A Conversation With Cheryl Gunselman
by Rosemary Streatfeild
Photo: Cindy Ellis
Cheryl Gunselman, Business and Economics Librarian at WSU Pullman, uncovered this information after she followed up on a reference question -- a patron wanted an image of an artifact related to the Lewis and Clark expedition when they had been in this area, which he believed had been published in a 1965 issue of The Record. Cheryl investigated. Although she found an article about a "Lewis and Clark Medal," there was no image included in the piece. Her interest piqued, she set off on a trail to unravel the medal's own story.
Cheryl is collaborating with Roderick Sprague, recently retired professor of anthropology at the University of Idaho. Professor Sprague, a graduate student in Archaeology at WSU in 1964, was the field supervisor of a dig at the Palus Burial site in Lyon's Ferry, WA when the medal was found. The medal was placed in the safe at the WSU Library for safekeeping because this safe was the strongest on campus back then. In 1970 the Nez Perce Tribe requested that the medal be transferred to them, and were successful despite the fact that NAGPRA (the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990) had not yet been passed. According to a Lewiston Morning Tribune article from that time, the medal was returned to the tribe during a commemorative ceremony to celebrate Washington's birthday, and it is currently housed at the Nez Perce National Historical Park museum at Spalding.
Sprague has written often and much on the archaeological practice of digging up remains at Indian burial sites. He and Cheryl are working together on a lengthy article for publication in a regional history journal on the facts surrounding the discovery of this medal, placing the event in a wider historical context. Cheryl has already secured publication of a shorter article in the Bunchgrass Historian, the journal of the Whitman County Historical Society, which will come out later this year. She does not have a background in archaeology, and was a little apprehensive when she first contacted Professor Sprague. She was surprised and delighted when he offered to collaborate with her on this topic.
Another of Cheryl's interests is the early free public libraries of the Northwest. She grew up in a small town on the Olympic Peninsula, and spent many years as an investment banker in Portland, Oregon where this curiosity was fostered. American Libraries will shortly be publishing one of her articles, which is about a cottage at a beach on the Oregon coast that used to belong to the Library Association of Portland. She has another article forthcoming in the Oregon Historical Quarterly in the fall on public library history in Portland. Her fascination with early public libraries has developed into an interest in the librarians that ran them, and future research may be focused on their biographies.
Cheryl got her undergraduate degree in Economics and English from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon. She has a MA in the Liberal Studies from Reed College and an MS in LIS from the University of Illinois. In keeping with her radical change in career choice, she has just completed a chapter for an upcoming book published by Greenwood Press on "Academic Reference as a Second Career."
Industrious as well as curious!
Rosemary Streatfeild 6/21/02