|
|
UI Home |
|
Search |
News of Special Collections and Archives 2005
Bow-Wow Takes a Bow
July 2005 Special Collections and Archives at the University of Idaho Library announces a new installment in its series of "Digital Memories." Digital Memories focuses on historic artifacts, documents, photographs, and books from the holdings of Special Collections and Archives. This is a changing showcase of highlights from our collections. Stanley "Bow-Wow" Wojtkiewicz made a big splash when he arrived on campus in the Fall of 1939. Elected president of the Freshman Class, he proceeded to stir things up, officially and unofficially. His propensity for hi-jinks continued into later life, with some surprising twists. The Special Collections Department of the University of Idaho Library includes those materials that, because of subject coverage, rarity, source, condition, or form, are best handled separately from the General Collection. The several "collections" housed in this department include the Day-Northwest Collection of Western Americana, Rare Books, Idaho Documents, Sir Walter Scott Collection, Ezra Pound Collection, Caxton Collection, University of Idaho Theses, Historical Maps, Historical Photograph Collection, and Personal Papers and University Archives. "Digital Memories" can be accessed through the URL <http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/special-collections/>. Previous editions include eastern music about Idaho, early outdoor recreation, and an unrecorded Thoreau manuscript. Also at this site is information about Special Collections and its holdings, archival and manuscript descriptions and inventories, and a link to a massive geographical guide to repositories of primary source materials. The latter now contains over 5000 entries from around the world. +++ Special Collections Head to Retire
June 2005 Terry Abraham, Head, Special Collections and Archives since 1984, is retiring at the end of July after nearly four decades working with archives and manuscript collections. He began as a "cage rat" working with the papers of Yakima-area rancher and Indian historian L. V. McWhorter in the basement of Holland Library at Washington State University in 1966 while finishing his MFA in Ceramics. Further work at WSU was followed by a year in the Circulation Department at the University of Washington's Suzzallo Library. Although he began attending library school at that time, he soon transferred to the new fellowship program in archival librarianship at the University of Oregon, graduating with an MLS and a certificate. His internship was spent inventorying the manuscript collections at the California Historical Society in San Francisco. In 1970, he returned to Washington State University as Manuscript Librarian, a position he held for 14 years. Following that experience he became Head, Special Collections and Archives at the University of Idaho Library. He has averred that his most significant accomplishment at Idaho was "keeping the doors open." But more than that he introduced, encouraged, and facilitated automated bibliographic access to the collections, migrated card catalogs to databases, and initiated the library's web presence. Grant funded projects helped reduce some of the department's backlog and opened up tremendous resources for research. During this time he also spent a year in Washington, D.C., as program officer in the Research Division of the National Endowment for the Humanities. From 1983 through 1985 he also corrected manuscripts as Projects Editor for the Society of American Archivists. In addition, he served as Interim Director of the University's International Jazz Collections for two years beginning in 2000. A member of the Library Associates of the University of Idaho since 1976, Abraham became Secretary-Treasurer of the organization upon his appointment to the library faculty. In that position, he worked to revitalize the Associates and increase recognition for their support of the university library. Under his direction, Towers was started in 1996. In more recent years, he has partnered with the library's Northwest Historical Manuscript Series to distribute copies of these informative publications to the Associates. His articles on library and archival practice, Idaho history, and overseas Chinese funerary practices have appeared in Scholarly Publishing, Provenance, American Archivist, Serials Librarian, Idaho Yesterdays, Library Philosophy and Practice, PNLA Quarterly, and Australasian Historical Archaeology. With Richard Davis, he compiled Day to Day: A Guide to the Records of the Historic Day Mines Group in the University of Idaho Library (1992). The University of Calgary Press is publishing his forthcoming book on British travelers in the North American West. A charter member of the Academy of Certified Archivists in 1989, he has also served on the Washington Historical Records Advisory Board and, subsequently, on the Idaho Historical Records Advisory Board. With two colleagues, he founded and served as co-chair of the Northwest Archivists. He has also been president of the Friends of the Museum of Art in Pullman, Washington. His plans for retirement are mutable; perhaps some additional research and publication, perhaps some consulting, perhaps some travel. "Planning," he notes, "is for people with too many projects." +++ Kooskia Internment Camp Scrapbook Acquired
June 2005 The University of Idaho Library, with financial assistance from the Library Associates, a friends group, has acquired a unique photographic resource related to Idaho's World War II history. It is a hand-made scrapbook of 148 original photographs (and two drawings) of activities and buildings related to the Kooskia Internment Camp on the Lochsa River. By mid-February 1942, federal authorities had rounded up over 3,000 Japanese aliens living in the United States. Arrested by the FBI and local officials, these men were turned over to the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) who placed them in internment camps in Texas, North Dakota, New Mexico, and Montana, among others. This was not the later unconstitutional removal of West Coast Japanese American citizens and their families who were herded into ten large concentration camps (including one in southern Idaho, at Minidoka) managed by the War Relocation Authority. In 1943 the federal prison at Leavenworth, Kansas, closed its remote work camps, one of which was a road-building site in a former CCC camp on the Lochsa River in Idaho. The inmates were extending the Lewis and Clark Highway (now US 12) up the river toward Montana. Completion of the road was declared a wartime necessity and so it continued under the authority of the INS using paid Japanese alien volunteers from the larger internment camps. Although called the Kooskia Internment Camp, it was actually some seven miles upstream from Lowell, Idaho. The photographs in the scrapbook, taken about 1944, are the work of either one of the Japanese inmates or one of the federal guards. The signed sketches are by one of the inmates. The son of a deceased guard discovered the scrapbook among family memorabilia and offered it to the University of Idaho. The photographs are an extensive record of life in the camp, with multiple views of the mess hall, the canteen, and the recreation facilities, as well as scenes of the heavy equipment and the construction work on the highway, where the Japanese worked closely with the Bureau of Public Roads personnel. Dr. Priscilla Wegars, curator of the university's Asian American Comparative Collection and author of a recent article on the camp published in Idaho Yesterdays, calls the scrapbook "a major artifact from a little-known aspect of Idaho's history." The scrapbook pages and the photographs have been scanned and added to the Historical Photographs Collection database, now approaching 100,000 entries. The scrapbook and the database are available for viewing in Special Collections at the University of Idaho Library during regular hours. The Special Collections Department of the University of Idaho Library includes those materials that, because of subject coverage, rarity, source, condition, or form, are best handled separately from the General Collection. The several "collections" housed in this department include the Day-Northwest Collection of Western Americana, Rare Books, Idaho Documents, Sir Walter Scott Collection, Ezra Pound Collection, Caxton Collection, University of Idaho Theses, Historical Maps, Historical Photograph Collection, and Personal Papers and University Archives. Descriptions of these collections are on the World Wide Web at http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/special-collections/. +++ General Chrisman Stays On
April 2005 Special Collections and Archives at the University of Idaho Library announces a new installment in its series of "Digital Memories." Digital Memories focuses on historic artifacts, documents, photographs, and books from the holdings of Special Collections and Archives. This is a changing showcase of highlights from our collections. West Pointer Edward R. Chrisman arrived in Moscow in 1894 to teach military science and mathematics. Service in the war with Spain and other events took him away, but in 1919 he returned to stay. Honored by the Army, the U. S. Congress, the university community, and alumni, General Chrisman died in 1939, one of the university's earliest faculty members. The Special Collections Department of the University of Idaho Library includes those materials that, because of subject coverage, rarity, source, condition, or form, are best handled separately from the General Collection. The several "collections" housed in this department include the Day-Northwest Collection of Western Americana, Rare Books, Idaho Documents, Sir Walter Scott Collection, Ezra Pound Collection, Caxton Collection, University of Idaho Theses, Historical Maps, Historical Photograph Collection, and Personal Papers and University Archives. "Digital Memories" can be accessed through the URL <http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/special-collections/>. Previous editions include eastern music about Idaho, early outdoor recreation, and an unrecorded Thoreau manuscript. Also at this site is information about Special Collections and its holdings, archival and manuscript descriptions and inventories, and a link to a massive geographical guide to repositories of primary source materials. The latter now contains over 5000 entries from around the world. +++ Packing for the Mines
January 2005 Special Collections and Archives at the University of Idaho Library announces a new installment in its series of "Digital Memories." Digital Memories focuses on historic artifacts, documents, photographs, and books from the holdings of Special Collections and Archives. This is a changing showcase of highlights from our collections. A photograph of men packing a mule illustrates the impact of early day pack trains, an essential mode of transportation to remote Idaho mines and mining communities. Securely attaching bulky products and commodities to the backs of mules and horses was widely recognized as an art. The Special Collections Department of the University of Idaho Library includes those materials that, because of subject coverage, rarity, source, condition, or form, are best handled separately from the General Collection. The several "collections" housed in this department include the Day-Northwest Collection of Western Americana, Rare Books, Idaho Documents, Sir Walter Scott Collection, Ezra Pound Collection, Caxton Collection, University of Idaho Theses, Historical Maps, Historical Photograph Collection, and Personal Papers and University Archives. "Digital Memories" can be accessed through the URL <http://www.lib.uidaho.edu/special-collections/>. Previous editions include eastern music about Idaho, early outdoor recreation, and an unrecorded Thoreau manuscript. Also at this site is information about Special Collections and its holdings, archival and manuscript descriptions and inventories, and a link to a massive geographical guide to repositories of primary source materials. The latter now contains over 5000 entries from around the world. +++ |
