Monthly Archives: April 2013

A view from above — tree planting and a song!

There are many reasons the 5th floor reading room is a lovely place to be… We see sun breaks in the clouds, we watch travelers traversing the quad, and we have fabulous collections to share. And last Friday we saw two great “views from above” with a tree planting and impromptu concert from the OSU Meistersingers.

One hundred years ago the class of 1913 planted the majestic elm trees we now enjoy in the Library Quad, and we celebrated Arbor Day & Earth Week on April 26th at noon with another tree gifting. While our newest addition is still small, we have big hopes for it!

And before the noon-hour was through the OSU Meistersingers showed up! Quite a crowd of lunch time wanderers stopped to listen and several students pulled out their phones to record to the serenade.

Choral concert in the quad

Such a treat!

Friday Feature: The Ernst J. Dornfeld Papers, A Labor of Love

At first blush, the Ernst J. Dornfeld Papers appear to be the output of a career entomologist. The stacks of maps charting butterfly movement, the encapsulated wings, and the thousands of butterfly photographs all point to the work of a rank-and-file lepidopterist.

Encapsulated butterfly wings

But something doesn’t add up. Dornfeld’s Ph.D., minted at the University of Wisconsin, reads “Zoology” and his curriculum vitae is littered with references to cytochemistry and histology. Upon digging into the Dornfeld Papers, one will unearth lecture notes on cytology and histology, images of cellular mitosis, and a thick bundle of reprints with titles like “Structural and functional reconstitution of ultra-centrifuged rat adrenal cells in autoplastic grafts.” Dornfeld, as it turns out, led a double life.

Ernst’s fascination with butterflies developed during childhood and carried into his early scientific career. However, after taking a position at Oregon State University in 1938, he immersed himself in his teaching and cell biology work. He became interested in embryology and cytochemistry, began publishing his work on reproductive cells, and threw himself into his teaching duties. Consequently, his interest in lepidopterology faded into the background.

In the late 1950s, Dornfeld returned to his lapsed hobby with renewed vigor. He crisscrossed Oregon on scouting trips with his son, developed contacts with other lepidopterists, and amassed an astounding collection of specimens from the Pacific Northwest. He also redirected some of his teaching and writing efforts to butterfly work, publishing papers and giving talks on local butterfly biology and ecology. Moonlighting as a lepidopterist afforded Dornfeld the opportunity to work directly with other enthusiasts. His correspondence with colleagues includes discussions of new species, plans for collecting trips, and arrangements for specimen trading, all of it written in the intense tones of obsession.

Following his retirement from OSU in 1976, Dornfeld began developing a comprehensive guide to Oregon lepidoptera. In 1980, he completed Butterflies of Oregon, the definitive work on the subject. He also put in long volunteer hours cataloging the OSU Systematic Entomology Laboratory’s specimen collection—shaping it into a valuable teaching tool. To this end, he even contributed his own collection, the result of hundreds of hours in the field.
The Dornfeld Papers have been placed in the Special Collections & Archives Research Center for all the usual reasons. The collection is a rich resource for entomologists, ecologists, and historians of science. It’s also a part of OSU’s history—something we’re dedicated to preserving. But it takes only a few minutes with this collection to realize it’s more than the sum total of its research value. The Ernst J. Dornfeld Papers are a tribute to a labor of love.

The Ernst J. Dornfeld Papers and other related questions are available for access 8:30AM-5:00PM Monday through Friday at the Special Collection & Archives Research Center. For questions about the Dornfeld Papers or other holdings, please contact us at scarc@oregonstate.edu.

Ken Austin wears a special hat…

Last week University Relations & Marketing borrowed one of our famous black and orange hats for a photo shoot with alumnus Ken Austin (class of 1953), who served as OSU’s original “Benny Beaver” when he was a student in the early 1950s.

Ken Austin with Benny Beaver, photo by SCARC director Larry Landis

Back on the field last week, Austin remembered a great story about sitting on the crossbar of the goal post during a game.  Stanford was driving toward a touchdown and Austin was perched up high to thwart their concentration when they were closing in on the goal line. Game officials told Ken to get down or OSC would be assessed an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty… Truth be told, a beaver in a brown shag carpet head might have thrown me off!

Going to my “go to site” for quick historical quips (George Edmonston’s writings on the OSU Alumni Association page), I found a treasure trove in “Up Close and Personal: Primal Traditions,” a piece that takes a look at four basic traditions every Beaver fan should know. Edmonston writes of Austin that

Growing up in the northern Willamette Valley near St. Paul, Austin had delighted as a boy watching rodeo clowns perform at the town’s annual Fourth of July Rodeo. After failing at an attempt to become Oregon State’s Yell King for the 1952 football season, Austin was approached by the guy who beat him out, Bill Sundstrom, who then asked him if he might want to join the rally squad as a school mascot, that is, dressing up as a beaver for the games. In those days, student mascots were rare in college football in the West, although Cal had Oskie the Bear and Stanford had its “Indian.” Why not a beaver for OSC?

Austin “took the idea and developed it into one of OSU’s most cherished traditions: student volunteers spicing up athletic events as Benny Beaver.” However, Austin isn’t actually the first student parading in a beaver suit… Edmonston reports that “[o]ver the years, it has been often reported that Austin was the first person to dress as a beaver for an Oregon State football game. This honor apparently goes to OSU alumnus Doug Chambers of Salem, who dressed in a homemade beaver suit for a halftime skit during a home game during the 1939 season. Chambers’ character didn’t have a name.”

Read more about Austin’s memories of being Benny on the Alumni Association site.

Hannah Mahoney wins an award

History student, SCARC student worker, and all around fabulous person Hannah Mahoney won one of the Libraries’  Undergraduate Research Awards this year for her paper “A Global Affair: Understanding 1960s Geopolitics Through the World’s Fair.” The ceremony was yesterday, which meant lots of clapping and a few tears of pride…

The award for humanities evaluated papers on these criteria:

  • Creativity, originality, and the extent of the use of library services, collections, and resources, including, but not limited to print, non-print resources, databases, and/or primary sources
  • Exceptional ability to locate, select, evaluate, and synthesize library resources
  • Demonstration of the use of these resources through the creation of an original project
  • Clear and effective writing skills
  • Responsible use of information including appropriate and accurate citations and credits
  • An essay that provides evidence of significant personal growth in methods of research and inquiry

Hannah has had lots of experience researching and working in archives, always showing herself to be curious, engaged, and focused on the stories of the people in archives. Her excitement for public history is infectious and she always looks for ways to engage with people and facilitate their own engagement with historic materials. The rest of this post has excerpts from her speech yesterday, which I think really capture why librarians and archivists keep doing what we do!

I want to give a special thanks to Professor Nichols, who I have been lucky enough to have as a mentor this year. I never thought I would meet the professor who would impact me most in college, during my last year. His guidance helped me craft a research paper that I am extremely proud of and made me more confident in my own abilities as an aspiring public historian.

I would also like to thank my research assistant. You may all be thinking, an undergraduate who has a research assistant?! But don’t worry I am just talking about my Dear Ole’ Dad. While all the other students and Dad’s were participating in Dad’s Weekend activities my Dad and I were upstairs looking through rolls and rolls of microfilm. Thank you so much for spending your last Dad’s Weekend helping me research.

A glance at the title, “A Global Affair: Understanding 1960s Geopolitics Through the World’s Fair”, may lead you to the think that you have to be an expert in history, on the 1960’s or on geopolitics, to understand the paper, but that is not the case. I wrote this paper for the non-experts. I used language that would be appealing to all audiences, found sources that would be easily accessible and included photos to keep it interesting.

I have a professor who says, “you shouldn’t end your research at Wikipedia, but you can start it there,” and that is just what I did. I began by writing down a list of key terms I found on the Wikipedia page and entered them into databases such as Academic Search Premier and JSTOR. That yielded a total of one article, but I was able to take the sources from that article and find more leads. As I already mentioned, I used the microfilm rolls from upstairs to look at the New York Times, giving extra attention to the “Letters to the Editors” because I thought they would give interesting points of view. My “neatest” source traveled to me from Cornell. It was a booklet on international exhibitors at the fair that the fair committee at put together. It was a great primary source.

I am proud to say that I am still researching! There are still a few avenues I haven’t explored, mostly the avenue to the New York Public Library to see the New York World’s Fair Collection. I will be taking donations for my trip after this speech!

Friday Feature: Sir Hugh Plat’s The Jewel House of Art and Nature

The Special Collections and Archives Research Center recently acquired an edition of Sir Hugh Plat’s The Jewel House of Art and Nature, published in London in 1653.

This collection of “diverse new and conceited Experiments” compiles recipes, household hints, and practical directions on an impressive variety of useful topics, including: “how to write a letter secretly,” “how to walk safely upon a high scaffold with danger of falling,” “to dry gun-powder without danger of fire,” “to help a Chimnie that is on fire presently,” “to prevent drunkenesse,” and “to help Venison that is tainted.” Mixed in among these trinkets are short treatises on “the Art of Memory,” “the Art of Molding and Casting,” a philosophical treatise on soil and marl, and even alchemical experiments. Intended to appeal to an audience as diverse as its contents, the book contains advices useful to travelers, farmers, housewives, soldiers, cooks, merchants, apothecaries, builders, distillers, and brewers, or indeed anyone who had “either wit, or will, to apply them.”

Plat frequently credits the source of his knowledge on these topics. Usually personal acquaintances, these range from seamen who shared various pieces of useful knowledge learned overseas, to clerics and barbers, to laborers and tradesmen.

Plat’s eclectic compilation provides a fascinating glimpse of the daily needs, desires, and concerns of people living and working in the mid-seventeenth century. It has an important place in the history of science, as it reflects what Deborah Harkness has called “vernacular science”—developments in engineering, chemistry, nutrition, medicine, botany, agricultural science, and physics as achieved by the common people as they  experimented and progressed within these areas. The Jewel House of Art and Nature joins other examples of this democratic genre in our rare book collections dating from the 16th to the 20th centuries.

Friday Feature: DIY Maraschino Cherries

What do these things have in common?

OSU is known as “the birthplace of the modern maraschino cherry industry” and Ernest H. Wiegand was the man with the plan. Before learning more about Wiegand’s work, let’s take a step back and dispel some myths about this tasty candy treat.

First off, it wasn’t actually invented here… The garnish originated in Europe and demand was fueled by Americans who had developed a taste for them in cocktails.

By the early 1900s, maraschinos were all the rage in the United States, largely bobbing around in cocktails like the Manhattan. A New York Times story from Jan. 2, 1910, captured the nation’s maraschino-cherry mania: “A young woman engaged a room at a fashionable hotel and, after ordering a Manhattan cocktail, immediately sent for another. Soon she was ordering them by the dozen. The management interfered and someone was sent to expostulate with her; also to find out how she had been able to consume so many cocktails. She was found surrounded by the full glasses with the cherry gone.” (The fruit that made Oregon famous, Verzemnieks, 2007)

However, it is not a myth that production of this bright red favorite was actually perfected just down the street from where I sit typing.

Another myth is the link between Wiegand’s work and prohibition. While there is a maraschino liqueur made from the marasca cherry and Americans clearly loved to drink, Wiegand wasn’t driven by the limits of prohibition in his work; instead, he set out to develop a method of manufacturing maraschino cherries using a brine solution rather than alcohol.

When Wiegand began his research, sodium metabisulfite was being used to preserve maraschino cherries. Some accounts indicate that this preservation method was being used long before Prohibition. Some manufacturers used maraschino or imitation liqueurs to flavor the cherries, but newspaper stories from the early part of the century suggest that many manufacturers stopped using alcohol and artificial dyes before Prohibition (Wikipedia, “Maraschino cherry”).

In any case, even for those Americans who were not looking to add the candies to their cocktails, we do know that cherry consumption in the U.S. was way up; but most were manufactured on the East Coast or imported from the other side of the ocean.

Inara Verzemnieks says in a rollicking blog post from 2006 that everything changed “the day a tall, kindly man sporting a pencil-thin mustache arrived at Oregon State University, and that’s when everything changed.”

When he arrived in Corvallis in 1919 he set out to help cherry growers solve a spoilage problem — the Queen Anne variety, which thrive here, spoiled and became mush when preserved. So from 1925 to 1931, Wiegand looked at ways to develop a new preservation process.

His final solution, which included adding calcium salts to the brine that the cherries soaked in, was revolutionary and is still the standard used in maraschino production today (Oregon Encyclopedia, “Maraschino Cherries”).

So… why bring this up today when real cherry blossoms are beginning to pop all over Corvallis? A few weeks ago Collections Archivist Karl McCreary got a fabulous new addition to our SCARC collections — a Maraschino Cherry Kit, replete with instructions and ingredients for making one gallon of Maraschino Cherries! The kit will become part of RG252, the Extension Family & Community Health collection.

  • Want to make your own? The kit contents are Calcium Chloride, Citric Acid, Sodium Meta Bisulfite, Maraschino Flavor, and (of course) Artificial Color. Yes, there are instructions!
  • Want to see some pretty pictures? Check out the Flickr set!

Friday Feature: a records review field trip

This week I took a trip to look at some records, but not the kind I would normally look at…

But the kind I might actually listen to…

A “Record Album” record

The U of O Library had a “Discover Music Sale and Music Services Intro” on April 3-4. Since I live with an audiophile and avid LP collector, we were there bright and early to explore stacks of thousands of de-accessioned vintage 78 rpm records, hundreds of vinyl albums, scores, sheet music, and books.

“Library record sale”

The range of music was incredible, from foreign language sets to adventures in reading records, square dancing to Shakespeare, jazz gems to “background music.”

Although I’m not an avid LP collector, I am avid picture taker. So I spent some time photographing some of my own favorite record album covers, which you’ll find in a delightfully colorful set on Flickr, with gems such as those you see below.

Enjoy!