The Blog of Special Collections and University Archives at Iowa State University
As summer hits and many students go away from campus, it’s good to remember the beautiful buildings at Iowa State and what awaits upon return. Few Iowa State images are as iconic as Beardshear Hall.
Take a look back at Beardshear over 100 years ago in 1920!
This post was authored by Cassandra Anderson, Curation Services student writer.
Looking at my calendar, I can’t believe that almost an entire year has passed since I started my position as Curation Services Student Writer. I was just looking through my blog post, “Reflecting on a Semester’s Worth of Writing About Special Collections & University Archives,” and it feels like I wrote it just yesterday! Throughout the year I have discovered more about the history of Iowa State University than I ever thought possible, and I have developed a deep love for Special Collections and University Archives.
The other day, my friends and I went to the University Bookstore to pick up our cap and gowns for the graduation ceremony that is now just a few short weeks away. Soon the class of 2019 will fill the seats at Hilton, like many of the classes before us. Getting ready for graduation has inspired me to do some reflecting on the past graduations at ISU. Check out these photos of the class of 1985 and the class of 1994 graduation ceremonies.
Students at Iowa State University are working towards a goal, and part of their individual goals are to obtain degrees in their majors. Each major is within a certain department, and each department has a unique history here at ISU. The University Archives are full of boxes related to various departments on campus. I am graduating with a degree in English, so sometimes I like to look through the English Department boxes when I have a chance. Check out this photo of members of the English Department in 1923, 50 years before Ross Hall was built in 1973!
As the Curation Services Student Writer, I have been writing blog posts, news updates, and social media posts for Special Collections and University Archives, Preservation, Digital Initiatives, and the Digital Repository. When I am not writing for Special Collections and University Archives, usually I am writing for the Preservation Department. Working with the members of the preservation lab has been so incredibly interesting, and writing about the different treatments they do is so cool! If you haven’t checked out their blog, here is the link: https://parkslibrarypreservation.wordpress.com/.
Working as the Curation Services Student Writer has been an incredible experience. Each department has helped me grow in ways I never could have imagined, and I am so grateful to everyone here at the library who helped to give me this chance. As I finish up my last few weeks as an ISU student, I am going to try and take in as much as possible, because I want the memories and friends that I have made here during my time at ISU to last a lifetime. After graduation I will be moving to Boston to continue my education at Simmons University, where I will study history and library science, so that I can work towards my dream career of becoming an archivist. Thank you Iowa State University, and thank you Special Collections and University Archives, for helping me work towards my goals. The University Library will always be a second home to me, and I hope to be back to visit often. Check out this photo of the library shortly after being built!
This blog post was authored by Curation Services Student Writer Cassandra Anderson.
Can you believe that it is already April? The year has gone by so fast! The month of April brings warmer weather, spring rainstorms, and the end of the semester. For seniors, we are suddenly hit with the realization that we only have a few more weeks of being a Cyclone. Finals are just around the corner, and then it’s time for graduation! While getting ready for graduation myself, I wondered what it was like for seniors graduating from Iowa State over the last 147 years.
The first graduating class from Iowa State College graduated Wednesday, November 13th, 1872. That very first class of Iowa State students had 26 members, including 2 women! The ceremony was held at the West House in Ames, the first hotel in the area. To learn more about the first graduation and to see photos of the class of 1872, check out this earlier blog post by Outreach Archivist Rachel Seale!
Special Collections and University Archives is full of photos from various graduating classes over the years, so if you are interested in finding photos from a specific year, I would definitely recommend checking out boxes 1532-1572 of the university photos collection. While sorting through the boxes, I found these traditional gap and gown photos of Ward M. Jones from Allison, Iowa and Mary E. Barger from Ontario, Iowa. Ward and Mary were both members of the 1897 graduating class.
After finding the photos of Ward and Mary, I thought it might be interesting to see what degrees they earned. I pulled boxes 1-5 of the Graduation Programs collection, RS 07/09/04/01 and started looking for the 1897 commencement program. About halfway through box 1 of the collection, I found the folder I was looking for, titled “1897 Program”. The graduating class of 1897 was larger than that very first graduating class, but with only 58 people, that is still much smaller than my graduating class is going to be! Ward M. Jones graduated with a Bachelors of Civil Engineering, focused in “Comparative Tests in Building Stones” and Mary E. Barger graduated with a Bachelors of Science focused in “French Physiocrats”.
After learning about Mary and Ward, I can’t stop wondering about what other cool pieces of graduation history we might have lying around the archives. If you are interested in finding photos from graduations of the past, I would recommend looking in the Bomb, the University Archives, and the University photograph collection! I found so many cool photos while writing this blog post, I wish that I could include them all. Check out this photo of members of the class of 1914!
As the seniors finish their classes and take in their final moments here at Iowa State University I want to remind everyone to make their final days last. While finishing our classes strong is important, it is also important to take the time to hang out with our friends, and make a few more memories at Iowa State that we can cherish for the rest of our lives. Congratulations Class of 2019, we made it!
This blog post was authored by Curation Services Student Writer Cassandra Anderson.
This August, I started working as the Curation Services Student Writer here at Parks Library. I have always loved looking at old photographs and documents, so this job has been an absolute blast for me to be working on. One of my favorite things about working this job is doing research in the Special Collections & University Archives Reading Room. While it can sometimes be challenging, finding materials is like a treasure hunt, you never know what you might find in the next folder. Recently, I have been doing a lot of research on the buildings that we have here on campus. Some of the buildings have been here since the beginning, like the Farm House, and others are still being added to! Our University Photograph collection has some amazing images of the campus during its early years, which I find fascinating to look at.
While thinking of ideas for a Facebook post, I thought it might be fun to use a picture of the library when it was first built. I knew that there had been an addition to Parks Library making it what we have on campus today, but what I did not know, was that there have been three additions to the library! The original section of the library was built in 1925, and then the three additions followed in 1961, 1969, and 1983. The 1983 addition to the library created the Parks Library that we all know and love today. While looking through the university photographs for pictures of the original library building, I found some pretty cool photos!
In the photo below, you can see the library in the middle of its construction. This photo was taken November 26th, 1923. There are so many cool photos of the library in the University Photographs, I wish I could post all of them but sadly, I cannot. If you want to see more cool photos of Parks Library, check out the University Photographs!
For some unknown reason, I tend to lean towards the older buildings on campus when I am doing my research in the Reading Room. I think that it is just because old buildings are so cool, they have so much potential for fun facts and cool photographs. Whatever the reason may be, one day I decided to look at photos of Old Music Hall. Going into the research, I knew that there was a music hall that stood somewhat close to the current Music Hall, but I had never seen any photos of it or heard any information on it. The building was built in 1870 as a home for professors, and continued to be a home for professors until 1924 when the Home Economics Department took over the building. In 1928, the Music Department moved in, and in 1929 the building was officially known as Music Hall. The Music Department continued to stay in the building until it was torn down in 1978 to build the Music Hall that we see on campus today.
The University Archives are full of crazy cool and weird stuff that you may never know about until you start looking! While it may seem daunting at first, our staff are more than happy to help you get your search started! You never know what you may find once you start looking, you may even have a hard time stopping. So whether you want to learn the history of your favorite building on campus, or you maybe you just want to see what we have on display, stop out and see us! We would love to see you!
The Reading Room is open Monday–Friday from 9 AM – 5 PM.
When Iowa State University was established in 1858 it was as the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm. The name alone sent a clear message that the school’s founders wanted the students who attended Iowa State to have a strong understanding of and practical education in farming. Of course, the students didn’t all want to be farmers, but that’s a different story.
In the early years, the male students were required to spend several hours each day helping out on the school’s farm and in the shops, while the female students were assigned to help with domestic chores in the kitchens and laundry. There was no tuition at Iowa State at the time, so perhaps it seemed like a fair trade. Within 20 years, the practice of requiring students to work on campus became impractical due to the complexities of organizing and supervising a workforce of hundreds of students.
By the early 20th century, the Iowa Agricultural College and Model Farm had become the Iowa State College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts and had grown to become a highly respected agricultural and engineering school. Students in agriculture still gained practical experience working with livestock, understanding how to maximize crop yields, and learning the business principles of farming. However, faculty still felt that the experience of the agriculture students could still be improved.
In 1938, Dr. William Murray, professor of economics, identified that his students had no real experience in actually managing a farm. He set out to change this. Murray convinced the college administration to purchase a farm and to provide a budget for the first year of farm operations. He argued that the cost of operation should not be high—if the students apply what they learned in class then the farm should be profitable.
The college administration agreed to the proposal and purchased a 187-acre farm just south of campus in the fall of 1942. The first formal Agriculture 450 class was offered in January 1943 with Murray as instructor. In March, the farm was turned over to the management of the students with the only limitation being that each expenditure and sale be approved in advance by the instructor. The farm has been in the care of students ever since.
Students in the AgEds 450 course (as it is now called) are responsible for every major decision that happens on the farm. As of 2018, the students farm around 1400 acres of land, some of which is rented or custom farmed. They are responsible for determining which crops to plant, caring for the livestock, purchasing equipment, and marketing the animals and grain that they raise. According to the Ag 450 Farm website this farm remains “…the ONLY completely student managed farm at a land grant university in the United States.”
If you are interested in taking a deeper dive into the history of the Ag 450 Farm, feel free to visit Special Collections and University Archives. The Ag 450 Farm records contain account books, photographs, scrapbooks, clippings, and more documenting the history of the Ag 450 course and the farm itself. Stop in and take a look!
This is the third in a series of posts about the history of the library at Iowa State. Want to catch up? Read the first and second posts!
The library has been through many expansions through the 20th century to meet the demands of a growing student population. Iowa State had a new library in 1925, but as quickly as 1930 the collection was too large for the bookshelf space. In 1940, an off-site storage facility was built to handle some of the overflow that had been stored in the Memorial Union and the Engineering Exhibit Hall.
While the collection already exceeded the size of the library, there were other pressures put on the library space starting in the mid-century. The university experienced a great period of growth after WWII due to the GI Bill and the Cold War, when the government was eager to fund the scientific research done at Iowa State. This period of growth was exacerbated by the incoming Baby Boom students. All of these factors put great pressure on the amount of study space in the library.
To address these issues, the first expansion opened in 1961. The new addition had 5 floors and added 52,000 square feet. One big innovation for this addition was open stacks, allowing students to browse the shelves and pick out books themselves. A glass rotunda was built for the new entrance on the south side of the building complete with staffed circulation desk to make sure materials did not make their way out of the library without being checked out.
Even brand new, the expanded library could only accommodate 75% of the 520,000 volume collection and did not contain the amount of study space recommended for the size of the student population. Tellingly, even as they were building the addition, it was referred to as the “First Addition”, which brings us, inevitably, to the Second Addition.
This addition was started in 1967 and completed in 1969. This expansion more than doubled the space for storing books and for users to work.*
In the 1969/70 school year, the library offered 7 courses. There were 4 undergraduate courses, each designed for students in different areas of study: home economics, sciences and humanities, engineering, and agriculture. Additionally, there were 3 courses, each aimed at different groups of graduate students.
Be sure to follow the blog to see the library further expand and get a name!
*Post written with the help of “A Short History of the Iowa State University Library 1858-2007” by Kevin D. Hill.
James Hilton was the president of Iowa State from 1953-1965. He is also the only ISU president who was also ISU alum. I have used his papers in several primary source instruction classes and workshops. During Hilton’s tenure as president, the university grew immensely. As a result, his papers contain interesting materials that I like to include in in my instruction sessions. His collection, spanning from 1938-1982, contains:
biographical information, addresses and speeches, Board of Regents’ materials, correspondence, minutes, and printed materials. The records document the programmatic relationship of Iowa State with the other Regents’ Universities, student activities such as military participation, and agricultural research and other projects undertaken by the various Colleges within the University. Also included is information regarding Iowa State’s participation in national academic organizations, such as the Association of Land-Grant Colleges (James H. Hilton Papers, RS 2/10).
Below is a postcard written to James Hilton after the students rioted after Homecoming in 1953.
The documents below are in a folder titled “Civil Defense” and include information on surviving a nuclear attack. There are other materials in the Hilton Papers that document how the Cold War affected Iowa State University.
If you are interested in conducting research, drop by and see us. We’re in room 403 Parks and open Monday-Friday from 9-5.
This is the second in a series of posts about the history of the library at Iowa State.
When we left off in 1914, the library was in Beardshear Hall, and the collection was bursting at the seams. As early as 1911, money was allocated by the legislature to build a library building. However, the process was slow-going, especially when it was discovered that in order to build a building of adequate size, much more funding would be needed.
Finally in 1923, construction on the new library building was started, and the first cornerstone was laid on October 11. Construction was complete in 1925, though not all books were moved until early 1926. One of the major benefits of the new library was that the materials were consolidated into one space instead of being spread out between Central (Beardshear), Agriculture Hall, Chemistry Building, Engineering Hall, and the Veterinary Building.
The building had space to store 200,000 books. At the time of opening, the library had “about 160,000 carefully selected volumes” (Catalogue, 1927-1928).
The library hours during regular sessions were:
Monday-Friday 7:50 am-6pm and 7-9:30pm
Saturday: 7:50am-2 and 1-6pm
Sunday: 2-5pm (no procrastinating until Sunday night!)
In 1925/6, the library offered 4 courses; classes in library usage specifically for agriculture, home economics, and industrial science students, and a course in bibliographic research. A 5th course in library methods had been added by the next year. The dean of the library was Charles Harvey Brown. Brown served as dean of the library from 1922-1946. In 1927, the library had 10 staff members and 12 assistants listed in the catalogue (compared to today’s 143 staff between librarians, support staff, and students).
The Alumnus had a rather interesting take on the new library building in their November 1924 issue:
Sounds like the library staff had their hands full!
From 1925 to the present the library has been in the same location but has grown. Join us for the next installments to see how the library has expanded in the last (nearly) century!
This is a first in a series of posts about the history of the library at Iowa State.
To kick off this series of posts about the history of the library at Iowa State, we’re going to take a look way back to nearly the founding of Iowa State University. Starting in 1868, the library was housed in Old Main. As Old Main held the entire college, it had a lot of functions including classrooms, museums, a chapel, dining halls, and housing for both faculty and students (to learn more about Old Main, visit our online exhibit). In 1880, the library had 6,000 volumes and was open from 2 pm to 9 pm. The library was run by students in the earliest days until 1876 when some professors were tasked with the double duty of scholarship and running the library. “From this time [1884] the position was added to that of women teachers in mathematics, modern language, or elocution” (pg 80, The History of Iowa State College by Earle Dudley Ross).
In 1891, the library was moved to Morrill Hall, which was designed to house the library and a museum. It was in that same year that library instruction at ISU began. Freshmen took a 1 credit course during the second term titled “Library Work.” In 1893, the library had 10,200 volumes and was open from 8-9:30, closing over the noon and dinner hours.
Morrill Hall was the home of the library for just 23 years, and in 1914, the library was moved to Beardshear Hall, which was deemed to be more fireproof than Morrill. The library quickly outgrew all of the buildings it occupied, so plans were laid for the library to have a permanent home of its own that could hold all of the volumes in one place.
In the next post (coming in May), we’ll look at the beginning of the library in its current location (though much smaller than the library of today!)
There are many places in the archives to learn about the history of the library and other buildings on campus. A good place to start is the online exhibit From Prairie Sod to Campus Cornerstones: Building Our Campus History or the reference books found in the reading room. You can also check out some quick facts from the library’s website. To dive a little deeper, look through our finding aids and records in RS 4/8/4.
Today’s blog post was authored by Margaret Weber. Margaret is PhD candidate for the Department of History at Iowa State University.
Why go to the archives? This is a question that has been asked of me a lot, especially by my students. I have often witnessed many Iowa State students pass the Special Collections & University Archives (SCUA) on the fourth floor of the library. A few brave souls venture in. Some spare a quick glance at the glass exhibit case and closed door. Most though pass by without another thought. What exactly is behind that closed door? And perhaps more importantly, what can the Iowa State archives offer to its students, faculty, staff, and the public at large? The answer…a place to satisfy your curiosity. For behind that closed door is a gateway to documents and artifacts that magnify our past and help us understand the present.
In a world of digitization and computer screens, what value is there in a stuffy place where old documents exist? Can’t the answer just be found online? Despite many advancements in digital collections in the past several years, those online documents pale in comparison to the type and variation offered at Special Collections across the country, including Iowa State’s. Lots of one of a kind videos, books, pictures, scrapbooks, artifacts, and other archival material can only be found here. There is something special about holding a document in your hands, seeing the text itself. It is a chance to truly get a feel for the quantities of our collective past. To use those documents to create a narrative of your own.
Nowhere else on campus offers such an in-depth look into the university’s history and life. Want to find out what university life was like in the roaring 1920s? Go to the archives to look at dance cards and homecoming pictures. Was there student unrest in the 1960s? Find the answer in the archives by reading through the Daily’s opinion section. Want to locate your grandfather’s or grandmother’s master thesis? It’s here in the archives, along with all of the other theses and dissertations. From the Manhattan Project to Morrill Act, there is lots explore on the fourth floor.
But it is not just Iowa State history documented here. The library’s archives also hold vast collections on technological and scientific advancements, developments in agriculture, political history, and much more. In my own personal research on agriculture in the postwar period, the various non-ISU manuscript collections have proven to be invaluable. Very few other archives cover such a wide range of rural life and the development of America’s food system. All archives, including Iowa State’s, play an important role in preserving pieces of our history.
And finally, while the university is a place to ask questions, its archives represents an opportunity to formulate your own answers. One of the greatest things about academic life is the expansion of the mind, the ability to ask questions, and find possible solutions. Curiosity is the fuel on the fire of learning. And the archives, like its classrooms, computer labs, and scientific laboratories, are just another resource for students to use to satisfy that inquisitiveness.
Cardinal Tales 