The OSU Valley Library is sponsoring a Book Collecting Contest!

Sponsored in association with the Himes & Duniway Society, a group of book collecting enthusiasts in Oregon, this contest is meant

• to encourage students in the collection and enjoyment of their own personal libraries,
• to develop an appreciation for the special qualities of printed or illustrated works, and
• to read, research, and preserve these works for pleasure and scholarship.

The collection can focus on any subject, and the contest is open to all full-time students.

Prizes:

Three prizes will be awarded to student winners:

1st prize: $1,000
2nd prize: $500
3rd prize: $250

Prizes are generously funded by the Himes & Duniway Society.

APPLICATIONS ARE DUE Friday, March 14, 2014 by 5:00 PM.

How Do I Enter?
The Application Package should include the following:

• The application form;
• The essay which should be at least two and no more than four pages in 12-point type with lines double-spaced describing how and why the collection was assembled;
• A bibliography of the collection preferably using the MLA Bibliography format with each individual title numbered and annotated. The annotations should reflect the importance of each item to the collection as a whole
• An annotated wish list of up to five other book titles that you would like to add in the future to complete or enhance your existing collection; and
• digital images of items in the collection including at least five with ten or more representative books being preferable.

You can submit your application in one of two ways:

1. Email your application package to Anne Bahde at anne.bahde@oregonstate.edu

2. Drop off your application package to the Special Collections and Archives Research Center, 5^th floor of Valley Library.

What’s a “Collection?”
A collection

• Consists of items that a student has come to own following a particular interest, or passion, which may be academic or not
• May consist of all books or a combination of books and other formats. For instance, a collection on a geographical topic may include a map, a collection on a playwright may include a poster or playbill, or a collection about an historical event may include ephemera.
• Consists of not less than 15 items or more than 30 items of which the majority should be books, but related materials such as photographs, illustrations, maps, ephemera, CDs, music scores, posters etc. may be included.
• Can be on any topic; subjects can be contemporary or historical and may stress bibliographical features such as bindings, printing processes, type, editions, illustrations, etc. Rare books are not expected. Comic books and graphic novels are acceptable; ephemera alone if of historical interest is acceptable; historical–not current–textbooks may be included.

Example Topics:

• Vampires
• Comic books or graphic novels
• Jane Austen
• The Beat Poets

Previous Sample Entries:

  An Interdisciplinary Survey of 20th Century Propaganda – Andrew Fink

  Words of the Waves: A Nautical Collection – Emily Selinger

  How To Be Alone – Mack Sullivan

How Do I Win?
Criteria for selection:

• Clearly state the purpose or unified theme of the collection;
• Explain the extent to which the collection represents the stated purpose;
• Evidence of creativity in building the collection;
• Originality, innovation, and uniqueness;
• Quality of the collector’s essay describing the collection

A team of judges from campus and The Himes & Duniway Society will determine the contest winners.

The Fine Print:

Students are limited to one entry. The student must be a full time student and the sole owner of the collection. The winners may be eligible for entry into The National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest supported by the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA), the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies (FABS) of which The Himes & Duniway Society is a member, the Center for the Book and the Rare Books and Special Collections Division (the Library of Congress) with major support from the Jay I. Kislak Foundation. http://hq.abaa.org/books/antiquarian/abaapages/contest

If you have questions about book collecting or this contest, contact Anne Bahde at anne.bahde@oregonstate.edu or 541-737-2083.

Was that a great game? I have a hunch history lovers know it wasn’t the first time that the Beavers travelled to Hawaii. Read all about it in this post by SCARC student Mike D.

The Oregon State Beavers travelled once again to the Sandwich Islands for a post season gridiron battle. Coach Riley stated earlier this month, “The Sheraton Hawai’i Bowl has a great tradition and we are excited to bring our team, which features several natives of the great State of Hawai’i, to represent the Pac-12 Conference.” The 2013 Sheraton Hawai’i Bowl pitting OSU against Boise State was our fourth bowl appearance in Hawaii, which was actually technically the third bowl game, but more on this later. In the great tradition of Beavers in Paradise, our holiday bowl game history in Hawaii spans ninety years, dating back to 1923!

OSU’s last appearance in Hawaii was the 1999 Oahu Bowl, where we lost to the Rainbow Warriors of the University of Hawaii, 23-17.  But thirty years earlier, Oregon State College defeated UH in the non-NCAA sanctioned 1949 Pineapple Bowl, 47-27. These two bowl games were important points in OSU Football history, but our story begins much earlier.

What prompted this foray into Hawaii Bowl history was SCARC’s new addition to our collection of digitized videos available on OSU MediaSpace. The home movies by the OSC Football team on their trip to the 1939 Pineapple Bowl are a colorful look at a happier time in Beaver football history.

Coach Lon Stiner’s 1939 OSC Beavers finished that year with a stellar 9-1-1 record. The season culminated with an invite to the Pineapple Bowl in Honolulu to face the Hawaii Rainbow Warriors. The 1940 Pineapple Bowl was played on New Year’s Day against the University of Hawaii Rainbow Warriors. OSC handily won the game 39 to 6. This game was the first annual Pineapple Bowl, had we been there a year earlier, the Beavers would have been in the Poi Bowl! The Hawaiian Poi Bowl only lasted from 1936-1939, arguably, one of the better bowl game name changes in history.

On Christmas Day, 1939, the Beavers played the Hawaii All-Stars, a Healani town team, in an exhibition contest. They won easily, 28-0. The Hawaii All-Star teams appear to have been made up of UH Alumni and local athletes.  Traditionally, the All-Stars played the visiting teams prior to the actual bowl games. Due to the travel restrictions of the period, mainly a long boat ride, and the invited teams would spend up to a month in Hawaii during the bowl season. This allowed time for extra game during their stay. OSC left Corvallis on December 11, 1939 by train to San Francisco. They were to board a steamship for the islands, but due to a dock worker strike, they were forced to leave from Los Angeles a day later. The team returned home on January 11^th, 1940 – quite a road trip!

As can be seen in the film footage, the squad had to practice on the ship in transit, mixing work and cruise ship travel. Barometer articles in early January 1940, chronicling the successful trip touted the excellent Hawaiian hospitality. The Beavers toured the sights, tried their hands at surfing and attended special events during their stay in Hawaii. The article reports that the “visitors were shown the Dole pineapple plants, were taken to a sugar refinery and saw museums and aquariums.” The Pineapple Bowl Parade, as seen in the film footage, was one of the highlights of the Beaver’s activities (other than the victorious football games).

Officially, Oregon State has played three actual “Bowl” games in Hawaii, 1940, 1949, and 1999. This is not the whole story however. The first trip to the Hawaiian Islands for the Beavers was ninety years ago in 1923. The University of Hawaii began intercollegiate football in 1920, playing their first game against Nevada on Christmas Day. These games during the early years were not officially “bowl” games; however, they were held during the holidays and were post season specials. The term bowl game first is seen with the 1923 Rose Bowl, played in the newly constructed Pasadena stadium. The name “bowl” to describe the games thus comes from the Rose Bowl stadium.

The 1923 season did not go well for the Oregon Agricultural College Beaver squad. Coach R. B. Rutherford took the 4-3-2 Beavers to Hawaii for OAC’s first game outside of the contiguous United States. This endeavor was undertaken at great expense to the college, so only twenty-five OAC delegates and team members made the trip.  Two coaches, a team manager, and only 14 football players boarded the steamship S.S. Lurline sailing from Seattle on December 11, 1923. The team arrived in Hawaii after an arduous voyage, and battling the island heat, the Beavers went down to defeat in two hard fought gridiron spectaculars against the Hawaii All-stars and the University of Hawaii.

The long voyage did not pay off as the Beavers dropped a game to the Hawaiian All-Stars, playing their first college team, 14-9, on Christmas day 1923 and then another to the University of Hawaii, 7-0. The loss to Hawaii was a huge upset, as Hawaii had only begun playing intercollegiate football three years earlier. The OAC Barometer, in the journalistic style of the era, reported on January 4, 1924 the stories of the games.

The Aggies and All-Stars tangled in a 60 minute encounter that was said to have all the ear-marks of a combined bull fight and Sinn Fein uprising.

Another special distinction for OAC during this trip was the subsequent renaming of the University of Hawaii football team. The legend states that a rainbow appeared in the sky as the Hawaii Fighting Deans upset Oregon State. Local reporters began using the nickname, and it was made official soon after. After that, every time a rainbow arced over the field, the team is said to have won, prompting a name change to the Rainbow Warriors. The Beavers would leave a lasting legacy in the islands that would remain until UH dropped “Rainbow” in 2000.  The move was controversial, Head coach June Jones said the team needed a more macho image.

The losses were devastating for the Beavers, who had to pay to travel to Hawaii and suffered two humiliating defeats. Again, we see in OAC Barometer articles some attempts at justification for these losses to their readers. The January 4^th edition speaks of the trials and tribulations of a sea voyage and the effects of  island weather

Under the devitalizing influence of the tropical heat of Hawaii, the OAC football team, fresh from the moist Oregon country, went down to defeat before the acclimated Honolulu pigskin artists.

According to the Barometer, the seasick Beavers had an eventful trip on the steamship Lurline. Four stormy days of travel on the open seas had a detrimental effect on the team. Coach Rutherford held daily workouts and the decks of the vessel. Only eight of the fourteen Beavers were able to participate, others were “using the rail…studying the habits of the fish.” The Barometer also reports that

They started their workouts by passing the ball around, but after they had lost two of the three pigskin spheroids overboard, the confined themselves to calisthenics and to running signals.

Photographic evidence of the first trip to Hawaii is scarce. The OSU Special Collections and Archive Research Center collections only yield the one photograph of the team on the ship, found in the 1925 Beaver Yearbook. Bound copies of the Barometer provide the only descriptions we have of this epic contest. The games are part of OSU’s football statistics, but these stories are what make history come alive.

On Christmas Eve, 2013 the OSU Beavers returned to the balmy Hawaiian islands for a 21^st century gridiron duel. Now the team travels in the comfort of chartered jet liners, arriving in hours rather than days. Today’s Beavers have the benefit of team doctors, sports medicine, and air-conditioning to battle the island heat. The entire team and its entourage make the trip. In 1923, with only fourteen players available, substitutions were not an option. Imagine being both, an offensive and defensive tackle, on the field for the entire game … still a little woozy from the heat and long trip.

Times were simpler then.

Mike D. made it to Batcheller Hall Thursday just before the mid-Valley snow dump and wrote up this post on his adventure!

On December 5^th the OSU School of Engineering celebrated an important milestone on Thursday, the centennial of one of OSU’s iconic early buildings, Batcheller Hall.

The Mines Building, as it was originally known, was completed for the beginning of the school year, 1913. A century ago, the OAC campus was quite different from today. As seen in this image of the newly constructed Mines Building, the grand structure stood alone, without the lush canopy of trees and landscaping we see today. With the addition of the physics building (now Covell Hall) in 1928 and Dearborn Hall twenty years later in 1948, the footprint of the Mines Building would morph into kind of a “Frankenhall” on Campus Way.

The OAC School of Mines had a rather short, but important place in OSU history.  Mines courses were first taught at Oregon Agricultural College in 1900. In 1913 the state legislature authorized the establishment of the School of Mines at OAC. Money was also authorized for the Oregon Bureau of Mines, which was placed under the School’s dean. The School of Mines consisted of four departments — Mining Engineering, Ceramic Engineering, Chemical Engineering, and Geology. As part of cutbacks throughout higher education in Oregon, the school was closed in 1932. Mining related courses continued to be taught in the Schools of Science and Engineering.

The Oregon State College Catalog from 1941 provided descriptions of the campus buildings for prospective students, so even though the School of Mines had been discontinued ten years earlier, there was still a presence of mining engineering in the old building. The catalog gave a great description of the building and its uses

65 by 81 feet in dimensions … a four-story building, constructed of brick, trimmed with stone, and similar in type to all the newer buildings on the campus. The basement laboratories are devoted to Physics research and to ore dressing under the Department of Mining Engineering. The latter department also has an Assay Laboratory on the first floor. The major portion of the first floor serves the Department of Mechanical Engineering, with the office of the head of that department, a lecture room, and a laboratory for fuels and lubricants. The second floor contains offices and recitation rooms for the joint use of Engineering and Physics, and the fourth floor houses Aeronautical Engineering offices, class rooms, and a drafting room.

The Mines Building has been a campus landmark since it was built, but when KOAC Radio (which is another great OSU history story that we’ve written about before on this blog) placed their transmitter antenna on the roof of Batcheller in 1926, the landmark building became an even more distinctive part of our campus skyline!

In 1965, the Mines Building was officially renamed Batcheller Hall, to honor James H. Batcheller, former dean of the OAC School of Mines.  Dr. Batcheller came to OAC in 1919 as an associate professor.  He was promoted to head of the School of Mines in 1928.  Known as “Gentleman Jim”, he assisted in the development of the college’s Honor System and served as Faculty Advisor for the schools Honor Committee.

The celebration for Batcheller’s 100^th birthday party in the lobby of the old building was attended by students and staff who sang a round of “Happy Birthday” led by OSU Choir members. Megan Gray, Intern for the School of Engineering, contacted SCARC for research assistance in preparing historical posters to highlight the story of the Mines Building. She proved to be a formidable researcher, utilizing stories and images from our collections to bring this century old building to life for today’s students.

With the approaching 150^th Anniversary of the founding of Oregon State, the history of our institution and its famous people will be prominently displayed. Centennials such as the one at Batcheller Hall (1913), as well as Strand Agriculture Hall (1909-1913), Gilkey Hall (1912), and many more over the next few years will be significant events in highlighting Beaver Pride!  Next year, we will celebrate the 100^th Birthday of another iconic building on campus, Home Economics (now Milam Hall), which holds a special place in the hearts of students in the School of History, Philosophy, and Religion students…

Due to staff shortages resulting from today’s inclement weather, access to the Special Collections & Archives Reading Room will be limited today, Friday December 6th.  Access will vary as follows:

• 8:00 AM – 1:00 PM: Access by appointment only. Please phone 541-737-2075 to gain entry.
• 1:00 PM – 3:00 PM: Normal access.
• 3:00 PM: Closed for the weekend.

Our apologies for the inconvenience. Stay warm out there!