Monthly Archives: September 2012

Friday Feature: the social side of SCARC

Who says archivists are introverted? We love to get social!

You have found this blog, obviously, but did you know that we have 2 other blogs that you should check out? For this Friday Feature we’re featuring something else and want you to go forth and explore…

  • The Pauling Blog: Your weekly source for fascinating new stories from the world of Linus Pauling. The Pauling Blog also provides an inside glimpse into the latest Pauling-related news and activities being carried out by our department.
  • The Oregon Multicultural Archives Blog: Up-to-date information regarding current projects, new collections, and recently digitized materials pertaining to the histories that document Oregon’s African American, Asian American, Latino/a, and Native American communities.

For all our social media hot spots make sure to explore SCARC’s “Social Media Digital Resources” page.

Enjoy!

SCARC in ScholarsArchive@OSU

Historic SCARC resources in ScholarsArchive

Historic SCARC resources in ScholarsArchive

Wondering what’s online? In addition to our fabulous digital resources and fun in Flickr/Flickr Commons, we also have a rich and ever-growing collection of digitized historic materials in ScholarsArchive@OSU.

ScholarsArchive@OSU is the university’s digital service for gathering, indexing, making available and storing the scholarly work of the Oregon State University community. It also includes materials from outside the institution in support of the university’s land, sun, sea and space grant missions and other research interests.

Friday Feature: Ten Little Lessons on Vitamins by Eugene Christian

Ten Little Lessons on Vitamins, by Eugene Christian

Ten Little Lessons on Vitamins, by Eugene Christian

This charming set of booklets was recently added to our History of Science collections to complement a collection emphasis on the history of vitamins and micronutrients, and their use in nutrition and alternative approaches to health and diet.

After Casimir Funk’s first work on vitamins in 1911, there was a notable emphasis on vitamins and their impact in American popular press and advertising. Americans were thrilled by the power, hope, and promise of vitamins, and looked to vitamin consumption as a quick fix to a multitude of health problems. Published in 1922, Ten Little Lessons on Vitamins was part of this new wave of interest in nutrition and diet.

In the introductory lesson, author Eugene Christian tells his story recovering health by eating only uncooked, natural foods. After recommending his approach to diet to numerous friends and acquaintances, Christian published Uncooked Foods and how to Use Them, a Treatise on How to Get the Highest Form of Animal Energy from Food, with Recipes for Preparation, Healthful Combinations, and Menus in 1901, and his career as nutritional activist was launched.

Through the Little Lessons, Christian wished to bring the “lessons of the new nutrition” out of the scientific literature and into clear language for laypersons, for use in their daily diet and “applications in the household.” He sought to convince a populace he claims was increasingly busy and reliant on unwholesome foods of the importance of “Vitamin Science,” and the consumption of “whole foods to which nothing has been added, and from which nothing has been taken away.” In the Little Lessons, Christian strongly advocated for a “Pure Food Movement” to restore nutritive value to American daily diets.

A self-proclaimed “prophet” of advances in nutrition, Christian headed many groups between 1915-1930 (including the Health-Culture Society, the Corrective Eating Society, and the Christian Dietetic Society), and published prolifically to spread his message of good health through better eating.  Ten Little Lessons on  Vitamins, and the numerous other works documenting the history of vitamins, natural foods, and orthomolecular medicine in our collections are of interest to scholars and students of the history of public health, popular culture, nutritional history, and alternative health.

 

 

Friday Feature: new Braceros in Oregon exhibit installation!

Christy in the case

The sun shone most days as we put up our new exhibit to to highlight an important piece of Oregon’s Latino History in honor of Latino/a Heritage Month. And, of course, we took pictures and released a new Flickr set called “The day we put up The Braceros Collection exhibit.” Catchy, eh?

You can read more about the display on the OMA blog and see the text panels in the Flickr set “Braceros In Oregon Exhibit, 2012 .”

Stop by the 5th floor of the Valley Library until October 26 to check it out!

 

 

A New Online Home for SCARC

It is with great pleasure that we announce the official launch of our new department website!  Please find it at http://scarc.library.oregonstate.edu and be sure to update your bookmarks away from the old University Archives and Special Collections sites, which will no longer be maintained.

Access to Collections

A project some ten months in the making, the new SCARC website is chock full of new features.  Archival materials naturally lie at the heart of what we do and this new site presents at least some mention of all 1,033 (and growing) collections currently under the stewardship of our merged department.  And while full description is not yet available for all of that material, we have created at least collection-level EAD records for more than 900 of them.

An example of the alphabetical sort available for all of our collections.

In addition, all of the SCARC collections are accessible in multiple ways.  There’s the big list of everything as well as the alphabetical view, with easy access to abstracts and other basic information about a given collection. In addition, our materials are also sortable by theme (university history, natural resources, multicultural archives, history of science and local history) and by the genre(s) of materials held within a specific collection (photographs, sound recordings and oral histories, videos and books).

Digital Resources

Over the years, SCARC has placed great emphasis on developing a robust set of online exhibits and digital libraries, and with the new department website, this huge batch of content is now more accessible than ever.  As with one view of our finding aids, SCARC’s digital resources are presented according to collection development theme.  Within this context, users will find a neatly organized treasure trove of materials available 24/7.  Be it the mammoth Best of OSU Archives digital library or our groundbreaking Flickr Commons presence, our massive Linus Pauling Online portal or the rapidly growing Oregon Multicultural Archives digitization program, the Digital Resources component of our work is now on full display. (we have a bunch of online videos too!)

A glimpse of our new University History Digital Resources portal.

And So Much More…

From our homepage you’ll quickly gain a sense of what we do and what’s new – be it our most recent accessions or latest outreach activities, as reported from various points across our social media hub. You’ll also find quick links to more information on some of our specialty work – the Records Management program perhaps or maybe our Rare Books. Nuts and bolts information is easy to find too, from forms to fees to people who are here to help.  Need assistance getting started with your research? We’ve got tutorials and learning curricula for that.  Just need to ask a question?  Fill out our online form and we’ll get back to you soon.

The SCARC website represents a big step forward for us a merged unit.  Over the coming weeks and months, we will be working to refine its effectiveness and add more and more content.  As the process plays out, please don’t hesitate to let us know what you think.  We’ll look forward to hearing from you!

E.E. Wilson, aka “the bicycle guy.” He shows up a lot on our new website.

New Flickr Commons set! “People (and cows) doing stuff in fields (and orchards)”

O’Neil with plants, circa 1965

It’s that magical time of the year when we can get lost in blueberry picking, get our hand stained from blackberries, and endlessly water our baby winter greens. Enjoy this delightful little set “People (and cows) doing stuff in fields (and orchards),” which celebrates people growing stuff and picking stuff!

And while you are over in the Flickr-verse, check out the entire “People Doing Stuff” collection!

The day we moved the yearbooks, catalogs, and finding aid notebooks!

As part of the consolidation of the SCARC reference desks, we’ve moved the Beaver yearbooks, catalogs, and finding aid notebooks off the 3rd floor shelves and into our workroom stacks. Fear not!

There is still a set of yearbooks available in the 5th floor reading room from 8:00 to 5:00, Monday through Friday. If you are looking to browse after hours, you can still find one in the circulating collection at LD4348 .A4.

Also, the catalogs and several issues of early yearbooks available online in ScholarsArchive in case you are outside of our browsing area:

And, yes it can get even better, the sound recordings from the 1956 yearbook are also available online in the Best of the Archives digital collection.

Friday Feature: the day we drilled a hole in the floor

Anticipating a flood of new and excited researchers this fall, all clamoring to see our new merged public service point on the 5th floor, we decided we needed to do some remodeling. Namely, we needed to turn the 2 big tables in our reading room into 4 smaller tables. However, since the big tables were fixed to the beautiful bamboo floor and plugged into inconvenient sockets we had to do some drilling.

Okay, so truth be told we didn’t actually drill the hole, but the nice folks at Facilities Services came by on Wednesday to cut the floor and drill through the concrete slab that separates floor 4 from floor 5! And, another truth to be told, they drilled four holes!

In any case, soon we’ll move the big tables out, smaller tables in, and will be set to receive all sorts of new researchers — and accommodate those who don’t want to have to share a table.

Want to see more? Take a peek at our Flickr set.