Life in the Cold War 1980s

Three new additions to our archive of Pauling Peace Lectureship presentations have been added recently to the Events and Videos page of the OSU Libraries Special Collections website.  Dating to the mid-1980s, each is a reflection of the major, and mounting, concerns that peace activists and critics of U.S. foreign policy harbored during the eight year presidency of Ronald Reagan.

In 1984 Helen Caldicott, speaking in the weeks before a presidential election that she deemed “a referendum on the fate of the Earth,” dazzled an overflow audience with a fiery talk titled “We the People: A Prescription for Ending the Arms Race.” Originally a physician by trade, Caldicott increasingly came to devote more of her time (and eventually all of it) to peace activism as a fulfillment of what she believed to be her obligations under the Hippocratic Oath – speaking out against nuclear escalation seemed to Caldicott to be the ultimate in preventive medicine. Using a number of medical analogies throughout her presentation, Caldicott struck a cord with one journalist who noted her “poetically grotesque images of what happens to those hit by a nuclear weapon.”

Caldicott’s lecture included a series of scathing indictments of the Reagan administration, as well as the following recounting of a face-to-face conversation that she held with the President himself.

Helen Caldicott: A Sobering Meeting with President Reagan

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations George W. Ball spoke on October 9, 1985 to an audience that included Linus Pauling. Ball’s presentation, titled “United States Foreign Policy,” continued in the vein of many of the themes introduced by Dr. Caldicott, including harsh criticisms of President Reagan, by now re-elected.

In Ball’s view, the cruel irony of the times lay in the fact that at the very moment that the Soviet leadership, under Gorbachev, was becoming more flexible in its approach to arms limitations, the United States was simultaneously growing more rigid. Particularly galling, in Ball’s view, was the Reagan administration’s enthusiasm for the Strategic Defense Initiative, more commonly known as “Star Wars.”

George W. Ball: The Folly of “Star Wars”

Author and diplomat John Kenneth Galbraith presented on “The Military Power and the Larger Complex” on October 14, 1986. Echoing his friends Caldicott and Ball, Galbraith suggested that U.S.-Soviet summit meetings contemporary to his talk were little more than a farce meant to convince the public that their concerns about nuclear hazards were being addressed. In Galbraith’s view, the massive escalation of military spending and consequent influence under Reagan’s watch had served to subjugate democracy itself. This despite the fact that the rationale for continued military expansion was based largely on what he perceived to be myths of tension and hostility between nations.

Galbraith’s perspective on current events was sobering indeed, but it did not preclude the relaying of a few funny stories.

John Kenneth Galbraith: The Humorous Side of Summit Meetings

Jointly established in 1982 by Linus Pauling and the OSU College of Liberal Arts as a means for honoring Ava Helen Pauling’s commitment to peace work, the Pauling Peace Lectureship has brought a number of major figures to Corvallis to discuss the ramifications of events in a changing world. In the coming months, several more presentations from the Lectureship will be made available on our Events and Videos page.

The Pauling Centenary Conference

The date February 28, 2001 is meaningful to many residents of the Pacific Northwest.  At 10:54 AM that morning, the Nisqually earthquake, a magnitude 6.8 temblor located northwest of Olympia, Washington, shook the earth beneath the greater Seattle-Tacoma area and ultimately caused over $1 billion in damage.

Some 200 miles south in Corvallis, faint signs of the earthquake were noticed.  In the lobby of the LaSells Stewart Center, for instance, observers noted coats on a coat rack mysteriously swaying.  At the time, few thought much of what they were seeing however, given that an important local event (if something short of seismic) occupied the attentions of most.  February 28, 2001 was the one-hundredth anniversary of Linus Pauling’s birth and the LaSells Stewart Center was the site of a day-long conference honoring Pauling’s memory.

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“In 1986, just before [Lloyd] Jeffress died, Pauling wrote him a letter in which he caught him up on the events of the past year. The last paragraph of the letter related a recent article that Pauling had published in Nature magazine, which had stirred up controversy in the scientific community. A reporter had asked Pauling, ‘Do you have a liking for controversy?’ ‘No,’ replied Pauling. ‘I have a liking for the truth.’ This phrase, ‘a liking for the truth,’ and its surrogate implications of Pauling’s passion for discovery, even in the face of controversy, is a theme of this conference, and we hope that you will be enlightened and entertained by what is to follow.”

-Cliff Mead, centenary conference introductory remarks

“A Liking for the Truth: Truth and Controversy in the Work of Linus Pauling” assembled a multifaceted group of speakers who directly and indirectly reflected upon Pauling’s legacy as a scientist, activist and human being.  The day’s keynote speaker was Dr. Ahmed Zewail, the Linus Pauling Chair Professor of Chemistry and Professor of Physics at the California Institute of Technology, and the recipient of the 1999 Nobel Prize for Chemistry.  Zewail’s topic was the evolution of femtoscience, the study of atomic behaviors that occur in very short periods of time, a breathtaking field of research that allows scientists to, in Zewail’s words, “see bonds and atoms.”

Whereas Zewail spoke of time, another of the day’s presentations, by crystallographer and long-time Pauling family friend Dr. Jack Dunitz, focused on space.  Dunitz, Pauling and many others enmeshed in the practice of crystallography shared a deep interest in developing theories governing the rules that underlie “closest-packing” in molecules, work that Pauling and Max Delbrück extended into the realm of biology through their theory of molecular complementarity.

Jack Dunitz at a Caltech graduate student outing, ca. 1948.

Two Pauling biographers were likewise involved in the centenary activities.  Tom Hager spoke eloquently of the real world consequences that enveloped the Paulings as their peace work assumed international prominence.  Dr. Robert Paradowski reflected upon a turbulent period of the Paulings lives as a young couple, as the pair toured through Europe during Linus’s Guggenheim studies in 1926-1927.

Perhaps the day’s most broadly interesting talk, however, was delivered by Linus Pauling, Jr., the eldest of the four Pauling children.  Recalling memories as varied as Christmas traditions, the family cars and an eventful restaurant meal, Linus Jr. shed insight into a world hidden from even the closest of colleagues and most meticulous of biographers.  In the video excerpt below, Linus Jr. recounts the details of a cherished family tradition – regular vacations to the Painted Canyon desert.

Transcribed video of the Pauling Centenary Conference is available here.

Fred Allen’s Notebook

During his time at Oregon Agricultural College, Linus Pauling quickly built a reputation as being the smartest man on campus. This reputation would eventually evolve into international considerations of Pauling as one of the top scientists in all of history. Understandably, because of his abilities in the classroom and the laboratory, he made significant impressions on his classmates and teachers alike. However, it is unlikely that Pauling impressed many of his early mentors as much as he did Fred Allen.

Allen was Pauling’s physical chemistry professor during his senior year at O.A.C. For this course, Allen kept a data notebook that can now be found in the biographical section of the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers. The notebook, simply titled “Phy Chem Data Book,” contains not only results compiled from the experiments that his students completed, but also annotations and short biographical notes made by Allen in his later life. While the data aren’t of any particular interest, the annotations, made in 1962, do provide some interesting details on the class in general, and also on Pauling in particular. On one of the first pages, Allen writes:

The 14 men named on next page were in a Phy. Chem. Course under FJ Allen the school year 1921-22. It was a remarkable group.

Pauling is obviously the most notable person among the list of students, but another familiar name is Paul Emmett. Emmett, who, along with Pauling, would go on to receive his Ph.D. from Caltech, was one of the best in the class. However, according to Allen, Pauling was in a league entirely his own.

Except for Pauling, Emmett would have been top man in the class. No censure is intended when I say that the gap from Pauling to the others in the class is akin to the hardness gap from diamond to corundum.

Linus Pauling and Paul Emmett, 1920.

Allen’s praise for Pauling, however, does not stop there.

Pauling is the only student I have encountered who showed definite qualities of genius as an undergraduate.

A number of other interesting tidbits pertaining to Pauling’s life can also be gleaned from Allen’s short note about him. For example, an anecdote suggesting that Pauling was coveted by more than just the Caltech chemistry department.

Robt. A Millikan, visiting at Purdue in the early twenties told me with a twinkle in his eye, ‘Linus is too good a man to waste on chemistry. I’m going to make a physicist out of him.’ In 1956, I told this to Linus who said, ‘He tried. He offered me the headship at Cal Tech.’ I said ‘Why didn’t you take him up?’ Linus replied, ‘Chemistry made me a better offer.’

Allen also makes a point to address his sympathy for Pauling’s political problems.

In my opinion the persecution that Pauling has undergone would be ridiculous if it were not so tragic. He had to get a Nobel Prize to obtain a passport to leave the U.S.A.

Allen likewise mentions a recent visit with Pauling, during which their student and teacher roles from O.A.C. appear to have been reversed, at least for a short time.

I saw him last in 1956 when as a research associate I attended some of his lectures and did a very small piece of research under his direction. The courtesies extended to me at that time by Ava Helen, Linus and Crellin (younger son) will live long in my memory.

Interestingly enough, Allen is also the professor that triggered the meeting between Linus and Ava Helen. As Pauling was traveling home to Portland for Christmas vacation his senior year, Allen approached him and asked him to teach his general chemistry class for home economic majors. Enrolled in this class just happened to be Ava Helen Miller, who almost immediately caught Pauling’s eye. In due time, the two would be married.

Linus Pauling to Fred Allen, September 20, 1956, pg. 1

Pauling to Allen, September 20, 1956, pg. 2.

Over the years, Allen and Pauling stayed in contact, discussing many matters, both scientific and otherwise, such as writing textbooks, Pauling’s passport troubles, their families, and visiting one another. As their correspondence continued, what began merely as a student-professor relationship became a friendship that lasted until Allen passed away in 1968.

Excerpts from the Fred Allen diary are available here. For more information on Linus Pauling in Oregon, check out our Oregon 150 series. For general information on Linus Pauling, please visit the Linus Pauling Online portal.

Extracts from the Messenger Lectures

(Part 4 of 4 in our series marking the fiftieth anniversary of Pauling’s delivery of the Messenger Lectures.)

For our final post on Linus Pauling’s 1959 Messenger Lecture series, we have compiled a number of quotations from the talks themselves and from his own personal preparatory notes.  These excerpts highlight the most significant elements of Pauling’s Messenger talks.

Linus Pauling on…

…Evolution

…the last great step in evolution was the mutational process that doubled the size of the brain, 700,000 years ago – that this mutation represented the origin of man…this mutation permitted the inheritance of acquired characteristics of a certain sort – of learning, through communication from one human being to another; so that abilities that have not yet been incorporated into the germ plasm are not lost until their rediscovery, but are handed on from person to person, from generation to generation.  It is this result of man’s great powers of thinking and remembering and communicating that have been responsible for the evolution of civilization.

…The Human Race

…a man or woman is not truly an organism, in the sense that a rabbit is, or a lion, or a whale; but that he is a part of a greater organism – the whole of mankind, into which he is bound by the means of communication – speech, writing, airplanes – in the way that the cells of a rabbit are interconnected by nerve fibers and hormonal molecular messengers.

From the standpoint of the great human organism as a single entity, its survival or non-survival might be independent of the degree of suffering of some of its constituent units; but the consciousness that exists in the world is that of the units, and the organism is hardly more than the sum of these units, despite their interconnection and interdependence.

…Peace

…we must now achieve the mutation that will bring sanity to this great organism, the organism that is mankind.

As man makes further progress in a world of peace and reason, in which the problem of the struggle for existence has been largely solved, he will have more and more opportunity to devote himself to the activities that give him the greatest satisfaction and happiness.  I believe that without doubt thinking will be the most important of these activities for those people who are endowed by heredity with excellent encephalonic activity.

Now morality must win out in the world.  Now survival means survival of the whole human organism – it depends on whether or not we can work for the common good.  The old evolutionary method, the ’survival of the fittest,’ is now not significant unless we consider Earth vs. other planets with intelligent life.  In our negotiations we may need a new Golden Rule:  ‘Do unto others 20% better than you would have them do unto you – to make up for subjective error, personal bias.’

…Thinking and Philosophy

The world is now going through an interesting period of its development when thinking is becoming an important activity for many people.  There are now many people in the world who find much pleasure in thinking, and who also have thinking as their profession.

People who are not scientists and who do not have enough of an understanding of science to appreciate the significance of new discoveries are restricted in their opportunities for finding happiness through thinking.  The world of activities of man, in his social, political, and economic relationships with his kind, is much more limited and in a sense much more artificial than the world of nature.

Click here for all of our posts on the Messenger Lectures.  For more information on Linus Pauling, please visit the Pauling Online Portal or the OSU Special Collections Homepage.

The Molecular Theory of Civilization

(Part 3 of 4 in our series marking the fiftieth anniversary of Pauling’s delivery of the Messenger Lectures.)

At the heart of Pauling’s Messenger Lectures was his newly established theory which he referred to simply as the “molecular basis of civilization.”  Through his work as a chemist, Pauling had developed a belief that the seeming randomness of life could be traced down to the molecular level where macroscopic problems, like violence and disease, could be explained.

Pauling explained that the first molecules resulted from photo- and electrochemical reactions.  Some of these molecules became autocatalytic, or self-duplicating, while others were broken down and reformed into different molecules, with each molecule competing for atomic particles that would allow for further self-duplication.

As this duplication and competition continued, the newly formed molecules began to evolve according to the abundance of various elements.  Eventually, mutations allowed these molecules to begin manufacturing smaller molecules to be used as “food” for the growing molecular colonies.  These molecules continued to mutate, eventually developing into organisms ranging from bacteria to complex mammals such as humans.  Joints, organs, nervous systems, and brains all appeared following millions of years of molecular evolution.

Pauling claimed that memories, for example, were one of the most significant results of evolution in history.  Pauling explained that when the human brain size doubled – approximately 700,000 years ago – humans developed the ability to create, maintain, and share memories. He described this phenomenon as the first example of “the inheritance of acquired characteristics.”  Ephemeral and long-term memory, he said, are the basis of civilization.  Without them, speech, invention, and the communication of long-term knowledge would all be virtually impossible.

According to Pauling, this increase in human brain size was the last great evolutionary moment in human history, and that the achievement of long-term memory and communication marked a completely new moment for life.  The ability to communicate information, he said, transformed the human race into a single organism connected through our collective knowledge.

From there, Pauling argued that, for the human race to thrive, evolution must continue. In his final lecture at Cornell, he exhorted that “we must now achieve the mutation that will bring sanity to this great organism, the organism that is mankind.”  Pauling admitted that a mutation allowing greater empathy among humans (he suggested extrasensory perception as an example) had the potential to be highly effective.  Unfortunately, in his view, the human race may well not survive long enough to enjoy another highly beneficial mutation along those lines.  Instead, he argued that the next “mutation” must be a mutation of conscience in human thought that would allow for widespread elimination of suffering via cooperation and shared interest in the advancement of human well-being.

Pauling argued that this change in human thought, however far outside our traditional understanding of evolution, is deeply connected with Darwinian theory.  He explained that a mass restructuring of values across the human race would accomplish the ultimate goal of physical evolution by allowing for the survival and even growth of the human race.  What’s more, he explained that this evolution of the mind corresponded directly with the earlier evolution of the brain.

Over the next decade, Pauling continued to refer to this next step – sometimes called conscious evolution – as a means of encouraging a wide variety of practices including nuclear disarmament, the control of hereditary genetic abnormalities, and the development of an international governing body.  In fact, he closed his final Messenger Lecture with a brief talk on the importance of international peace and the need to end human suffering, encouraging his audience to actively seek a heightened sense of communal responsibility.

Following the lecture series, it was traditional for the guest speaker to partner with Cornell University Press for a print release of the talks.  Though not a requirement of the lectureship, this partnership gave the Press some exposure and allowed the lecturer’s work to be more widely circulate, making it an ideal situation for both parties.  Pauling believed his talks to be suitable for publication and, in late 1959, began to collect his notes and resources accordingly.

Unfortunately, the book never materialized.  In 1960, Pauling was subpoenaed by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee and embroiled in a long and unpleasant series of investigations into his patriotism.  From there, his peace work took over, leaving little time for other activities.  It seems that the Messenger publication was simply neglected amidst the press of greater issues.  Nevertheless, Pauling’s papers include a substantial collection of his Messenger notes and manuscripts, affording us a glimpse at the philosophical questions that stimulated and intrigued Pauling during his most politically active years.

Click here for all of our posts on the Messenger Lectures.  For more information on Linus Pauling, please visit the Linus Pauling Portal or the OSU Special Collections homepage.

Science and Philosophy

(Part 2 of 4 in our series marking the fiftieth anniversary of Pauling’s delivery of the Messenger Lectures.)

Above all else, Linus Pauling considered himself to be a man of rational thought. The Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers are filled notebooks and manuscripts detailing Pauling’s ideas on practical manners (such as reflective road signs), matters of legality and morality (including diversity and racism in the United States), and philosophical questions (such as this refutation of solipsism). Over the course of his long life, Pauling trained himself to think critically about every question within his reach, even going so far as to advocate thinking about problems through dreams.

In his first Messenger Lecture, entitled “Science and Philosophy,” Pauling chose to approach philosophy itself through the lens of hard science. In order to do so, however, he first found it necessary to define science. “Science,” he claimed, is the “knowledge, understanding, and appreciation of the world.” He argued that appreciation, defined as an “accurate perception, true estimation, [or] evaluation” is a key component of science in that it requires the scientist to be able to both collect and interpret facts and to critically evaluate the value (be it practical, moral, or other) of that interpretation.

Unlike some of his contemporaries, Pauling actively engaged in intellectual conversations outside of his own field of expertise. In particular, he found himself drawn to philosophy and became interested in the work of philosophers of science such as Alfred Stern and, later, Karl Popper. The Messenger Lectures allowed him to focus this interest and apply it to a structured, well-developed dialogue with his fellow intellectuals. Rather than building his talks on a foundation of opinions and personal experiences, Pauling chose to rely on the works of established philosophers, approaching their writings and ideas through the lens of his scientific training.

Citing P.W. Bridgman’s The Way Things Are, Pauling argued that philosophy can act to challenge the significance of self and, in some cases, both depress and demean the human spirit. “I myself,” he claimed, “have been depressed by the old philosophical writings. Now I no longer am depressed, because I think that I understand them, and that I can now decide how they should be interpreted, and how much time and effort should be devoted to them.”

Pauling found that, despite his lack of training as a philosopher, he could in fact approach complex philosophical concepts.

He explained that “The basic fact is that philosophy must be based on science – it includes science (the relation of man as subject and the objective world includes the nature of the objective world).” While he did not argue that philosophy is itself a science, he suggested that science – what Pauling referred to as “the study of the world in an objective manner” – necessarily affects our core understanding of philosophy. As such, he claimed that the disciplines of philosophy and science should be merged, allowing the tenets of scientific methodology to guide philosophical thought.

Finally, he concluded that, “Philosophy is the subjective study of the world by man.” Everyone, he said, studies the world in some way, be it through profession, hobby, or simple curiosity. Therefore, anyone who hopes to reach some measure of truth, and is willing to apply their intellect to this search, may call themselves a philosopher, regardless of background or training.

Click here for all of our posts on the Messenger Lectures.  For more information on Linus Pauling, please visit the Linus Pauling Online Portal or the Special Collections homepage.

The Messenger Lectures

Linus Pauling, 1958

[Ed note: October 2009 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Linus Pauling's delivery of the Messenger Lectures at Cornell University. This is part one of a four post series discussing participation in the Messenger series.]

The Messenger Lectures on the Evolution of Civilization, better know simply as the Messenger Lectures, is a prestigious lectureship hosted by Cornell University.  Upon the 1924 death of Hiram Messenger, a Travelers’ Insurance Company actuary and graduate of Cornell University, a portion of his fortune was bequeathed to Cornell, his alma mater.  The following year, Cornell began its now famous Messenger Lecture series, defining it as “a course of lectures on the evolution of civilization, for the special purpose of raising the moral standards of our political, business, and social life.”

In 1925, James Henry Breasted, a historian-archaeologist made famous by his work in the Middle East, delivered the first Messenger lecture.  In his talk, he explored the implications of moral growth in the human race through a study of ancient European and Egyptian societies.  His scholarly, introspective lectures which married the history of science and philosophy, set the tone for future speakers.

Since 1925, a great number of intellectuals have served as Messenger lecturers.  Over the course of the lectureship’s history, the likes of Noam Chomsky, Robert A. Millikan, and J. Robert Oppenheimer have all taken the position.  Perhaps the most famous of the Messenger Lectures are those by Richard Feynman, a professor of theoretical physics at Caltech.  In 1964, Feynman gave a series of lectures on “The Character of Physical Law.”  In 2009, Bill Gates purchased the rights to the BBC recordings of Feynman’s seven talks and made them available to the public as part of Project Tuva, giving Feynman, Microsoft, and the Messenger Lectures a great deal of publicity.

The lectureship has been particularly famous among academicians because it allows researchers and scholars to approach the human experience through the lens of their own field of study.  The series encourages scientists, historians, writers, political theorists, etc. to meaningfully apply their life’s work to problems of philosophical thought, resulting in unique and often striking conclusions about the human condition.

Because of their prestige, only the best known intellectuals of the day were invited to serve as Messenger lecturers.  In fact, it took Pauling more than twenty years of work as an internationally-known chemist to be given the honor.

In 1936, Linus spent four months in Ithaca as the George Fischer Baker Lecturer.  During his stay, he established lasting friendships with the Cornell chemistry department faculty and became something of a campus celebrity.  At that time, however, he was deeply immersed in the sciences and was of only minimal interest to the non-scientific community at Cornell.

Two decades later, however, Pauling was much more than just a chemist; he was a Nobel Prize winner, a peace advocate, and a household name.  What’s more, by the late 1950s, Pauling’s interests had fallen in line with the core focus of the Messenger Lectures.  Pauling was deeply concerned with the molecular basis of individuality, community, free will and, of course, peace and violence.  Where sociologists, anthropologists, and biologists were all looking at human civilization on a macroscopic scale, Pauling was examining the very particles of life and extracting astounding theories from the molecules of the human body.

When the Cornell faculty was asked to nominate a speaker for the 1959 Messenger Lectures, chemistry department members remembered the success of Pauling’s previous stay at Cornell.  In April 1957, Linus Pauling received a letter from A. W. Laubengayer, the acting chairman for Cornell’s chemistry department.  Laubengayer asked that Pauling hold six lectures in the Fall Term of 1959.  As was traditional, the university would provide only the broad topic, the evolution of civilization, leaving Pauling to interpret as he wished.

Pauling readily accepted the appointment, citing his fond memories of serving as Baker Lecturer.  His topic, he declared, would be “The Molecular Basis of Life.”  The concept was one that Pauling had lectured on several times before.  For a lectureship as significant and the Messenger series, Pauling needed to introduce a new and unique concept rather than rehash established ideas.

Over the course of the next two years, Pauling set about refining his theories on the influence of molecular evolution in individual and group behavior.  In February of 1959, he began his work on the lectures themselves.  The series was to be divided into six parts: Science and Philosophy, Molecules and Life, The Molecular Basis of Disease, Molecules and Heredity, Molecules and Evolution, and The World of the Future.  Lectures three, four, and five relied heavily on the material Pauling had presented in various publications and talks over the past five years.  Lectures one, two, and six, however, were unique.  It is on these three lectures, the focus of which were Pauling’s philosophical interests, that we will discuss over the course of our series Pauling and the Messenger Lectures.

Click here for all of our posts on the Messenger Lectures.  For more information on Linus Pauling, visit the Pauling Online Portal or the OSU Special Collections homepage.

New Image Search and Catalogue Pages

Continuing the theme from our last post, Redesigning our Web Presence, here is a closer look at how we built the new Image Search feature as well as what it takes to create the catalogue pages showing the detailed holdings of our collections.

New Image Search Feature

Our main web search feature, now on all of our pages, is provided by Oregon State’s campus search engine running the Nutch software. This software works similar to Google and has web crawlers that find web pages and indexes them for searching. Each Documentary History website and Linus Pauling Day-by-Day have a search box that limits results to the pages and items on only that site.

However, the main search feature on the OSU Libraries homepage does not use the campus engine, and our websites and digital objects were not included. The Library’s search feature is powered by LibraryFind, built by a team at OSU using the Ruby on Rails web application software. LibraryFind harvests and indexes many records and data sources, but does not crawl web pages. We needed to get our records harvested by and indexed into LibraryFind.

Since our digital object records are stored using the METS format with MODS metadata, it was fairly easy to convert this to Dublin Core metadata, which can then be served up by an OAI-PMH provider. LibraryFind then checks our OAI-PMH provider and harvests our digital object metadata for indexing into LibraryFind. Thanks to Terry Reese for his assistance on setting up the provider software and for his work on LibraryFind.

One piece of metadata that our METS records didn’t have that we needed to add was a URL where the digital object sits once it’s part of our Documentary History websites or Linus Pauling Day-by-Day. Our own scripts and stylesheets didn’t need this information, since they built the pages, but LibraryFind needed the URL to know where to provide a link to from search results that included our digital objects. This required adding:

<mods:location><mods:url access="object in context" displayLabel="Linus Pauling and the Race for DNA: A Documentary History. Pictures and Illustrations.">
http://osulibrary.oregonstate.edu/specialcollections/coll/pauling/dna/pictures/1948i.61.html
</mods:url></mods:location>

as appropriate to our metadata files.

Now that our digital objects are harvested into LibraryFind, they are included in results for searches done from the Library’s homepage. We can also limit the search results to just our materials, and by turning on the image results view, we get our new Image Search functionality. Now it is easy to search for digitized materials that are online, including photographs, scans of documents, and more.

Image Search results, powered by LibraryFind

In the future, we plan to include more of our digital objects and increase support for complex items and multimedia files.

Building Catalogue Pages from EAD

Each of our collections are stored in Encoded Archival Description (EAD) XML files, which include collection information as well as detailed catalogue listings for most of our collections. Often these descriptions go down to the item level, and there are varying levels and hierarchies in use, depending on what was appropriate for the material. The EAD files are processed by XSLT stylesheet files, similar to the rest of our website, and ideally we’d like to have a single set of files that can handle the different description levels and that we don’t have to tweak for specific collections. Here is a snippet of EAD XML for the Pauling Photographs series:

<c02 level="file">
<did>
<container type="box">1933i</container>
<unittitle>Photographs and Images related to Linus Pauling, <unitdate>1933</unitdate>.</unittitle>
</did>

<c03 level="item">
<did>
<container type="folder">1933i.1</container>
<unitid audience="internal">1311</unitid>
<unittitle>Linus Pauling at OSU (Oregon Agricultural College) to receive an honorary doctorate of science. Pictured from left are Dr. Marvin Gordon Neale, president of the University of Idaho, David C. Henny, Linus Pauling, Chancellor W. J. Kerr, and Charles A. Howard, state superintendent of public instruction in Oregon. June 5, 1933. "LP at OSU (OAC) honorary doctorate 1933" Photographer unknown. Black and white print courtesy of the Oregon State University Archives.</unittitle>
<unitdate>1933</unitdate>
</did>
</c03>

<c03 level="item">
<did>
<container type="folder">1933i.2</container>
<unittitle>D.C. Henny, C.A. Howard and Linus Pauling. Linus Pauling receiving an honorary degree from Oregon Agricultural College. Print courtesy of the Oregon State University Archives. Photographer unknown. Black and white print.</unittitle>
<unitdate>1933</unitdate>
</did>
</c03>

Our previous setup for processing catalogues was heavily modified from older EAD Cookbook stylesheet files and contained a large amount of custom code. One of the major sections we added was code that split up very large sections and box listings into separate web pages that were a reasonable size, instead of presenting hundreds of boxes or folders on each page. To accomplish this, the stylesheet used to first make a temporary file that built a high-level ‘menu’ of the catalogue, which had a range for each page that was to be created. The rest of the stylesheet would then use this menu file to determine what pages to create, and searched over the whole collection for the IDs of the start and end of each page. This was complicated by the fact that some box IDs are not easy to compare numerically, such as ‘1954h3.4′ or ‘NDi.2′. Usually the alphabetic characters were replaced with numbers or punctuation to facilitate comparing them against each other. This technique was not very efficient for large sections, and required lots of tweaking to be able to handle all the various box and folder IDs we have.

Also, separate stylesheet files had to be created to better handle the Pauling Papers since it was so much larger than anything else, which meant that it was a pain to maintain features in both sets of stylesheet files. For the newer set of catalogue XSLT stylesheet files, we took a few different approaches.

First, a lot of redundant code was eliminated through the use of more XSLT matching templates. These allow you to write one set of formatting code and reuse it whenever an element appears. This made it easier to work around EAD’s flexibility for container lists, so a series or box would get processed the same no matter where it was in the encoded hierarchy. Here are some examples of the EAD matching templates:

<xsl:template match="ead:unittitle">
<xsl:apply-templates/>
<xsl:if test="not(ends-with(., '.'))">.</xsl:if>
<xsl:text> </xsl:text>
<xsl:if test="following-sibling::ead:unittitle"><br/></xsl:if>
</xsl:template>

<xsl:template match="ead:unitid[@type]">
<xsl:choose>
<xsl:when test="@type = 'isbn'">
  <a class="nowrap" href="http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=isbn%3A{replace(., '-', '')}" title="Look up this title in WorldCat"><xsl:value-of select="."/></a></xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="@type = 'oclc'">
  <a class="nowrap" href="http://www.worldcat.org/search?q=no%3A{.}" title="Look up this title in WorldCat"><xsl:value-of select="."/></a></xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="@type = 'lcc'">
  <a class="nowrap" href="http://oasis.oregonstate.edu/search/c?SEARCH={replace(., ' ', '+')}" title="Look up this title in the OSU Libraries' catalog"><xsl:value-of select="."/></a></xsl:when>
<xsl:when test="@type = 'gdoc'">
  <a class="nowrap" href="http://oasis.oregonstate.edu/search/?searchtype=g&amp;searcharg={replace(replace(., ' ', '+'), '/', '%2F')}" title="Look up this title in the OSU Libraries' catalog"><xsl:value-of select="."/></a></xsl:when>
<xsl:otherwise><xsl:value-of select="."/></xsl:otherwise>
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Second, the code to break long sections into smaller pages for web display was redone, this time using the position of a box or item instead of the IDs. IDs are still used for display purposes, but the output is all based on position (such as 1-10, 11-20, etc.) This code is much cleaner since IDs are no longer directly compared. It’s also faster since it deals with the pages sequentially and doesn’t loop over the whole section every time a page is processed.

Example of new catalogue page of Pauling Correspondence

Third, instead of using HTML tables for the columns layout of catalogue pages, we switched to a CSS-based layout that approximates the look of columns and indents. This requires much less code in both the XSLT for processing and the output files.

Finally, all catalogues are processed by the same set of files, and separate ones for the Pauling Papers are no longer needed. This will enable us to make improvements faster, expanding our links to digital content and increasing the access options for our materials.

Redesigning our Web Presence

The first conceptual mock-up for a revised Special Collections homepage, September 2007.

In September 2007, we decided that the time had come to redesign our home page and department web presence.  Last month, three graphic designers, dozens of mock-ups, hundreds of work hours and almost exactly two years later, we released our new look, complete with scads of fresh content.  For those interested in many of the details of what’s new, here is the press release announcing the launch.

The objective of this post is to talk a bit about our process, but before getting into that, let’s have a look at the old homepage as well as that which has now replaced it.

Old Special Collections homepage, launched September 2003.

New Special Collections homepage, launched September 2009.

The Homepage

The desire to revamp our site was spurred initially by the realization that all of our various Pauling projects were amounting to an urban sprawl of sorts, cluttering up the right-hand side of the homepage.  The solution to this: Linus Pauling Online, a portal for all of the Pauling sites that could be linked to as a landing page from the Special Collections home and elsewhere, including the top-right corner of this blog.

The design for the Pauling portal was completed and released well before the site redesign was complete, but both projects were developed with the other in mind – aside from differing color schemes, the look and feel of the two pages are very similar.

Linus Pauling Online, launched January 2009.

Though the Pauling Online portal moved most of our Pauling resources off of the homepage, we still wanted to reserve some prime real estate for various featured projects – hence the “Featured” section, which currently links to the Pauling Centenary Conference, Linus Pauling Day-by-Day and the Pauling Chronology.

In a similar vein, now that we’re doing much more with video, it made sense to include a featured video component to the homepage.  Currently that video is Dr. Roderick MacKinnon’s 2008 Pauling Legacy Award lecture, but the videos, as with the featured websites, will switch out with some frequency.

Lastly, the thousands of reference interviews that we’ve conducted over the years have given us a pretty good idea of the sub-pages on our site that are most heavily used.  Links to those aspects of our site are now located prominently at the top of each of our redesigned pages, whereas some of the more ancillary content has been moved to the page footer.

Collections Pages

Another major component of the redesign project entailed an overhaul of our collections pages.  Our objective here was to redevelop each collection index page into something more than an access point to information, but rather for the page to stand as something close to a digital exhibit devoted to the creator of each collection.

As such, aside from improving the finding aids for many of our archival collections (and, in certain cases, creating finding aids where before there were none) each of the fully processed collections now boasts of a featured document and, whenever possible, a featured video.  Biographical timelines, improved administrative metadata and new illustrations complete the revamp.

The Fritz Marti Papers page is a good example of the striking difference between old and new.  Plans are in the works for Omeka-based biographical exhibits that will further expound upon the life work of Marti and many others whose papers reside in the Oregon State University Libraries Special Collections.

The Fritz Marti Papers - retired design.

The Fritz Marti Papers - new design.

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Older Efforts

The launch of the 2009 redesign marks the fifth such release in the history of our department.  Here’s a look at the evolution of our homepage over the years.

OSU Libraries Special Collections homepage, August 1998. Featuring rotating images and scrolling text.

Special Collections homepage, July 2000. Images and text still animated.

Special Collections homepage, July 2001. First fully-static homepage.

The Linus Pauling Science Center

Artist's rendering of the Linus Pauling Science Center

Last Friday, September 25th, Oregon State University formally launched the construction of what will be the largest academic building on the OSU campus – the Linus Pauling Science Center.  Scheduled for completion in Spring 2011, the Pauling Science Center is a centerpiece of the on-going Campaign for OSU.

The crowd assembled on the west edge of campus for the launching ceremony.

Linus Pauling’s extraordinary career was defined in large part by his ability to synthesize scientific details across disciplines.  His revolutionary work on the nature of the chemical bond, for example, involved at its core the marriage of the new physics – quantum mechanics, which Pauling studied as it was being developed by the great European scientists of the early and mid-1920s – with chemistry’s quest to understand how atoms bind together to form molecules.

The ambition of the Linus Pauling Science Center is, in a sense, to follow a similar model by bringing the entire faculty of the Linus Pauling Institute (LPI) under the same roof as the OSU Department of Chemistry, as well as students and researchers in both the physical and life sciences.  LPI Director Balz Frei, speaking at the launch ceremony, suggested that the completion of the building promises to be a “seismic event” for work in the sciences at OSU.  And in a recent issue of the LPI research newsletter, Frei had this to say about the Institute’s aims for their new space.

Our goal is to have five laboratories in each of the three major areas of research in the Institute: cardiovascular and metabolic diseases, cancer chemoprotection, and healthy aging. We also continue to expand our outreach efforts, including the Micronutrient Information Center, which provides free, scientifically accurate information on vitamins, minerals, phytochemicals, and certain foods and beverages. We would like to enhance these efforts to educate people about the important role of diet and lifestyle and supplements in disease prevention, which is becoming increasingly urgent as healthcare costs continue to increase. We plan to get involved in school programs to encourage kids to exercise more and eat healthily, and we are in the process of setting up a study in older adults to investigate the beneficial effects of specific lifestyle changes in maintaining health.

Dr. Balz Frei, Director of the Linus Pauling Institute, at the launch ceremonies.

OSU President Dr. Ed Ray.

George Pernsteiner, Chancellor of the Oregon University System.

This will not be the first building named for Linus Pauling.  In 1951 the Centro de Estudos Linus Pauling was christened at what was then known as the Universidade do Recife in Brazil.  A different Linus Pauling Study Center was dedicated in Santiago, Chile in 1992.  Soka University of America in Aliso Viejo, California is home to Linus and Ava Helen Pauling Hall; Caltech has named a lecture hall after Pauling in its Gates Laboratory of Chemistry; Corvallis boasts of Linus Pauling Middle School; and we have recently received word of a Linus Pauling Hospital being built in Madagascar!

Logo used by the Chilean Linus Pauling Study Center.

The Corvallis Gazette-Times has more on the launch celebration, including a description of the commemorative beam signing that closed the event.