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Yesterday, March 13, kicked off Ag Week (March 13-19, 2011), and tomorrow (Tuesday, March 15) National Agriculture Day will be celebrated.  National Ag Day, and Ag Week, celebrates American agriculture and increases public awareness of agriculture and the role that agricultural producers play in producing and delivering food to the American public.  The day and week is celebrated both at the local and national level.  Agriculture and rural life are two of our main collecting areas here in the Special Collections Department, and we are lucky to hold the records of National Agriculture Day.  The collection documents the first ten years of the celebration when it was run and sponsored by the National Agri-Marketing Association (NAMA).

How did Ag Day begin?  The collection contains materials which document the formation of Ag Day, including efforts to make it a national holiday.  Miller Publishing Company, based in Minneapolis and at that time a major publisher of agriculture related materials, spearheaded the formation of Ag Day.  In fact, the the company celebrated the first Ag Day by declaring it a holiday for all Miller employees.  During its second year, Iowa’s own then governor Robert D. Ray declared Mary 25, 1974 as Iowa Agriculture Day with the theme Farm to Food.  For more on Ag Day’s history, you can read the historical note to the collection’s finding aid, visit Ag Day’s website, or come to the Special Collections Department and see what is in the collection!

 

An early publicity photograph from a 1974 Ag Day activity at Clyde Rumpza farm in Watertown, Minnesota.  Mayor Hofstede is shown shoveling feed (photograph from National Agriculture Day Records, box 9, folder 11).

The collection includes records documenting the formation of Ag Day during its very early years, including handwritten notes by David Bennett (organizer and first Chairperson).  The notes include who he contacted (including legislators), presentation notes, and ideas about looking into having NAMA (then NAAMA) in charge of the day.  The collection also includes promotional items and advertisements for Ag Day and agriculture in general.  In addition to documenting the activities of Ag Day during its first ten years, the collection might also be an interesting way to study the different ways agriculture was marketed and promoted during that time period.  In addition to the materials listed above, the records include correspondence, memoranda, meeting minutes, resolutions, news releases, news clippings, promotional materials (annual logos, brochures, advertisements), newsletters, lesson plans and education kits, fact sheets, national and chapter reports on Ag Day activities, and photographs.

A selection of 1975 Ag Day publicity materials, some of which can be found within the collection (photograph from box 9, folder 15).

To find out more about Ag Day’s first ten years…take a look at our finding aid describing the contents of the collection, and come visit us here in the Special Collections Department.  If you would like to find out how Ag Day is being celebrated this year, check out their website or blog.  In fact, last Monday’s blog post was written by an Iowa State student!

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March is Women’s History Month, and today (March 8th) marks the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day (1911-2011).  As the International Women’s Day press release states, “International Women’s Day is a global celebration of the economic, political, and social achievements of women past, present, and future.”

The Special Collections Department here at Iowa State University holds numerous collections documenting the history of women here at Iowa State, throughout Iowa, the United States and sometimes even the world.  A listing of selected collections related to women can be found in our subject guide found online.

Ada Hayden taking a photograph.

In the last few years, we have put a number of items related to women’s history from our collections online.  One of these is a scrapbook from the Ada Hayden Papers which contains beautiful black and white photographs, including brief captions, of prairie scenes and flora in Iowa.  In addition to being an Iowa State graduate, Ada Hayden was also an Instructor and Assistant Professor (1910-1950) of botany for many years here at Iowa State, and later Curator of the Herbarium (1947-1950).  In addition to studying Iowa’s prairies and flora, she devoted herself to prairie preservation.  Iowa State’s Herbarium was named after Ada Hayden, and contains many specimens collected by her.  For more on the Ada Hayden Herbarium, please visit the herbarium’s website.  You may also recognize her name from Ada Hayden Heritage Park on the north side of Ames.  The finding aid for Hayden’s papers can be found here.

The collection of quilt historian and Ames alumna Mary Barton is also available online through Digital Collections.  The Fashion Plates Collection (1776-2003) contains plates of general fashion dating back to the 18th century and continuing through the 20th century.

Mary Welch’s cookbook and several suffrage cookbooks can be found through the Cookbooks link on the Digital Collection’s homepage.  Mary Welch was the wife of Iowa State’s first president, Adonijah Welch and was the organizer and head of the Department of Domestic Economy at Iowa State from 1875 to 1883.  In addition to this cookbook, the Special Collections Department also holds Mary Welch’s papers.  The finding aid to her papers can be found online here.  Her collection contains interesting writings and lectures from an influential Iowa State woman from the early part of Iowa State’s history.

The online suffrage cookbooks (the originals are housed here in the Special Collections Department) in the library’s Digital Collections are also are also fun to look through.  The “Woman Suffrage Cook Book, containing thoroughly tested and reliable recipes for cooking, directions for the care of the sick, and practical suggestions, contributed especially for this work”  was edited and published by Mrs. Hattie A. Burr in 1886.  In addition to the normal sections of a title page still present today, I was surprised to find on the title page Hattie’s street address in Boston (or at least that is what I am assuming the address refers to)!

Catt's graduation image

The final online suffrage cookbook in our Digital Collections, “The Suffrage Cookbook, ” was compiled by Mrs. L.O. Kleber and published in 1915.  In addition to the information and recipes this particular book contains, it also has additional value (sometimes referred to as “intrinsic value“) in that it was owned by our own suffragist Carrie Chapman Catt (Iowa State graduate and president of the National American Woman Suffrage Association).  The book was once owned by Carrie Chapman Catt, and according to the note at the front of the book by her niece to Dr. Hilton [Helen LeBaron Hilton] “Aunt Carrie checked some of the recipes she liked and sometimes wrote figures on the side to show cost.  Her own favorite desserts were cranberry souffle and strawberry shortcake-biscuit style.”  An example of one of these checked recipes (Inexpensive Spice Cake!) can be found on page 124.  Pie for a Suffragist’s Doubting Husband (page 147) is also an interesting read.

Last year we celebrated the 90th anniversary of the 19th amendment, giving women the right to vote and for which Carrie Chapman Catt had worked towards for many years.  Ninety years ago this year, the 1921 Bomb (Iowa State’s yearbook) was dedicated to Carrie Chapman Catt:

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1997-1999 Team PrISUM and solar car:  Phoenix

2011 is the third year of President Geoffroy’s Live Green! initiative, and last week was the third annual Symposium on Sustainability here on the ISU campus. Iowa State also has a wide variety of sustainability related research projects, departments and organizations and the University Archives holds the records of a variety of these.

Recently, the Iowa State University solar car team, Team PrISUm, donated their records to the University Archives. You may have seen examples of the solar cars the team has constructed throughout the years displayed at various university events. Now you can visit Special Collections to do research and find out more about the development of these cars and past activities and projects carried out by Team PrISUm!

Team PrISUm constructing a solar car.

Team PrISUm is a student-run organization that started in 1989. The team designs, builds, and races solar powered electric vehicles in the American Solar Challenge (previously known as Sunrayce). Teams have two years between races to design, construct, and test their cars. The team is composed of students from a variety of backgrounds including engineering, design, and business. Team PrISUm also focuses on outreach projects and education to raise awareness about solar energy and efficient transportation and displays the cars at events on campus and throughout the state.

Team PrISUm at the 1997 Sunrayce event with the solar car ExCYtor

The records contain information documenting the activities of Team PrISUm, including news clippings, proposals, design notes, statistics, fundraising information, brochures, solar car and race information, and videotapes. There also hundreds of photographs in the collection documenting the various incarnations of the ISU solar car, solar car construction and racing, outreach projects, and team members. The team’s newsletter, “The Sundial”, consists of valuable information regarding the development of each car. The collection also includes documents relating to Sunrayce and the American Solar Challenge such as correspondence, proposals, race regulations, and route books.

The finding aid for the Team PrISUm Records is available at: http://www.lib.iastate.edu/arch/rgrp/22-5-0-30.html

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As I listened to the news stories this past weekend leading up to the Super Bowl game of the Packers versus the Steelers, I realized that our own Cyclones and other collections we have here in the Special Collections Department had a few things in common with the history of this year’s Super Bowl team names.

The history of how the Packers and Steelers received their names has been recounted in numerous articles.  The Packers got theirs from a Wisconsin meat packing company which helped supply their uniforms, and the Steelers from the steel industry around the Pittsburgh area.  Both names are rooted in history and place, just as the Cyclones’ name.

How did our Cyclones get their name? Iowa State’s athletic teams have been known as the Cyclones since 1895.  On September 28 of that year the Iowa State football team surprised Northwestern University’s team, and themselves, by scoring an amazing 36 points.  Northwestern scored 0 points.  The Chicago Tribune described the game the next day:

“Struck by a Cyclone…Northwestern might as well have tried to play football with an Iowa cyclone as with the Iowa team it met yesterday.  At the end of fifty minute’s play the big husky farmers from Iowa’s Agricultural College had rolled up 36 points, while 15 yard line was the nearest Northwestern got to Iowa’s goal.”

Although tornadoes are not necessarily a money making industry here in Iowa, Iowa is nevertheless well known for producing these often terrifying weather phenomena.

More on the history of the naming of the Cyclones can be found here on our online exhibit about the history of Cy.  News clippings about that game with Northwestern, along with many others on the Cyclone football teams through the years, can be found in our football news clippings file (RS 24/6/0/0).  The University Archives also holds other materials documenting ISU’s football history, including game programs and media guides.  If you would like to read a little more about the history of football here at Iowa State, please read a previous post on an exhibit here in Special Collections on Iowa State’s football history (if you would still like to view this exhibit you need to hurry – a new one will soon be taking its place!).

The original Cyclone football team from 1895.

So you would like to do some research related to the names of the Packers and Steelers?  Although we obviously do not collect records related to these teams, we do have Iowa papers and records of people and companies related to the industries these teams were named after.  In addition to the papers of an Iowa State football player who played for one season with the Green Bay Packers (William Reichardt Papers, MS-8 – however – his papers do not contain much if any documentation related to his football career), we have the records of an Iowa meat packing company, the Rath Packing Company (MS-562).  The Steelers?  This might be a bit of a stretch, but we have the Sherwood DeForest Papers (RS 9/7/53).  DeForest worked for the Agricultural Marketing Department (1954-1977) of US Steel (USX) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and held the positions of Marketing Representative and Manager Marketing – Agricultural Equipment.

Hopefully this post has given you an idea of the variety of collections we hold here in the Special Collections Department of Parks Library, in addition to a little bit of athletic history!

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Yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s inauguration, and last week the availability of the largest online digital collection of presidential papers (that of John F. Kennedy) was announced.  However, as the search page for the digitized collection makes clear, the majority of the library’s collections remains undigitized and are available in their original, physical form only.  As at the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum, libraries and archives all over the world are struggling to find the time and money to make even a small portion of their collections available online.  Despite these obstacles, we here at Iowa State have been in the process of digitizing our collections over the past few years, and there are a number of new collections online which this blog hopes to highlight in the coming months.

For instance, a new blog post from our Preservation Department’s blog describes the lantern slides from the Warren Manning Papers (prominent landscape architect), which are now available in our Digital Collections.  Please take note that this is only a part of his collection, and the entire collection is available here in the Special Collections Department.  If you would like to find out more, the collection’s finding aid/description can be found here.

Philip Homer Elwood

We have a variety of digitized portions of our collections in Digital Collections, in addition to photographs on Flickr, documents and publications on Scribd, audio on iTunes U, and films on our YouTube channel.  We recently uploaded a number of films made by Iowa State landscape professor Philip Elwood (some of you may recognize the name from the former Elwood Drive, now University Boulevard).  In 1923, Elwood was hired as a Professor of Landscape Architecture at Iowa State College (now University) and helped to organize the new Department of Landscape Architecture. He was made head of the department in 1929 and served in that capacity until 1950.

During his time at Iowa State, Elwood conducted several summer travel tours for students to Asia and Europe, and throughout North America.  These films document these travels, and I highly recommend you visit our YouTube channel to see them all since this would have to be quite a lengthy post if I were to highlight them all!  You can limit the selections to only the Elwood films by searching for “Elwood” in the searchbox.  However, please take note:  if you are looking for exciting music and sounds with color images, please be aware that these are silent and in black and white.  Even so, they are an interesting window into the early part of the 20th century both here and abroad, showing a different way of life (and landscape architecture!).

One of these films include a trip from Japan to Hong Kong.  Professors Elwood and Popham took 4 students (Bethane Carpenter, John Hall, Max Bird, and Norman Morris) on a tour of Japan, China, the Philippine Islands, and Hawaii in 1929. This videodisc covers highlights of the Korea, China and Hong Kong portions of that trip and includes footage of a train ride between Kamakura and Kyoto showing rice farms, the sacred island of Miyajima (Itsuku-Shima), a willow pattern tea house, temples, the harbor of the Whang-poo River in Shanghai, scenes of Hong Kong, the upper deck of C.P. SS Empress of Russia, and views of Hong Kong from the docks at Kowloon.

There are also a number of films of Elwood’s travels throughout North America, including Tennessee (this film is in 2 parts).

Elwood took students on a tour of the southern and eastern United States. In Tennessee they view a Confederate statue, homes in a small town, and boys playing football in a yard.  From there they traveled on to view a new power plant with its lake, dam, and new community for its workers, dam construction, rural communities where girls are doing laundry outdoors in tubs, and a woman is standing over a tub on a fire. They also see a waterwheel working at a mill, logging, and mining operations. Then the group travels through the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.

Part 1:

Part 2:

As mentioned above, please visit our YouTube channel to view more of these films, as well as many others.  Also remember to keep in mind that if you are not finding what you need online, it is not necessarily because it does not exist but just might not be digitized!  Search our website or the library’s catalog, or ask us, to find out what might be available.

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A new year has begun!  Our departmental blog was started last year (the first post was February 17, to be exact).  Although not strictly a year in existence, I thought it would be fun to start off this new year off with some highlights from last year – including some not announced on this blog.

Posts with the most visits were:

1.  Images of Past ISU and Ames Floods

Hopefully this year we will see nothing even close to last year’s flood here in Ames!  However, I took advantage of being the only one to make it to the office that day by putting together a quick post on past floods.  As you can see, many visited this one!

1918 Flood: the Dinkey and floodwaters again

2. New Collection: Agricultural Machinery Product Literature

This is a wonderful collection of agricultural literature, and although I enjoyed writing most if not all blog posts – I think I had the most fun with this one!  We hope to have even more posts, although perhaps much shorter, on new incoming collections in the future.

 

Buckeye Mower and Reaper catalog, 1874

3.  Friley Hall images now on Flickr

One of our wonderful students helped describe and put these images up on Flickr, and her work has paid off!  We hope at some point to add more dorm images to Flickr.

 

A student in his Friley Hall dorm room working on homeworrk in 1964.

Other highlights from last year:

The Library’s new Digital Collections site (using CONTENTdm) was launched.  Many of the original collections on this site are housed here in our Special Collections Department.

During October’s Archives Month, I created a blog version of a tour of our department.  We are hoping to create a video version of the tour to put up on our website.

An image of our collections in storage seen on the "tour."

One of the many excellent donations this year was that given by Professor Emeritus Robert Harvey of ninety-two rare books to our Department.  Back in October we had an after hours open house which highlighted books from this donation and allowed visitors to speak with Professor Harvey and members of our staff, including Preservation.  Many of these books were related to his field of expertise, landscape architecture.  For more information on this donation, please see our Preservation Department’s post.

Several of the books on display at the Open House.

Although not announced yet on this blog, we received the exciting news later last year that the Roy J. Carver Charitable Trust is funding $137,000 to support the design and construction of a Special Collections and Preservation classroom on the fourth floor of Parks Library.  Courses, seminars and workshops will be held in the classroom space.  The Trust is a philanthropic foundation in Iowa with assets of more than $250 million and annual grant distributions of over $11 million.  We have a number of classes which visit both our department and Preservation each semester, and we are looking forward to having a much larger and accessible space for presentations, tours, seminars, workshops and class projects with our collections.

Happy New Year to all!  We are looking forward to 2011, and hope you are as well.  Thanks for your readership and support!

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The end of the year, and the holidays that come at this time of year, are definitely upon us.  And winter and the snow that comes with it are here as well.  In honor of the first day of winter (December 21), pictured above is one of my favorite Iowa State winter campus photographs – a horse drawn sleigh in front of Catt Hall (formerly Agricultural Hall and then Botany Hall) and the old greenhouses.

As you may have noticed, we have taken a bit of a break here on the Departmental blog to catch up on things.  However, it seemed fitting to highlight one of our collections during this holiday season.  There are a number to choose from.  Winterfest was celebrated here on campus earlier this December, and hopefully there will be a blog post on this in future years.  Earl Stout, featured in an earlier blog post, probably has some Iowa related sayings and proverbs in his collection.  In fact, many collections here at Iowa State probably have at least one reference to the end of the year and the holidays that come at this time.

Since it is now so close to Christmas, I thought I would highlight one of our University Archives collections of an Iowa State Professor of Textiles and Clothing, Donna Danielson.  Every year, beginning in 1961, Professor Danielson created her own Christmas cards.  In fact, her tradition was inspired by several Iowa State professors she had studied under.   Danielson received her B.S. (1957) and M.S. (1961) from Iowa State University in applied art.  In 1964, Danielson joined the Iowa State University faculty as Assistant Professor of Textiles and Clothing.  She was promoted to Associate Professor (1971) and Professor (1976), and retired from Iowa State in 1991.

Danielson in front of the bookshelf showcasing the Christmas cards she created.

Danielson describes her experiences of creating Christmas cards in a talk, “Variation on a Poem by Phyllis McGinley: Lady Selecting Her Christmas Card Theme,” which is included in the collection of her papers.  The majority of the small collection, however, contains the Christmas cards she created for each year from 1961 to 2001.  The collection includes her first Christmas card from 1961, which, as she describes in her talk, were created individually “using pen and brush-applied white ink on a textured blue surface…the form, that is the lettering itself, was a reflection of my personal and professional interest in lettering and calligraphy.”  As I looked through her Christmas cards, I found myself glancing at her lettering and calligraphy just as much as the illustrations.  She even has a wonderfully clear handwriting style in her everyday handwriting, found on the forms in the biographical files in her collection.

The inside of her first Christmas card from 1961, with the simple message “Christmas Greetings.”

Her cards all have an illustration paired with a saying or verse…however, soon after her first year she no longer created each card individually, but had them printed instead!  We even have one of the printing blocks (shown below), used for her 1963 Christmas cards, in the artifact collection.

As she explained in her talk, most of the verses and sayings she used on her Christmas cards were not written by her.  However, when creating her 1980 Christmas card with her selected theme of Norwegian Christmas cookies and other baked goods, she could not find an appropriate verse, song, poem or saying and so she created her own.

The outside of Danielson’s 1980 Christmas card, with its Norwegian Christmas cookies and other baked goods.  The illustration includes the first line, in Norwegian, of the verse she wrote for the card.

The inside of Danielson’s 1980 Christmas card, containing the verse (in both Norwegian and English) she created to go with the theme.

Other Christmas cards and records related to holiday and winter related festivities can be found here in the Special Collections Department, although this is the only collection we have that is centered around one artist’s Christmas card creations.  Danielson’s papers are preserved in an archival box and archival folders in our storage area.  However, Christmas cards are now being created electronically, such as this year’s card from President Geoffroy.  These electronic cards from President Geoffroy will be in our Web Archive, such as last year’s from 2009.

If you are interested in finding out more about Donna Danielson and her Christmas cards, please take a look at the finding aid of her collection, available online, or come visit us in the Special Collections Department!  Please note, however, that Parks Library, including the Special Collections Department, will be closed for a portion of winter break (from Thursday, December 23, 2010, through Sunday, January 2, 2011).

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Thanksgiving is rapidly approaching – the holiday season is here!  Holiday recipes can be found in a variety of places in Special Collections, including homemaking radio show scripts from the WOI Radio and Television Records (RS 5/6/3).  Homemaking radio shows were popular during the early to middle part of the 20th century, and Iowa State’s own WOI hosted programs for homemakers, including Homemaker’s Half Hour. Homemaker’s Half Hour aired over WOI radio from the late 1920s through the early 1960s.

We have script books from Homemaker’s Half Hour here in our University Archives.  These scripts contain recipes which are often chosen based on upcoming holidays or time of year.  Below are Thanksgiving recipes from the first Homemaker’s Half Hour script book in the WOI records – from 1937 (earlier script books can be found in other collections – see below for a few links to these finding aids).  The recipes include crown of pork, apple and raisin stuffing, spiced cranberry stuffing, mock duck, and pumpkin chiffon pie.  You can click on the pages to get a larger image.

The recipe for Spiced Cranberry Stuffing (for Pork Shoulder or Crown) on the second page might be useful those of you who bought an overabundance of fresh cranberries – or if you just like cranberries!:

2 cups ground (uncooked) cranberries

1 cup sugar

2 cups fine dry bread crumbs

2 tsp. baking powder

1/4 tsp. salt

1/4 tsp. cinnamon

1/4 tsp. nutmeg

cold water

Sweeten cranberries and combine with bread crumbs.  Add spices and baking powder, and mix well.  Add enough cold water to moisten and pack lightly into cavity in pork shoulder or crown.  Roast meat as usual.

You will probably notice that there is no turkey in the array of recipes.  Is this a Depression or Dust Bowl era phenomenon?  Was it more practical to raise pigs and sheep?  Whatever the reason for the lack of turkey in the Thanksgiving script above, the recipes look delicious!

The Homemaker’s Half Hour 1937 script book and more can be found in the WOI Radio and Television Records (RS 6/6/3), and the finding aid is available online.  Other Homemaker’s Half Hour materials can also be found in other collections, including the Winifred R. Tilden Papers (RS 10/7/11) and the Barbara Ellen Forker Papers (RS 10/7/13).  Information on the library’s Iowa Cookbook Collection can be found here.

If you are interested in taking a look at some of the homemaking radio show records, please come visit us here in Special Collections.  However, if you would like to make photocopies of any of the materials please ask first.  The script books in the WOI records are not easy to photocopy.

More on homemaking radio shows here at Iowa State and in Iowa can be found in this earlier post.

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International Week, organized by the International Student Council and various other international campus student organizations, began last week and will be coming to a close this Friday with International Cultural Night.  Although perhaps only a coincidence, International Cultural Night is very similar to the International Nights (see below for one of their programs) held by an early international student organization here at Iowa State.  While the ISU campus now hosts dozens of international groups, in its early days as a small college campus there was a single international student group – the Cosmopolitan Club.  And the University Archives holds its records!

Please note:  cosmopolitan here does not refer to the cocktail!  According to the wonderful Oxford English Dictionary, cosmopolitan means “belonging to all parts of the world; not restricted to any one country or its inhabitants.”  And, according to one of the documents in the Cosmopolitan Club’s records, the definition of the Cosmopolitan Club is:

One of the fun promotional materials found in Box 1, Folder 3 of the Cosmopolitan Club (Iowa State University) Records, RS 22/3/2.

The National Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs began as a national organization in 1903.  Soon after, Iowa State College (now University) began organizing its own chapter in 1907, and was officially admitted to the National Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs, as its tenth chapter, in 1908.  The purpose of the club was to encourage friendship, respect and understanding among men and women of all nationalities, and its corresponding motto (the national motto for all cosmopolitan clubs) was “Above all nations, humanity.”  Membership was open to all students, faculty, and staff of Iowa State University, and members were both from the United States and from around the world.

The above image comes from one of the scrapbooks in the collection, and shows the cast for a Cosmopolitan Night Play from November 28, 1928.

The club hosted a variety of events each year, including international food fairs, talent shows, hayrides, barn parties, international films, and the MYCE BAAR (co-sponsored with the YMCA, the MYCE BAAR featured coffeehouse gatherings which often included presentations, shows, music and food of a specific country).  These events were fun ways to acquaint club members and the community to the diverse cultures of the Cosmopolitan Club’s members.  The club also served as a supportive group for international students, and often had orientations for new international students at the beginning of the school year.  The Cosmopolitan Club ceased to exist on campus during the mid-1990s; the last year it is listed in the campus directory is in the 1995/1996 school year.

Although a rather small collection of records, the contents almost span its entire years of existence, 1908-1992 (there are no records from its final years).   The collection documents the club’s activities on campus, in the Ames community, and nationally and include historical narratives, scrapbooks, financial accounts, constitutions, membership lists, brochures, posters, programs, newsletters, and yearly records produced by the club.

Pictured above is the program of an International Night held on March 28, 1931, showing the wonderful variety of international students and programs put on by the organization in 1931.   According to an undated history of the club found in the collection, “International Night,  a prominent activity of the club for many years, served as a means of acquainting other students with the dances, music, clothing, etc. of people in other lands.”  Not very different from the description of this Friday’s International Cultural Night:  “International Night is one of the biggest events organized by International Student Council to celebrate different cultures and traditions through a variety of performances! A night filled with laughter, culture, tradition, dance, music and FUN!!” (the entire schedule can be found on the International Week 2010 events page).

To find out more about the Cosmopolitan Club’s records housed in the University Archives, please take a look at the collection’s finding aid.

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Today, November 12, is #followanarchive day on Twitter!  Yes, that’s right – we are on Twitter!  Follow us!

Following us, or any an archive on Twitter, is a wonderful way to stay up-to-date on the latest news, happenings and archival collections both here or around the world.  Are you already following us on Twitter, or just started today?  This is your chance to tell others about us and any other archives out there you are following!

Here are some ideas, from the #followanarchive blog, on what your twitter post about ISU Archives, or any archives, can contain:

Tell a friend about us.
Tell a friend about a discovery you made here.
Tell a friend how archives inspire you.

The name of the Twitter action is: Follow an archive! The hashtag (#) for the Twitter action is: #followanarchive.

This was put together by archivists in Europe and it’s an international event!  For a list of other archives to follow, go to the #followanarchive blog’s list of twittering archives around the world.