It’s Dead Week at Iowa State University, and here in the library, we see a lot of this:
Students hard at work in the library reading room, circa 1940. Photograph Collection box 146.
Of course, the building has changed significantly since 1940 — not to mention the hair and clothing styles — but evidently the popularity of the library as a study space persists.
Some people prefer a quieter place to study in the stacks:
A view of the stacks in the then-new library, with a male student working in a study carrel, April, 1925. Photograph Collection, box 146.
And, of course, we also see a lot of this:
A student looking exhausted and resting in the library, 1957. Photograph Collection, box 147.
For more historical photos of Parks Library, check out this earlier blog post, or check out our Flickr page.
If you need a place to study or sleep, remember the library!
As Apparel, Merchandising, and Design majors get ready for The Fashion Show next month, let’s take a look at an earlier ISU fashion moment.
Three women students work in a Textiles and Clothing classroom circa 1940. RS 12/10.
Here are three students in a 1940s Textiles and Clothing classroom working on a dress design. Two students drape and cut fabric on a small mannequin, while a third works at a drawing board.
Textiles and Clothing has a long history at ISU. Sewing classes were first introduced in 1879 as part of the Domestic Economy curriculum. In 1924, the Department of Textiles and Clothing was established. In 2001, the department was combined with the departments of Family and Consumer Science Education and Studies, and Hotel, Restaurant and Institution Management to form the Department of Apparel, Education Studies, and Hospitality Management. The Fashion Show grew out of the annual style show presented by the Textiles and Clothing Club during VEISHEA.
View of the southwest corner of campus in 1888, as seen from the roof of Old Main
For those of you who have spent much time on campus in the last century, you probably wouldn’t recognize the subject of this photo without the caption, above. This is the Iowa State Campus looking from Old Main to the southwest corner of campus. Before it burned down, Old Main was situated where Beardshear Hall now sits. On today’s campus, this view would be like standing on top of Beardshear looking toward Campustown. Instead of a few buildings and lots of farmland, the view today consists of, well, lots of buildings. To see more photos of campus in the early days, check out our Flickr page or the Digital Collections website under “University Photographs”. Want to learn more about Old Main? We have a post all about it. For information about the history of our campus, we have a post about that too. Of course, if you want to see even more photos and learn all about central campus, stop by and see us!
As some may already know, a selection of the photographs housed in the Special Collections Department have been digitized and put on Flickr. Other photographs from our collections can also be found on the library’s Digital Collections site (images on the Digital Collections site will have more information on the images). The images on Flickr and the Digital Collections site are only a few of the more than one million photographs in our university photograph collection, university archives, and manuscript collections.
Above is one of the photos Ashley scanned as a part of her project. Pictured is a student in his Friley Hall dorm room working on homework in 1964.
This past year, senior Ashley Rosener worked on an honors project here in the Special Collections Department. Her project involved research regarding digitization projects and processes here at Parks Library, and included the digitization and description of photographs of Friley Hall in the university photograph collection. Ashley composed a brief history of Friley Hall for the online collection, and then put together the metadata (descriptions/information) of each photograph. As is the case for all of our photographs on Flickr, the metadata includes a title, date and brief description of each photograph. To find the Friley Hall images from our Flickr homepage, go to collections (near the top), and then click on university archives and then buildings.
As a part of her honors project, Ashley put together a poster which she presented last week. The poster, pictured below, summarizes what Ashley did, lessons learned, and recommendations for the library.
Please click on image for a larger version.
When asked about what she learned during her project, Ashley noted that Friley Hall, its first unit built as Hughes Hall in 1927, has a rich and interesting history. “I was also quite shocked by how bare the dorm rooms were 40-50 years ago. Students have so much more stuff now!” A brief history of Friley Hall, published in 1980, can be found in the online version of H. Summerfield Day’s The Iowa State University Campus and Its Buildings. The book can also be found by searching the library’s catalog.
Commencement in 1936 - one of the many additional images in our collections.
As is the case with most of our online photograph collections, the images of Friley Hall on Flickr are only a small portion of the photographs we have of Friley Hall here at the University Archives. In addition, as noted above, we have numerous photographs throughout our collections. As Ashley commented, “The Special Collections Department has A LOT of pictures, many of which are in excellent condition. I think it’s unfortunate that not many people know about them or look at them.” Come visit us if you would like to see more!
Ashley will be graduating at the end of the semester, and attending graduate school for library and information studies in the fall. We have enjoyed working with Ashley, and wish her the best of luck in her future endeavors!
Cardinal Tales 