MASC News
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In 1977, Washington State University's KWSU-TV produced five docudramas based upon the stories of black Americans in the early northwest, aimed at middle-school students. Based upon research headed by WSU Professors Quintard Taylor and Talmadge Anderson, and produced by media expert Nate Long, five initial half-hour television programs were completed in 1976, and three more programs followed in 1981. The series, known as
South by Northwest, was cited for "outstanding participation" by the American Revolution Bicentennial Administration, and won a Corporation for Public Broadcasting Award and a New York Film Festival Award.
33 years later, the Washington State University Libraries still receive regular requests for access to these. As nationwide only 8 libraries, including WSU, still hold copies, all on VHS, the MASC has digitized the series from the Libraries' circulating tapes, and has made them available online along with a searchable pdf reproduction of a 56 page booklet which discussed the project and presented a guide for educators to use it. These can be viewed direct at the MASC's new
South by Northwest site, or found through the WSU Libraries'
digital collections page,
Posted on 26 September 2010 | 10:14 am
Over its history, the MASC has acquired many thousands of unique historical architectural and structural drawings and blueprints documenting the development of WSU's campuses and their buildings. While the oldest of these very large documents (some were up to 6 ft. by 4 ft. in size) had been carefully stored in archivally safe folders in large map cabinets, those received in the past 30-40 years had mostly been stored on open shelves or in loose non-archival cabinets, as seen immediately below.
Fearing the eventual destruction of these irreplacable documents should any sort of minor emergency occur in the Archives (or simply from continued exposure), the MASC recently undertook a project to re-organize these drawings and place them into newly-purchased archivally safe 3' and 4' long tubes (the pictures above show the project when it was about half-done, while the first-tubed items were being temporarily stored in their original locations). When the MASC was awarded new storage shelves for their ever-expanding collections, one section was designed as double-width shelving for housing these long tubes. University Archivist Mark O'English has been working since May of 2010 to identify each set of drawings and their origins, and then to organize, label, and preserve them appropriately.
With the project virtually complete as of September 2010 (pending only the receiving of a final few tubes), we estimate that approximately 5000 architectural and structural drawings and blueprints are now protectively housed in these tubes, and additional information generated in the process has been (and continues to be) added to MASC's website so that not only are these protected for future generations, but current University staff, scholars, and students will also now have more access to these drawings than ever before.
Posted on 10 September 2010 | 3:58 am
Our lovely, and rare, 1783 London-printed broadside Oh Dear! What can the Matter Be will be featured in a London exhibit. The exhibit opening this fall will feature the textiles left with abandoned babies as identity tokens at the London Foundling Hospital in the eighteenth century. About a third of these tokens were ribbons. The exhibit will feature the connections made in eighteenth-century ballads between ribbons, fairings, courtship, illegitimacy and, by implication, foundling babies.
MASCs broadside with its visual and textual references to ribbons will be reproduced on one of the text panels in the exhibition and an accompanying booklet.
Posted on 31 August 2010 | 9:17 am
From 1885-1935, Homer M. Hill was a Seattle-area newspaperman and community activist, and his personal papers came to WSU and the archives back in the 1940s. Over this past summer, Linnea Nelson, a 2010 Whitworth University graduate now studying Library Science at the University of Maryland, worked in MASC with University Archivist Mark O'English to digitize and describe Hill's photographs as well as selected papers and ephemera from his collection.
The digital collection can be found in either the Regional Collections or the New Collections section of the WSU Libraries'
Digital Collections page, or linked direct at
http://content.wsulibs.wsu.edu/cdm-hill/. The guide to the original papers can be found at
http://www.wsulibs.wsu.edu/masc/finders/cg118.htm.
Notable pieces of the 64 item digital collection include pictures of the aftermath of the 1889 Seattle fire, images from Seattle's anti-Chinese riots of 1890, a three-fold panorama of Seattle in 1890 (formatted at MASC to allow users to zoom in and move around it - click the above image to do so), a telegram announcing the granting of Washington's statehood, and a 25 image photo album given to Hill by Seattle's city engineer, primarily depicting the construction of the city's reservoir system but also including items like the 1899 unveiling of Pioneer Square's totem pole.
Posted on 24 August 2010 | 5:15 am
In working with some materials donated in 1941 and 1951 by the Tannatt family (Eben Tannatt was a member of WSU's second graduating class; his father, General Thomas Tannatt, was a WSU regent from 1893-1901 and mayor of Walla Walla in the 1880s), MASC's Manuscripts Librarian Cheryl Gunselman recently uncovered this little gem.
A bit of research determined that this Hawaiian currency is company scrip issued to workers between 1839 and 1844 by Ladd & Co.'s Koloa Plantation, the first sugar plantation in Hawaii (located near the town of Koloa on the island of Kauai, and begun in 1835). The text on it apparently states, in Hawaiian, that the bill is good for three dollars worth of goods at the company store. The bills are exceedingly rare today; a five dollar (Elima Kala) bill sold at public auction for $24,000 in 2006.
This "three dollar bill" is kept in MASC as part of Cage 4977, and is available for researchers and the curious to view. The MASC anticipates it being used regularly by students in DTC/Engl 375 (Language Texts and Technology) courses, when students are asked to look at the history and evolution of currency as part of their coursework.
Posted on 23 August 2010 | 3:03 am
In the past few months, the MASC has had new shelving installed. This has necessitated several rearrangements of the basement stacks; originally to make room for the shelving, and now again to accommodate moving things into it. In the process, we've uncovered a number of things either unfortunately misfiled or simply once set aside because someone didn't know what to do with it. One of the latter, apparently, is what you see in the image here - a cyanotype print of the 1901 WSU football team, easily identifiable as such from the writing on the football that one player is holding, which reads P.N.W. Championship 1901. Curiously, however, this is printed on cloth, and even more unusually, upon close examination it becomes clearly that this is actually a pillowcase! We don't know where this came from, who made it, or what it was used for - maybe displayed on a chair in one of the players' parents' home? Perhaps one of the team-members' sweethearts slept nightly on her boyfriends portrait? Does anyone have some other theories? Unfortunately we don't know for certain and probably never will, but its fun to look at this 109 year-old artifact of our school and speculate on the lives of those who preceded us here at the college.
Posted on 5 August 2010 | 9:05 am
MASC's copy of the Looking-Glasse of Schisme includes several fine examples of manicules sometimes called "fists" by librarians. Instead of highlighting portions of texts, readers, especially in the 17th-century, would often draw a picture of a hand with a pointing index figures to draw attention to certain passages. Note that these manicules also include ruffled shirt-sleeves. To see these annotations in person, visit the MASC anytime Monday through Friday between 8:30 and 4:30. The call number is BX5202 .S78 1635.
Posted on 22 July 2010 | 2:37 am
We recently purchased a very cool 17th-century book from James and Devon Grey Booksellers. The Looking-glasse of Schisme: Wherein by a briefe and true Narration of the execrable murders, done by Enoch ap Evan, a downe-right non-conformist, on the bodies of his Mother and Brother, with the cause moving him thereunto: the disobedience of that Sect, against royal majesty, and the lawes of our Church is plainly set forth. The second edition enlarged and corrected: together with an answer to certaine criminations against this historie. By Peter Studley, Master of Arts, and minister of Gods Word, in Shrevvsbury.
London : Printed by Richard Badger for Thomas Alchorne, and are to be sold at the signe of the greene Dragon in Pauls Church-yard, 1635.
Octavo, . Second edition A B-O par. A-D . From James Grey's description, on July 5th, 1633, Enoch ap Evan from Clune in Shropshire took up an axe and decapitated his mother and brother. Popping the pair of severed heads into a sack he made off, only to be quickly apprehended by the authorities and whisked away to Shrewsbury gaol. On August 20th he was publicly hung by the neck for his inhumane and unnatural double murder. Justice was seen to be done. We know about Enoch and his barbarous and most cruel act because two pamphlet accounts of it were published in London shortly afterwards. By the reign of Charles I a thriving market in tabloid-style journalism was well established in England. Cheap tracts and single sheet broadsides fed an apparently insatiable popular appetite for novelty, sensation and titillation. An imbalanced diet of blood and gore, sex and perversion, supernatural prodigy and divine retribution all went down particularly well.
You are welcome to see this book during MASC's open hours: Monday-Friday 8:30-4:30. The call number is BX5202 .S78 1635.
Posted on 22 July 2010 | 1:51 am
We are excited to now have some 1,200 linear feet of new shelf space in the MASC basement. Over the coming weeks, we plan to reorganize our processing areas and decorate the walls with historic photographs.
Posted on 16 July 2010 | 2:06 am
A partnership of five academic research libraries led by Colorado State University, and including Brigham Young University, the University of California-Berkeley, the University of Utah, and Washington State University, has just concluded a three-year project, The Foundations of Western Water Policy, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). Alex Merrill served as WSU's project director.
The purpose of the project was to add content to Western Waters Digital Library (WWDL), a website that provides free public access to information resources regarding water issues in the Western U.S. Water concerns have dominated the western states for over a century, and as populations increase and we face the uncertain outcomes of climate change, pressures on the Wests fragile water supply will only increase. The WWDL provides data and information resources that can guide future planning and policy said Kenning Arlitsch, Associate Director for Information Technology Services at the University of Utah, Marriott Library.
These resources, which cover a wide range of topics, and include items such as government reports, legal transcripts, personal papers, photographs, and audio/visual materials, are held by a geographically dispersed partnership of major western universities.
WWDL began as a collaborative regional partnership undertaken by twelve academic research libraries from eight western states under auspice of the Greater Western Library Alliance (GWLA). Initial funding for WWDL was provided by the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS).
Since its inception in 2004, WWDL has expanded to include water-related materials for twenty-five archival holding institutions including: Arizona State University; Brigham Young University; California Institute of Technology; Claremont Colleges; Colorado State University; Humboldt State University; Iowa State University; Northern State University; Oregon Institute of Technology; Oregon State University; Texas A&M University; University of Arizona; University of California, Berkeley; University of Idaho; University of Hawai'i at Manoa; University of Nebraska Lincoln; University of Nevada - Las Vegas; University of New Mexico; University of Oregon; University of the Pacific; University of Texas Austin; University of Utah; Utah State University; University of Washington; and Washington State University.
Posted on 6 July 2010 | 9:31 am
