Anniversaries and New Beginnings

The Special Collections & Archives Research Center staff. (minus Ruth) November 2011.

Last Friday night a group assembled in the fourth floor rotunda of the Valley Library to celebrate the convergence of two anniversaries: the University Archives turns 50 in 2011, while Special Collections celebrates its 25th birthday.

The University Archives was established in 1961 as a component of what was then called the Kerr Library.  The department was originally located in Gill Coliseum – home to Beaver basketball, among other sports – before moving to the old library location in Kidder Hall.  The first University Archivist was Harriet Moore and her charge was to gather materials of consequence to the history of the institution – variously known as Oregon Agricultural College, Oregon State Agricultural College, Oregon State College and, finally, Oregon State University.  These days, one of the University Archives’ most frequently used photograph collections is “Harriet’s Collection,” a set of some 30,000 images that Moore assembled herself.

In 1966 Harriet Moore retired.  Her replacement, William Schmidt, established a records management program within the department, one of the first such programs at any university nationwide.  In 1972 the University Archives moved again, both physically and organizationally, to the university’s main administration building (in the basement, of course).  The Archives were now part of the Office of Budgets and Planning, and the staff spent a great deal of their time microfilming historic records and administering personnel files.

Organizationally, the Archives returned home to the library in the year 2000, making the physical move out of the basement and to the third floor of the Valley Library in 2003.  Ever since, the department has focused more and more on acquiring manuscript collections and creating a robust digital presence.  Along with the history of the university, two of the Archives’ primary collecting foci are natural resources and multiculturalism in the Pacific Northwest.

As many readers of this blog know, Special Collections at Oregon State University Libraries was created in 1986 with Linus Pauling’s donation of his and his wife’s papers to their undergraduate alma mater.  Under the leadership of it’s first head, Cliff Mead, the department spent the better part of a decade arranging and describing the massive Pauling collection and, in the years since, digitizing components of the collection for consumption on the web.  Using the Pauling Papers as a cornerstone, the department has collected actively in the history of science and technology.  It is also the university’s repository for rare and fine books.  And at least once every week since early March 2008, Special Collections has been publishing this blog.

Now, Special Collections and University Archives are one department: The Special Collections & Archives Research Center.  As this article in Library Journal notes

The merger…will continue over the next several months, with a goal to ‘create one public service point from which all collections within the new department will be made available to the onsite researchers’… The merger will, among other advantages, eliminate the need for researchers to visit separate reading rooms.

Long term, OSU Libraries plans to consolidate the storage, office, and work space, and create a separate classroom space for the new department… Goals for the remainder of 2011 include combining workflows for collections processing, digital collections creation, and instruction and outreach, using teams made up of staff from both previous departments.

Indeed, these are exciting times for us all, but a lot of work lies ahead.

For now though, the blog is in a reflective mood.  In that spirit, please enjoy the photographs below, a sampling of the people, places and events that defined two successful departments for a combined 75 years.

Readers in the McDonald Rare Books Room, predecessor to Special Collections, 1934.

Lucy M. Lewis assisting a patron in the McDonald Room,1934. Lewis was University Librarian from 1920-1945. During her tenure the library, among other advancements, made the switch from Dewey Decimal classification to the Library of Congress schema.

University President George Peavy, seated in the McDonald Room, 1934.

Harriet Moore, the first University Archivist, holding a historic copy of the student newspaper, 1965.

William F. Schmidt, the second University Archivist, with two students, 1966.

Homecoming keepsake, ca. 1960s.

University Archivist Sally Wilson working at a microfilm cabinet, ca. 1974.

Sally Wilson on her birthday, 1977.

University Archivist Rolf Swensen and staff member Anne Merydith-Wolf working in the basement of the Administration Building, ca. 1979.

Students processing a collection, ca. 1979.

An early example of moveable shelving in the University Archives, ca. 1979.

Transcribing an oral history interview with a typewriter (!), ca. 1979.

A University Archives student microfilming records, ca. 1970s.

Linus and Ava Helen Pauling in the University Archives reading room, May 1980.

Archives staff member Anne Merydith-Wolf in the basement store room, Administration Building, ca. 1980.

Student workers in the original Special Collections reading room, ca. late 1980s.

Conducting disaster recovery at an OSU mink research laboratory that was vandalized in June 1991.

Another view of the mink laboratory disaster recovery.

Lawrence A. Landis in 1995. Larry has served as University Archivist since 1996 and is now the Director of the Special Collections & Archives Research Center.

Student employees working in the original Special Collections reading room, ca. 1996.

Opening Linus Pauling’s personal safe. To the right is Cliff Mead, Emeritus Head of Special Collections. Ca. 1996.

The University Archives reading room in the basement of Kerr Administration Building, 2002.

A Special Collections student holding a piece of the original Watson & Crick DNA model in the Special Collections display foyer, January 2003.

Super Karl helping move the University Archives records to the Valley Library, 2003.

Student assistants helping move the University Archives records to the Valley Library, 2003.

The University Archives reading room on the third floor of the Valley Library.

John Fenn, 2002 Nobel chemistry laureate, visiting the Special Collections stacks, October 2004.

Emeritus Head of Special Collections Cliff Mead with Mary Steckel at the Pauling traveling exhibit opening in Tokyo, Japan, 2004.

A bust of Linus Pauling presiding over the Special Collections reading room, 2004. (Bust by Erna Weil)

Karyle Butcher, Emeritus University Librarian, in the Special Collections reading room, November 2005.

Mary Washington and her husband Warren, a renowned climate scientist, in the Special Collections reading room, June 2006.

Moving sets of The Pauling Catalogue into Special Collections, November 2006.

Little Lucia Frumkin holds a Nobel Prize, August 2007.

Tiah leads the ‘Haunting for History’ tour on the OSU campus, October 2008.

Setting up the ‘Common Ground’ Flickr Commons slideshow on the face of Kidder Hall, home of the first university library. October 2009.

Balz Frei, head of the Linus Pauling Institute, posing in the Pauling office permanent display. October 2010.

Trevor shows a tour group The Gradual, a 15th century liturgical text, October 2011.

University Librarian Faye Chadwell speaking at the joint anniversary event, November 2011.

The Special Collections & Archives Research Center staff. (minus Ruth) November 2011.

“Oregon Experience: Linus Pauling,” now available online

The terrific hour long documentary Oregon Experience: Linus Pauling, produced by Oregon Public Broadcasting, is now available online.

In addition to the documentary feature – which incorporates a large amount of archival material as well as interviews with numerous Pauling scholars in telling the story of Pauling’s life – the Oregon Experience website includes several video extras that did not make the final cut.  Included among them are a fascinating tour of Pauling’s boyhood home on Hawthorne Street in Portland; Cliff Mead’s recounting of a rather nerve-racking pop quiz that Pauling sprung on him in 1987; and Ken Hedberg telling his famous basalt story.

Oregon Experience: Linus Pauling is well worth your time – anyone with an even passing interest in Pauling’s career will find the film to be engaging and informative.  The program may be viewed at:

http://www.opb.org/programs/oregonexperience/programs/player/35-Linus-Pauling

Goodbye Cliff

Today marks the final day in the office for Clifford Mead, the only Head of Special Collections that Oregon State University has ever known. He is retiring after twenty-four years of service to OSU Libraries, a time during which the institution has experienced tremendous growth.

When Linus Pauling donated his papers to OSU in April 1986, there was no Special Collections unit in what was then known as the Kerr Library. Recognizing that this major new acquisition required its own department, the library soon hired Cliff from Keene State College in New Hampshire to oversee the monumental task of shepherding the Pauling Papers into usable form. Items flowed from at least four different locations to Corvallis (and to a warehouse in Albany, as the original Special Collections facility was not large enough to house the archive) and the staff went to work.

In the two decades that followed, the more than 4,400 linear feet of materials that comprise the Pauling collection have been arranged, described and made available, many of them in digital form. (Currently, fourteen online resources related to Pauling, including this blog, have been released by the OSU Libraries Special Collections.) At the same time, the department has added more than two dozen ancillary book and manuscript collections, most of which focus on the history of science and technology in the twentieth century.

Linus Pauling, Cliff Mead and members of the Special Collections student staff. 1987.

With Cliff’s retirement, the library loses its last employee who worked closely with Linus Pauling. So too will it lose a wealth of knowledge concerning the history of the book, for Cliff is surely among the region’s most capable evaluators of rare book collections. Cliff has headed the organization of three conferences of international import, overseen the awarding of six Pauling Legacy Awards and coordinated the month-long visits of five Resident Scholars. In twenty-four years, he has attended countless meetings, led innumerable tours and taught scores of classes, acting always as a knowledgeable and enthusiastic ambassador for Special Collections.

As an emeritus professor, Cliff plans, among other pursuits, to continue working on a book project of his own and to follow his beloved Yankees with the same energy that he has devoted to his professional work. To those of us on staff in Special Collections, he will remain a generous mentor, gracious colleague and loyal friend.

Oregon State University has released an official press release announcing Cliff’s retirement, the text of which is appended below. For those interested in watching Cliff in action, check out this ten-minute tour of our facility, recorded in 2008.

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CORVALLIS, Ore. – Clifford Mead, an expert on the life of one of Oregon State University’s most celebrated alumni, Linus Pauling, and the man responsible for the growth of OSU Libraries’ world-class collections, is retiring after 24 years at the university.

Mead, who is head of Special Collections for OSU Libraries, will retire Jan. 1. His expertise in special collections administration has resulted in the development and growth of a collection that serves as a resource not only for the OSU community but for scholars from across the globe.

Mead has dedicated himself to making the OSU collections available to the public, explained Mary Jo Nye, the Horning Professor of Humanities and Professor of History emeritus.

Cliff Mead, Linus Pauling and biographer Thomas Hager on the OSU campus, March 1991.

“Cliff and his staff have pioneered online website communication of historically valuable documents, photographs, films, and other resources to the public,” Nye said. “He has been a real treasure at OSU whom countless visitors have found to be their engaging and omniscient guide in Special Collections.”

The focus of OSU Special Collections is on the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers, with a broader emphasis on the history of 20th century science and technology. Mead has led the Special Collections’ development of digital resources, especially those that provide in-depth coverage of the life and work of Linus Pauling, the only recipient of two unshared Nobel Prizes.

“In addition to Professor Mead’s leadership in developing a truly innovative and world-renowned web presence for displaying the vast resources of the Special Collections department, he has provided exceptional opportunities for OSU students to have first-hand experience working with primary research materials,” said Karyle Butcher, former OSU University librarian and director of the OSU Press.

Cliff Mead with Warren Washington, 2010 recipient of the National Medal of Science.

Mead is recognized as the authority on the Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers. He has authored several publications, and most recently co-edited with OSU’s Chris Petersen, “The Pauling Catalogue: Ava Helen and Linus Pauling Papers at Oregon State University” (2006).

Mead received bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Syracuse University.

Paul Farber, an OSU distinguished professor emeritus, said Mead’s personality drove the collection.

“Cliff has that rare combination of intelligence, organization, personality, wit and humor that makes a university collection of papers and books into a Special Collection,” Farber said. “He has been at the center of creating this major asset at OSU, one that has large portions available online, and one that brings scholars from around the world to campus. He cannot be replaced, but he has built an institution that will persist.”

Larry Landis, OSU’s university archivist, will serve as interim director of Special Collections beginning Jan. 1. He has been at OSU since 1991.