The latest issue of Easy Access, the newsletter of the Northwest Archivists, Inc., includes a report from Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections (MASC), part of the WSU Libraries. The report includes:
Online outreach initiatives
“We have a very lively Facebook page,” reports Trevor Bond, MASC interim head and rare books/special collections librarian. Recent installments include photographs of mold removal, a new digital collection of early Seattle photographs, and the recent discovery of an extremely rare $3 Kala note issued in Hawaii between 1839 and 1844.
MASC also has launched into YouTube with 29 videos on its own channel. They include “the cheesy, yet catchy tune Old Wazzu 1981,” Bond said.
New digital collections
Faith Beamer Cooke (1910-2001) was a Washington poet whose collection illuminates a little known aspect of women’s history and identity in Cold War America. See the collection at http://content.wsulibs.wsu.edu/cdm-cooke/.
Images from the papers and photographs of Homer M. Hill, a newspaper publisher and community activist in Seattle from the 1880s to 1930s. Topics of note include the Seattle Fire of 1889 and Seattle Anti-Chinese Riots in 1890. See http://content.wsulibs.wsu.edu/cdm-hill/
Seattle-based photographer Irwin Nash documented the experiences of Yakima Valley migrant workers, as well as the Yakima and Seattle-based agricultural protest movements, in the late 1960s and early 1970s. See http://content.wsulibs.wsu.edu/cdm-nash/
WSU has produced numerous formal and informal films, a portion of which have been digitized. Dating from 1916 to the present, the films document life on campus, in the Pullman and Palouse area, and in the greater Pacific Northwest. See http://content.wsulibs.wsu.edu/cdm-masc_media/
Newly processed collections
Sue Armitage was one of the first scholars to examine the role of women in the American West through teaching, research, articles, books and service. She developed and taught the first two undergraduate U.S. Women’s history courses at WSU and was co-editor for The Women’s West (1987) and Writing the Range (1997). In 2008, she was named WSU Woman of the Year. Find more at http://www.wsulibs.wsu.edu/masc/finders/cg734.htm
George Frykman (1917-2004) joined the Washington State College history faculty in 1950. He devoted much of his professional energy to the history of the Pacific Northwest and, more specifically, to WSU. Frykman was selected as WSU’s Centennial Historian for the 1990 anniversary celebration and his 1990 history of the university, “Creating the People’s University: Washington State University, 1890-1990,” was published. Find more at http://www.wsulibs.wsu.edu/masc/finders/cg747.htm