Tap Into History: The Birth of the Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives Tiah Edmunson-Morton, Oregon State University Oregon is a special place, known for stunning natural beauty, a good amount of rain, and a predilection for pushing the boundaries of cultural norms. Its cities are surrounded by rural landscapes of agricultural farmland and forests; much of our history and heritage is intertwined with the politics of environmental protection and land use, the economics and sustainability of farming, and social considerations related to labor and employment. Oregonians are generally interested in knowing who grows their food, and who brews their beer. Brewing and imbibing aren't new to Oregon's economy and culture, and it’s fair to say that our state has a complicated relationship to its vices. Our history includes a healthy pre- Prohibition brewing scene, early local and statewide prohibition tied to state suffrage and temperance movements, counterculture hippies with an interest in mind-altering substances, and home brewing that certainly predates its legalization in 1978.1 When Chuck Coury opened Oregon’s first microbrewery in 1980 he stepped into this legacy and paved the way for an artisanal commercial craft brewing industry. It wasn’t long before the state took its place at the epicenter of a renaissance, one with brewers that were both curious and dedicated to their craft. The modern community of consumers, farmers, and brewers continues to connect with their predecessors. Today brewers recreate historic styles and pride themselves in using traditional ingredients, many sourced from the hop farms that have been a staple on the landscape since the first commercial hop yard was established in Buena Vista, Oregon in 1867.2 As the state’s land grant school, research at Oregon State University (OSU) on these communities and industries has its own historical roots. Scientists at Oregon Agricultural College planted the first experimental hops on campus grounds in 1895, and 76 years later Dr. Alfred Haunold made an indelible mark on the industry with the release of Cascade and other superstar hop varieties. University scholarship and research grows with the work of OSU’s Aroma Hops Breeding program at the Plant Breeding and Genetics Program and the U.S. Department of Agriculture-Agricultural Research Service programs. Food science and studies on fermentation have long been a part of research at OSU, but since the establishment of a Fermentation Science Program in 1995 OSU has been a leader in training brewers. While scholars and laypeople alike are interested in digging into the topic, there was no single repository dedicated to gathering the history of hops farmers, scientists, and craft brewing communities. A project to collect and provide access to these primary materials would be invaluable for informed scholarship and accuracy of the historical record. Inspired by an involved community, a growing body of scientific research, and a need for documentation and aggregation, in 2013 the OSU Libraries and Press’ Special Collections and Archives Research Center (SCARC) established the Oregon Hops and Brewing Archives (OHBA). OHBA’s mission is to preserve the story of hop production and the craft brewing movement in Oregon through a range of diverse activities. OHBA is the first archive in the United States dedicated to saving and telling these intertwined stories, capturing all facets of the industries and uniting social and cultural aspects with the scientific research work at OSU. We have the opportunity to document a vibrant living culture and the rich historic past of industries that have made a significant impact on the culture, science, agriculture, law, and economy of our state. Beer is also part of our regional identity and its study allows exploration of topics like prohibition and government regulation, ecology and environmentalism, gender and representation, marketing, and business practices. While in retrospect starting OHBA seems like a natural for SCARC, the original spark was a personal one. I am a native Oregonian who came of age in the first decade of the craft beer explosion, and I still remember my dad’s excitement when we went to our first brewpub, illegal in Oregon until 1985, because he could have a meal and a beer brewed onsite. The Edmunson family also had a hop farm in Goshen through the 1920s, until it was replaced by sour cherries when downy mildew wiped out many of the hop crops throughout the Valley. In addition to my family heritage, the birth of OHBA also includes a wedding, a trip, and a fortuitous meeting. In June 2013 two friends of mine were married at the Rogue Farms Hopyard and since one was an archivist the daylong fete included a history lesson on Oregon hops. I was among many guests who were captivated by the legacy of the crop in our region and how craft beer was affecting agricultural practices. A week later I attended the Archives Leadership Institute in Iowa, where two important things happened. The first was meeting Rachael Woody (Oregon Wine History Archive) and Doug Boyd (Kentucky Bourbon Tales) and hearing them talk about the crossover between academic research and popular history collections. The second was a tour of Seed Savers, where we learned about their work to conserve and promote America’s food crop heritage. They collect and share heirloom seeds, but to do so they have to grow them—like the stories that live in archives live because they are used, the plants persevere because they are grown. I returned from Iowa with the kernel of an idea to create an archive that would celebrate science, business, and culture. The idea grew after I heard historian Peter Kopp lecture on “The Origins of Hoptopia.” After his talk on place, culture, and the international nature of the hop trade, I introduced myself and we had the first of many conversations. Fortunately for me, he was turning his dissertation on hops in the Willamette Valley into a book; he’d used our university history collections for that dissertation and was an excellent person to talk to about what he’d found there, but his work also spoke to a larger need to preserve heritage and culture by saving the story of science and agriculture. My vision for what would eventually become OHBA included more than just collecting items and putting them in boxes. I imagined a destination for researchers and a portal for historical documentation housed in OSU collections, but also in outside repositories and in the communities. I wanted to work with a variety of donors to collect traditional and nontraditional materials produced by the community, digitize collections we don't own, collect secondary literature to support scholarship in the form of rare books and historic industry journals, and conduct oral histories. I’m fascinated by the principles and practical applications of community archiving and post-custodialism,3 and I wanted to find ways to allow for community involvement and curation, and explore how current technologies offer alternatives to physical possession of items in order to provide access to informational content. I had identified a new collecting area with outreach potential and scholarly interest, and in which I had a strong personal connection. I was bursting with ideas about how to make this into a collaborative, community-oriented resource, but it took more than just ideas and my enthusiasm to make OBHA a reality. While it has been only slightly more than a year since we debuted the effort, we have completed the essential steps of planning and launching the new archive, as well as conducting essential outreach to our donors and collaborators. In many ways we are still finding our way and defining OHBA, but there have been some lessons and successes that I hope can help others interested in starting similar community documentation efforts. Planning Our organizational culture was ideal for nurturing an idea like mine. I am fortunate to work at a library that prides itself in being innovative and we are encouraged to experiment. From the earliest conceptual stage, both my boss and others in library administration completely supported establishing the new archive, and they helped guide me through the critical elements of planning and getting the new effort off the ground. SCARC has several signature collecting areas that are managed by curators who serve as the main contact for donors, media, researchers, and people generally interested in the subject. I wanted this to be another established collecting area, highlighting existing collections with materials pertaining to hops and brewing research at OSU, but also adding new materials and serving as a portal to collections in other repositories. In line with our Oregon Multicultural Archives, the hops and brewing archives would be comprised of many different individual collections and materials in existing SCARC collections. When I approached Larry Landis, my supervisor and the director of SCARC, in July 2013 I knew OHBA could follow the same model as our other collecting areas. With Larry’s support after pitching the initial idea, I needed to prepare a project proposal that detailed mission and scope, as well as staffing and plans for outreach. Though I wrote the majority of the narrative, I worked closely with Larry to discuss and sketch out project details. SCARC staff and our administration reviewed the proposal iteratively; most suggestions were editorial, but others were more substantive, such as including ideas for student engagement and not forming an official advisory board.4 I revised it five times before settling on the final document that my library administration approved in August 2013. In developing the proposal, defining the scope was the most difficult piece. I’d identified 45 promising physical collections so I knew that we had ample material in our holdings on which we could build; however, during the planning phase I did outside research to make sure OHBA’s scope complemented rather than competed with other collecting initiatives.