Theuniversity of OKLAHOMA LIBRARIES Special Collections
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The UNIVERSITY of OKLAHOMA LIBRARIES Special Collections SOONER HORIZON SPRING 2016 VOLUME 4, NUMBER 1 SOONER The University of Oklahoma HORIZON Libraries Special Collections SPRING 2016 • VOL. 4, NO. 1 The Bizzell Bible Collection The Harry W. Bass Business History Collection CONTENTS The History of Science Collections The John and Mary Nichols Rare Books and Special 2 Letter from the Dean Collections 3 Discovering, Creating, Collaborating: The Western History Collections A Model for Academic Excellence The Daniel and Ruth Boorstin Collection 7 Chinese Literature Translation Archive Chinese Literature Translation Archive and Collection 9 Galileo’s World Travel Log: Fall 2015 On the Cover: TOP Decorative screen designed by Joe Taylor on display in 10 Galileo’s World Spring Exhibits the Barbara Brite Paul Grand Foyer of the Bizzell Memorial Library. BOTTOM “The Barbara Brite Paul Grand Foyer. Letter from the Dean s we embark on a new year at OU As our libraries continue to grow our facilities Libraries, we reemphasize the role of the to meet the rapidly escalating demand for libraries as active participants in the collaborative and technologically enabled Acreation of knowledge. Peering inside our doors, spaces, we remain equally focused on the library is an essential component in strengthening the diversity of, and access to, our understanding how to look at knowledge special collections. A recent gift by Wai-lim Yip transmission today. As the hub of campus, to our Chinese Literature Translation Archive intellectually and geographically, we are at the adds new opportunities for multicultural center of both where cultural meaning resides in exploration and international collaboration our repositories, and where an open door enables through the digitization and open access the scaffolding for new learning modalities. It is of previously unexplored manuscripts and with this perspective of facilitating active artifacts relevant to the processes of language engagement, collaboration and the creative exploration of translation and the creative, contextual nuances that enable new ideas that we narrate the initiatives within this deeper meaning and facilitate rich academic exploration. publication. These new endeavors are examples, along with the Professors Keith Gaddie and David Wrobel have successfully Galileo’s World exhibition, of enabling creative synergy demonstrated the synergistic combination of library through our special collections while also introducing our collections, new staff capabilities and use of renovated multidimensional resources to entirely new audiences. It facilities in a unique and creative fashion. By combining is our vision to actively enable the amazing ideas of our university sponsorship of a Presidential Dream Course, OU faculty and students, together with our highly skilled with the holdings of the Western History Collections team, to create new knowledge that inspires and advances. and the advanced technology of the libraries’ Digital Scholarship Lab, they created an academic experience that Sincerely, extends well beyond the traditional classroom. Aside from the incomparable impact of the course on its students, the creation of the knowledge generated from this unique experience is something now captured and preserved Rick Luce for exploration and extension in future classes. This Dean, University Libraries course is a model for how creative ideas can be achieved Professor and Peggy V. Helmerich Chair collaboratively to advance academic excellence across Associate Vice President for Research, Norman Campus departments and across the campus in a way unique to the University of Oklahoma. 2 • THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA LIBRARIES TOP LEFT Students gather in front of a WPA built warehouse in Guthrie, OK. BOTTOM LEFT Students doing research in the Western History Collections. RIGHT Construction of the Memorial Union Tower, January 3, 1936. Roy E. Heffner Collection, no. V2981 Discovering, Creating, Collaborating: A Model for Academic Excellence t began as a conversation; we talked about doing a book while a concurrent companion course with 45 students was together, a revisiting of Oklahoma, a Guide to the Sooner offered through the OSHER Lifelong Learning Institute. At State (University of Oklahoma Press, 1941). But we quickly our Monday lectures, we saw a wonderful mix of students, Irealized the enterprise was a massive one. An accomplished ranging in age from about 19 to 90 and a fantastic example team of writers, including the revered historian Angie Debo, of the benefits of an intergenerational learning environment. had collaboratively created the Oklahoma guide, one of the finest of all the state guides, financed by the New Deal’s In addition to bringing in distinguished guest speakers such Works Progress Administration (WPA). as David Levy, David Kennedy, Charles Bullock and Susan Shillinglaw, we also ran a 1930s film series for students If not a book, then what about a course, we wondered. and the OU community, featuring classic movies from the A course that would turn students into creators of new era, along with the newsreels and animated shorts that knowledge about the past and history’s continuing role accompanied them when originally shown in an attempt in illuminating the present. And a course focused on a to recreate the movie-going experience of the ‘30s. Students single decade—the 1930s—during which the nation was also traveled to central Oklahoma, up to OSU, and on to transformed, politically, economically and culturally, in Guthrie and Edmond to view the lasting legacy of the New profound and enduring ways that continue to shape the Deal in the built environment of the region. landscape of the American present. The course’s most important creative enterprise was the That course—generously funded by the Office of the digital reconstruction of the built environment of the New President as part of OU’s Presidential Dream Course series, Deal at OU, in Norman, Oklahoma City, and other central and brought to life through the collaboration of the Office Oklahoma communities; it features some of the tours along of the Provost, the OU Libraries, and the College of Arts various Oklahoma state highways that appeared in the and Sciences—Making Modern America: Discovering the Great original state guide and of some landmarks of greatness that Depression and New Deal, welcomed 50 undergraduates, have shaped the cultural legacy of the thirties, including THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA LIBRARIES • 3 ABOVE Cleveland County Court House, c. 1906. This was later demolished by WPA workers. Norman, OK Collection, no. 8 We had a vision for a course. building, website construction, field research, and digital mapping, not to mention the positive, up-beat outlook that That vision has become a reality, convinced the students that all things are possible. Tara Carlisle, who directs the OU Libraries’ Digital Scholarship Lab, and a seemingly successful one, provided direction in oral history techniques. Jeff Widener, OU Libraries’ GIS specialist, conducted workshops in GIS only because of the incredible mapping. Laurie Scrivener, the History Librarian, and Jackie support that the OU Libraries Reese, the Western History Collections Librarian, directed archival research workshops, with the assistance of Professor has provided. Emeritus and OU’s official historian, David Levy. Carl Albert Center archivists Nathan Gerth and Rachel Henson created a guide to all the CAC’s New Deal materials and instructed the an exhibit on John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath that was students on how to navigate those collections. displayed in the OU Memorial Union in March 1940. A core instructional team of three, with a supporting team Through a series of workshops on archival research— of seven, helped us take an idea for a course and turn it drawing on OU’s superb Western History Collections, into a model for the full integration of library faculty, staff and the Carl Albert Center for Congressional Research— and resources into the curriculum. All of which seems students learned mapping, field research, oral history, particularly fitting when we consider that William Bennett and website building. Our students have acquired the Bizzell, for whom the OU library is named, wrote the requisite skills to reconstruct the landscapes of the past, foreword to the Oklahoma guide in May 1941 (just a few and they’ve done so with impressive energy, enthusiasm, weeks prior to his retirement as OU president), the book that and insightfulness. provided the original spark for our collaborative enterprise. The students’ achievements to date have been outstanding, but David Wrobel and Keith Gaddie that is the case primarily because their efforts have been built Presidential Dream Course instructors on a remarkable set of human foundations, and the resources of the OU Libraries. We had a vision for a course. That vision has become a reality, and a seemingly successful one, only because of the incredible support that the OU Libraries has provided. View student projects at Sarah Clayton, OU Libraries digital scholarship fellow, was our co-instructor for the course. Sarah coordinated all of the newdeal.oucreate.com group projects and provided the core instruction in exhibit 4 • THE UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA LIBRARIES ABOVE LEFT Letter from Josh Lee regarding PWA funding for the Business Administration and Science Buildings, January 1936. University Archives Record Group 03 William Bennett Bizzell, Box 98, Folder 21 ABOVE RIGHT Students researching in the Helmerich