Because the Tucson delegation was so late, it missed out on the $100,000 that went with the asylum, and instead received $25,000 for the University of Arizona. Six years later, the school’s first student (a 14-year-old girl) signed her name in the registration book. Special Collections contributed materials to an excellent video about that girl’s experience with the school. Watch Clara Fish’s story here.

About the Archivist
From University of Arizona

Allow me to introduce my affable and accommodating tour host, Chrystal Carpenter, the Manuscript & Congressional Archivist at the University of Arizona’s Special Collections. Chrystal has been in her current position for three years. Previously she served as the photo archivist at the Arizona Historical Society in Tucson, and an archives and library assistant at the Arizona State Museum. She earned her Master in Information Resources and Library Science from the University and later obtained her certification from the Academy of Certified Archivists.

She fell in love with the profession as an anthropology/archaeology undergraduate student at the University. Chrystal explains, "I had the opportunity to work at Special Collections, and it is here that I developed a passion for archives. I found that an archival career would be similar to an archaeological career except I wouldn’t get as dirty!"

While she knew she wouldn’t get as dirty, Chrystal certainly didn’t expect that she would be called in to oversee the collection of mementos and personal tributes to the victims of the January 8th attempted assassination of Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. Arizona Public Media’s interview below shows Chrystal describing her process of working with the many volunteers who helped collect and package the materials, as well as decisions she made about how to handle this collection. She also does an excellent job of explaining the archival process and Special Collections without being technical or jargony.



I asked Chrystal about her upcoming and current projects. She told me about some of the fascinating work she’s doing and the big projects on schedule for the summer.

A priority for Special Collections is our Borderlands Cultural Community project. With this in mind I have been working toward acquiring collections that fit its scope, as well as prioritizing our processing activities. This summer, we will be processing the Humane Borders archive as well as a bilingual education collection. I also will be integrating the Arizona Architectural Archives (AAA) into our collection. The AAA materials contain about 600 linear feet of architectural and business records and include over 22 collections that were curated by the University’s Architecture department.

I found Chrystal to be particularly impressive in the area of training. In an innovative move, she trained a subset of catalogers from Technical Services to provide archival processing services as well as their regular work. This initiative allowed her to add 100 hours a month of processing to Special Collections and yielded 2.5 full-time processors. Her work, as well as that of her colleague Erika Castano, also helped add value to the metadata of the digital collections and taught the catalogers highly marketable skills.

Exhibits and Public Outreach
From University of Arizona

Whenever I visit an archive, university special collections, or any other cultural heritage institution, I am often intrigued by the displays and exhibits. The University of Arizona’s exhibit space (renovated in 2001) shown above and immediately below provides the archivists with a great deal of attractive, modern space where they show the role played by archival materials in history.

From University of Arizona

The Special Collections department changes its exhibits every six months. At the time of my visit, the exhibit space focused on the life and impact of Stewart Lee Udall ("I’m for Stew" was its apt title). According to the Special Collections web site, he was an Arizona congressman who also served as Secretary of the Interior from 1961-1969 (under both Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson). Udall was "a champion of civil rights, an avid conservationist, a lawyer, a B24 gunner during WWII, and a University of Arizona alumnus," says Special Collections. The next exhibit will focus on Arizona history from 1600-1912 in commemoration of the 2012 Arizona Centennial.

Remember Chrystal’s guest speaker for the night of my tour? He was the second speaker in a three-part lecture series on "Stew." Robert G. Stanton, Senior Advisor to the Secretary of the U.S. Department of the Interior and Director of the National Park Service from 1997-2001, spoke on Udall’s environmental work and how he became a leading voice in American environmentalism.

From University of Arizona

The photo above shows the public reading room used for lectures like Stanton’s. There also is another large space inside Special Collections that is frequently used for meetings and other University events.

About the Collections
The University of Arizona’s Special Collections was established in 1958 to house materials on Arizona, the Southwest, and the U.S./Mexico Borderlands. Today it includes audio; video; film; cassettes; electronic records; photographs; and paper-based collections including personal and corporate records, sheet music, maps, and blueprints in a wide variety of areas.

The processed manuscript collections come in at about 12,000 linear feet and growing. The unprocessed materials are about 3000 linear feet and shrinking. Below is a photo of Special Collections’ unprocessed stacks.

From University of Arizona

Because the University also has a library school, Special Collections makes use of paid graduate and undergraduate student assistants as well as interns to help the seven full-time and two part-time employees accomplish their work. Three of the seven full-timers are archivists.

Most of Special Collections’ patrons are associated with the University, whether undergraduates, graduates, faculty, and/or visiting researchers. However, Chrystal notes "We also have a number of researchers from around the country and internationally, as well as local users." They see approximately 50 visitors per week, and host a long-term researcher utilizing the political collections. "More often than not, our long-term researchers are working with our political collections, University-related materials, or early Tucson research," explains Chrystal.

Because the school is renowned for its astronomy, among other research areas, the Special Collections reflects that focus in its rare books holdings. Chrystal showed me a particularly interesting volume by Galileo, published in 1610. (She holds the volume in the photo above in "About the Archivist.") A researcher, who had located the book in World Cat discovered through his descriptive bibliography work that the book was one of three existing hand-edited works by the astronomer. Below are three photos of the book (the first is the title page, the second shows a hand-edited page, and the third is a close-up of the edit).

From University of Arizona

From University of Arizona

From University of Arizona

The University of Arizona’s Special Collections also contain a small percentage of three-dimensional objects such as wigs, trunks, costumes, and paintings. Below are two examples of objects that are part of the school’s very popular American Vaudeville Museum collection and related vaudeville collections. First is a pair of pants decorated with shell buttons, worn by a vaudeville actor.

From University of Arizona

Next is a box of wigs, also worn by vaudeville actors.

From University of Arizona

Chrystal also showed me some of Special Collections’ Western Pulp Fiction holdings. Below is some of the creative labeling used for that collection. Following the photo is a very short video of Chrystal in the stacks talking about the Western Pulp Fiction.

Embed photo:
From University of Arizona



Other popular Special Collections at the school include the Josias Joesler collection of architectural renderings and blueprints and the Stewart L. Udall and Morris K. Udall political collections. Chrystal’s favorite collections are the Stewart L. Udall and the Don Alonzo Sanford Collections. She likes Udall’s because it contains so much documentation "from his early life growing up in a rural Arizona town and his life as a WWII B-24 bomber, to the vast documentation on his eight years as the U.S. Secretary of the Interior," she says.

Chrystal is especially interested in the Don Alonzo Sanford collection because it "provides a snapshot into the everyday life of a pioneer businessman/politician and his family in the Arizona Territory--from what it would cost for Tucson to install street lights to what it was like for a Eastern woman to travel across country and take up residence in an unfamiliar western territory."

From University of Arizona

Some of the undiscovered or underutilized gems of the collection include the incunabula holdings (books that were printed prior to 1501), science fiction and fanzines collections, and de la Torre family collection which focuses on the Cristero Movement in Mexico.

Conclusion
The University of Arizona’s Special Collections makes significant contributions to the effort to preserve the region’s collective historical memory. Its acquisition, processing, and digitization programs related to projects like the Borderlands Cultural Community program allow its archivists and librarians to work with community groups in the borderland region to acquire collective histories. With proactive and innovative leaders such as Chrystal Carpenter, the future of Special Collections looks especially bright.

Contact Information
Chrystal Carpenter
Manuscript & Congressional Archivist
University of Arizona Libraries, Special Collections
1510 E. University Blvd.
Tucson, AZ 85721
(520) 621-6423
carpenterc@u.library.arizona.edu
http://speccoll.library.arizona.edu/

Tuesday, May 17, 2011

Field Trip: The Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts, Philadelphia

Remember this map? It, the other map I found, and a very interesting scrapbook are now in the very capable hands of the conservators at The Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts (CCAHA) in Philadelphia. After a nice bath, the map will be lined with Japanese paper and wheat paste, and given a good, sturdy housing for its return trip to the Plainfield Public Library and eventual storage. CCAHA also offers digitization and facsimile services for clients who wish to keep their treasures safe while offering their content to patrons in usable formats.

From Plainfield Public Library

Sarah Hull, Plainfield Public Library Archivist, and I drove down to Philly on a rainy day with our precious cargo in an archival tube and box in the back of my Subaru Forester. While the maps' plans are set, we were getting a quote on what it would take to remove newspaper clippings that had been glued onto the scrapbook's pages. Why just a quote, and (more importantly) why remove the clippings at all?

It appears that those clippings are on top of content written on the pages of a ledger from one of the Vail family's stores. In their heyday, the Vails were one of the more prominent Plainfield families, and the Library holds quite a few items related to their history.

The photo below shows the cover of the scrapbook. If CCAHA takes it on, the cover will likely be unbound to address the clipping issue.

From Plainfield Public Library

In the photo below, you can see that the clippings are dated, so they have some value and will be saved, if possible.

From Plainfield Public Library

Below, the mystery of the hidden ledgers peek out from among the clippings.

From Plainfield Public Library

Our host for the tour (and the person who talked with us about our conservation needs) was Corine McHugh, Paper Conservator (shown below in the book area).

From Plainfield Public Library

The CCAHA building is a former candy factory, but now it holds several rooms of specialists in the areas of books, manuscripts, artworks on paper, maps, historic wallpaper, posters, and photographs. When we arrived, Jim Hinz, Director of Book Conservation, was assessing an elephant folio (a very large format book) of John James Audubon's Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. Published in the mid-19th century, the book is a follow-up to his famed Birds of America.

Below is a page in the book. For scale, see Hinz's index finger near the spine of the book.

From Plainfield Public Library

His plans for the book include washing some of the plates. However, because some of the prints had been hand-touched with a water-soluble ink after printing, they will not be able to go into a water bath. Hinz will disbind the book, send the plates to the paper lab, and when they return, he will reconnect and sew the book together.

From Plainfield Public Library

Above, you can see one of the original end bands, which Hinz will replace with cotton rather than silk (the original) because silk becomes acidic over time. The image above also shows that the books pages do not rest flat. After Jim's repairs are complete, the book will be able to be displayed and/or used with its pages open flat. He said that they see a lot of Audubons, and apparently there are a few around. The Plainfield Public Library recently received a donation of three Audubon prints.

As our tour continued, we moved on to the paper area (shown below).

From Plainfield Public Library

We also saw other large workspaces and tables prepared for making enclosures.

From Plainfield Public Library

Corine showed us a suction table that acts (as you might expect) like a large draw. Marilyn Kemp Weidner, who started the Conservation Center in the 1970s, invented the table. In the photo below, Corine stands to the right of the table (which has a tiny sign that reads "I love this!" on it) and in front of homemade tubs for bathing large objects. If you are interested in learning more about suction tables and Marilyn's work, the American Institute for Conservation has made some of her papers available online. This one has photos of the table in use.

From Plainfield Public Library

One of paper's enemies is light, but it can be used effectively to treat certain issues such as intensive foxing. Corine gave the excellent example of how hanging sheets to dry in the sun helps to bleach them. In the photo below, she shows us how plant grow lights are used (with eye protection to protect conservators and a curtain to protect other items in the lab) to treat black and white prints. The works are immersed in water and the lights are turned on for a period of time until they bleach as much of the foxing from the prints as possible. The conservator will check on the prints periodically to ensure that the results are as expected.

From Plainfield Public Library

Finally, Corine showed us the CCAHA digital photo studio and the very big printer.

Visiting the CCAHA made Sarah and me want to go back to school to become conservators. It is a field that combines science with history, art, and technique. The pros at CCAHA who do the hard work conserving art and historical materials are very lucky indeed.

Contact Information
Corine McHugh
Paper Conservator
Conservation Center for Art & Historic Artifacts
264 S. 23rd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19103
cmchugh@ccaha.org
215-735-9313
http://www.ccaha.org/

Tuesday, May 03, 2011

Tour of the Utah State University's Special Collections and University Archives, Part I

Introduction
When I initiated this project of visiting libraries, archives, and museums to spotlight their gems (hidden and otherwise) on this blog, I had no idea my world would expand as much as it has. Experiencing (and sometimes holding) important historical objects, books, and manuscripts is life-altering for sure. However, my favorite part of this project is visiting with some of the best storytellers I've ever met. These historians, archivists, and curators enthusiastically share the history of their collections in such a way that I always leave wanting to see more.

My hosts at Utah State University Merrill-Cazier Library's Special Collections and Archives were no exception. Despite spending a day in Logan, UT (about an hour and a half north of Salt Lake City), seeing a wide range of collecting areas, I could easily return many times and still only experience a fraction of their treasures. The fact that the school is located in the gorgeous Cache Valley doesn't hurt either!


Copyright 2009 David Densley.

Background on the School
Since we're at the beginning of the Civil War Sesquicentennial, it is fitting that the history of Utah State University (USU) begins with an act signed into law in 1862 -- the Morrill Act. According to the Department of State,
The act gave to every state that had remained in the Union a grant of 30,000 acres of public land for every member of its congressional delegation. Since under the Constitution every state had at least two senators and one representative, even the smallest state received 90,000 acres. The states were to sell this land and use the proceeds to establish colleges in engineering, agriculture and military science. Over seventy "land grant" colleges, as they came to be known, were established under the original Morrill Act; a second act in 1890 extended the land grant provisions to the sixteen southern states.

Like Rutgers, USU counts itself as one of those public land-grant schools. When it was founded in 1888, it was known as the Agricultural College of Utah, but eventually became Utah State University in 1957. (The school still uses a typographic "A" as its symbol, though, because the students are "Aggies.") In the early 20th century, USU's educational offerings were greatly limited because state lawmakers feared that it would overshadow the University of Utah. They tried to combine the two schools, but failed. Instead, "the legislature passed a bill limiting [the school's] curriculum to agriculture, domestic science, and mechanic arts. Many once-thriving programs in the arts, humanities, education, and others are closed, despite the college's initial mandate that it offer such instruction. By 1927, all curricular restrictions except law and medicine are lifted," says USU.

During World War I, USU turned into a military installation, with enlisted students housed in barracks that would later become lab space and classrooms. USU also is known as "The West Point of the West" because it has graduated more officers than any other school outside the Army academy.

In the 1950s, the Space Dynamics Laboratory and the Utah Water Research Laboratory were established. (For those who may not know, a great deal of the US space program's testing happens in Utah.)

At about the same time, the University Archives and some of the historical collections were brought together by History Professor S. George Ellsworth. The Special Collections and University Archives department was formally established around 1967. For more USU history, visit the History and Traditions page.

About the Collections
The USU Special Collections and University Archives currently houses approximately 80,000 volumes (including theses and dissertations), 18,000 linear feet of manuscripts and university archives, and 500,000 photographic images. In other words, the department is gigantic.

From Utah State University

The size of the western collections I have visited never fails to impress me. The general scale of pretty much everything seems about 10 times larger than here in New Jersey.

USU's Special Collections and University Archives employs 10 full time (five faculty, three professional, and two classified) staffers and one part-time worker. They include four archivists and one processing assistant, although some of the archivists hold the title "Curator." The staff serves about 30 patrons per week, including USU faculty and students, community users, and outside researchers. Their long-term researchers include one person working on a local history project and another researching historian Leonard Arrington. This summer, they are expecting another professor from Alabama who is researching Brigham Young.

The school's collecting areas are regional history, the Mormon experience, and the history of the West. They also have strong collections in Western literature and the Western environment. "Our university archive is extremely strong and complete back to the founding of the university," says Brad Cole, my gracious primary tour host and the Associate Library Dean.

Brad has been at USU for 18 years. "I graduated with a Master’s degree in history and was not sure what I was going to do for employment. A position opened up in the Special Collections and Archives department of the library and that was how I started," he says. Primarily he works on donor relations and larger projects. In fact, he and his Folklore staff are finishing a ranch documentation oral history project.

His favorite collections are those related to environmental issues -- the Sierra Club papers, Utah Wilderness Association, and diaries about the environment, among others. Brad explains, "I guess I like these collections because they really relate to Utah State and also to very current issues in the American West."

I asked Brad to tell me about some of the items in the collections that don't receive as much attention as they probably should. He names a few,
Some of our collections include diaries from forest rangers, others are related to Utah State University’s role in developing Western agriculture. Other collections are about USU's involvement in Iraq and Iran during the 1950s. We worked a lot in that area of the world to help rebuild after WWII. In addition to these would be a large collection about Czech patriot, Thomas Masaryk, and one of the largest Beat Poetry collections in the US.

Books and Manuscripts
USU's Beat Poetry collection comprises 10,000 volumes. I was especially impressed with the Wallace Berman Semina collection. Below, Brad tells me a bit more about the seminas and why they are important to the university's special collections.



Below are close-ups of the materials Brad showed in the video.

From Utah State University

From Utah State University

From Utah State University

Moving backward in time from the mid- to the early 20th century, USU holds one of the largest collections of first-edition Jack London books. But, they're not classified as books in the Special Collections -- they're manuscripts. Why? Well, I'll let Brad tell you.



Below are some close-up photos I took of these remarkable manuscripts.

From Utah State University

From Utah State University

From Utah State University

From Utah State University

From Utah State University

To see the collection of books inscribed to Charmian online, visit USU's Jack London exhibit. Additionally, Jack London researchers might also be interested in USU's 42 boxes of his papers.

On the topic of manuscripts, I had an opportunity to meet briefly with recent Conference of Intermountain Archivists Service Award recipient and outgoing Manuscript Curator Stephen Sturgeon about USU's 400 collections of unpublished papers. He spoke with me about several of the key collections. One of the school's largest manuscript collections is the Leonard J. Arrington Historical Archives. According to the archives' site, Arrington is known as the "Dean of Mormon History," having published many books and papers on the subject as an economics professor at USU and afterward. He served as "Church Historian" at the LDS Church Archives in Salt Lake City from 1972-1982, and later transferred to head the Joseph Fielding Smith Institute for Church History at BYU in 1982.

Arrington kept voluminous diaries (kept sealed in the collection until 2010) as well as correspondence and other papers. This collection, measuring 319 linear feet, has become a premier research resource on Mormon, Utah, and Western history.

In addition to collecting in the area of the Mormon experience, USU actively collects regional history. For example, a new collection the archivists are processing is Utah Representative Jim Hansen's papers. So far, they have processed 400 of those Hollinger boxes (below).

From Utah State University

Design Workshop Landscape Architecture Archive and Exhibit
A few days prior to my visit, USU had announced the creation of the Design Workshop Landscape Architecture Archive and Digital Collection. It was well coordinated with their hosting of the American Society of Landscape Architects Annual Meeting. The new archive is a three-way partnership between the USU Special Collections, USU Department of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning, and Design Workshop, a legendary landscape architecture firm founded by two class of 1963 USU graduates.

Below, Brad shows me early examples of digital landscape architecture drawings in the collection.

From Utah State University

From Utah State University

One of the challenges USU is addressing is the lack of map cabinets to store all the drawings flat (it's a very common issue as map cabinets are expensive). Their solution is to use acid-free tubes to store the drawings rolled. Below is an image of some drawings that have been processed and stored in the tubes.

From Utah State University

There are approximately 5,000 more tubes in storage. So far, the materials are being processed by landscape architecture professors and graduate students who can assess the drawings and describe them accurately. Upstairs, in the Merrill-Cazier Library was a sizable exhibit showcasing Design Workshop's long history as a trailblazer in urban planning. A few photos of the exhibit are shown below.

From Utah State University

From Utah State University

From Utah State University

From Utah State University

Preservation
Brad helped produce the exhibit with Rose Milovich, Preservation Manager and Exhibition Program Director. She's been with USU Special Collections and Archives for 15 years and USU for 21 years. Rose has managed the Preservation Lab since 2008, and previously, she was Curator of Art and Book Arts. She comes from a museum studies background, and you can see that influence in the exhibits and her conservation projects.

Below is a short video of Rose showing me one of 80 custom boxes she and her students made for the Larry E. Elsner sketch book collection.



In some cases, they would find ephemera in the sketchbooks. In others, the students would make cushions to help protect the spiral-bound notebooks. Below are two close ups -- one of the enclosure and one of the sketchbooks open to a page of drawings.

From Utah State University

From Utah State University

Because this feature on USU's Special Collections and Archives is quite long, I have broken it into two parts. The remainder of the tour begins with University Archives on this page.

Tour of the Utah State University's Special Collections and University Archives, Part II

This is a continuation of my tour of the Utah State University's Special Collections and University Archives. The first portion may be found on this page.

University Archives
Remember when I mentioned great storytellers earlier? Well, Bob Parson, the USU University Archivist since 1995, is one. He showed me an amazing copy letter book of John T. Caine, Jr., the secretary of the school back at its humble beginnings in 1888. Caine's correspondence with the Board of Trustees and the school's first president, Jeremiah Wilson Sanborn, showed that he set up the school and found the people with the expertise to run it. Below is a photo of one copy book open to correspondence from 1909.

From Utah State University

Bob showed me a letter from 1890 in which Caine tells a seal maker charged with forging the official school seal that he is dissatisfied with the quality of workmanship. There were no other records of the seal until 100 years later, when workmen excavating the flower bed of Caine's descendants' home found the original brass seal. They brought it to Bob who was able to identify it from the records in the University Archives.

Here is that legendary seal.

From Utah State University

What is so remarkable about the USU University Archives is the completeness of the records. With the exception of presidents #2 and #3 (whose records may have burned in a fire in 1905), the school holds all the administrative papers from all the presidents. Bob has personally processed three presidents' records. Rose Ernstrom, the Executive Secretary to the president had a system that made it a pleasurable experience for Bob. He explains why below.



Photographs
Another USU staffer who loves his work is Daniel Davis, Photograph Curator. He manages the 500,000 photograph collection (150,000 have been processed and a much smaller portion has been digitized). One of his passions is stereo views related to the Transcontinental Railroads. Below is a short video of Daniel explaining why.



Below are a selection of close-ups of the stereo views in the video.

From Utah State University

From Utah State University

From Utah State University

The photographer was A.J. Russell & Company, and the Utah photos were taken in 1868. As working documents, the stereo views documented the progress of the railroad in a way that a written report never could. Daniel is writing a book on the subject and has followed the whole route, photographing the same images. I can't wait to see his work as a published book!

Fife Folklore Archives
To wrap up my tour of the Utah State University Special Collections and University Archives, Brad introduced me to Randy Williams, Folklore Curator and 17-year veteran of USU's Special Collections. If you need to know anything about the folklore of the American West, the Fife Folklore Archives is the place to go. Austin E. and Alta S. Fife traveled the West with the intention of capturing on film, audio, and paper the folklife they encountered. They recorded cowboy and western songs, Mormon folksongs and stories, and lyrics read aloud. Essentially, they were oral historians with a knack for field work.

In the mid-1960s, the Fifes donated their extensive field work collections to the library, including acetate discs and reel-to-reel field recordings, 67 bound volumes of field notes/transcriptions, and their extensive folklore book collection. In 1972, the library created the Fife Library of Western Folklore, known today as the Fife Folklore Archives, and worked with the Fifes to create a folklore program at USU.

According to USU,
The Fife Folklore Archives collects field data, oral histories, monographs, slides, photographs, periodicals, books, audio recordings, and non-commercial video recordings on the subject of folklore, particularly but not exclusively in the areas of regional folklore (including the Intermountain West, especially Utah and Idaho); folk groups (including ranching culture, Native American culture, Latino culture, and Mormon culture); genres (including belief, folksongs, foodways, proverbs, and legends)and themes (including family, ethnic, and religious folklore). As well, the Archives maintains a basic folklore research and reference collection.

Below Randy shows me the card files created by the Fifes to organize and catalog their collection. "Alta Fife was a computer before there were computers," she says.

From Utah State University

In 1984, the Fife Folklore Archives gained copies of 324 student field work projects (spanning 1968-1978) conducted by upper-level folklore students at BYU. The courses had been taught by Professor William A. Wilson, who became the first director of USU's Folklore Program and the Fife Folklore Archives. When he returned to Provo, he not only gave copies of the BYU students' work to USU, he did the same for his USU students and took those copies to BYU.

Today, the collections in the Fife Folklore Archives number 46 and include the Latino/Latina Voices Project, Peggy Seeger Folk Song Collection, John S. and Orpha S. Boyden Family Native American Book Collection, Cache Valley Presbyterian Church Oral History Collection, Skaggs Cowboy Poetry Collection, Grouse Creek (Utah) Cultural Survey, and many more. Of particular interest is the Fife Slide Collection of Western U.S. Vernacular Architecture, available at the USU Digital Library. Randy has prepared very detailed registers (think finding aids) that are well worth the scanning.

Conclusion
USU certainly has a lot to offer patrons and researchers in a wide range of areas. I hope I have inspired you to explore the collections both in person and online.

Contact Information
Interested users and donors should contact

Brad Cole
Associate Library Dean
Special Collections and Archives
Merrill-Cazier Library
Utah State University
3000 Old Main Hill
Logan, Utah 84322-3000
435-797-8268
Brad.Cole@usu.edu
http://library.usu.edu/specol/index.php