July 25, 2002
University Archives celebrates 35 years
When Architecture Professor Emeritus Norm Johnston was writing a book on the building of the Washington State Capitol, he turned to the University Archives to do research. It wasn’t so much factual material he was looking for, although there’s plenty of that to be had.
“You can get a lot of rich detail in the archives,” Johnston said. “It tells you not only what happened, but also something about the individuals involved.”
For example, Johnston found a letter in the archives that described a meeting between then-Governor Roland Hartley (1925–33) and members of the capitol committee. The governor (who was only 5 feet 6) complained that the chairs being purchased for the capitol were too high, the letter-writer reported, and the secretary of state said, “Well, governor, we won’t always have such a small man for governor.” The letter writer went on to add that the comment “can be taken in more ways than one.”
What writer wouldn’t find an afternoon’s digging in the archives worthwhile if he were rewarded with an anecdote like that? Which is why University Archives, celebrating its 35th birthday next week, is such a popular place with researchers. About 4,000 people come through the doors of Manuscripts, Special Collections, University Archives each year.
“We serve a diverse cross section of the University community,” said University Archivist John Paul Deley. “And, we also serve clients online and through telephone and e-mail.”
The University Archives contains four different kinds of materials — the official, public records of the university; faculty and staff papers; publications files; and documentation of student life, including some alumni files. It was founded on Aug. 1, 1967, largely to consolidate what had become an unwieldy collection of files.
“Before the archives was created, you’d find the regents’ records in the regents’ office, the president’s records in the president’s office, and so forth,” said Gary Lundell, a reference specialist who came to the archive five years after it was founded.
Lundell remembers what that kind of system meant. “When Charles Odegaard retired in 1973, someone in the president’s office decided maybe it was time they cleaned out some of the files,” he recalled. “They sent us about 140 boxes of presidential records going back about 10 administrations, clear back before Suzzallo’s.”
These days, such records come to the archives from scores of departments and programs. “Our team works closely with administrators throughout campus now,” Lundell said.
Records such as those from the president’s office are part of the University’s official public records that must by law be preserved and made accessible. Such records are stored by the Office of Records Management Services and transferred to the University Archives later if they have historical value.
But not all records come to the archives as a matter of course. Some individuals, especially faculty, donate their personal papers. Bill Seaburg, a professor at UW Bothell, first came in contact with the archives through the papers of the late anthropology professor Melville Jacobs and his wife Elizabeth.
“My major professor at the University of Hawaii was a friend of Jacobs, and Jacobs asked him to prepare the papers for deposit in the archive,” Seaburg said. “He showed me the material and I was overwhelmed by all that was there.” Seaburg became so interested in the Jacobs’ work that he got to know Elizabeth Jacobs (Melville had died by that time) and interviewed her about her experiences.
Seaburg later was hired by the library as part of an NEH funded project to write a guide to the Jacobs collection. “I had a whole year, in 1981-82, to pore over the papers, and it was fascinating,” he said. “You never knew from day to day what you were going to run into.”
He’s currently working with Elizabeth Jacobs’ field notes in the archives, hoping to publish some of her research with Native Americans in Oregon nearly 70 years after it was first conducted.
As for Johnston, he is so grateful to the archives — which he’s also used for his history of the UW campus, The Fountain and the Mountain, and for a history of the College of Architecture and Urban planning — that he’s been instrumental in getting architects in the region to donate their records. And when he learned that the architect of the state capitol had given his records to the University of Oregon, he arranged to have those pertaining to the building of the Washington capitol transferred to the UW.
The collection now includes about 25,000 cubic feet of materials, Deley says. A lot of it is in the Allen basement and sub-basement, but some is stored in off-site facilities and retrieved as needed. Most is in paper form, but there are also video and audio tapes, photographs, scrapbooks, films and other miscellaneous items.
“The part of the collection we need to build up is the student life section,” Deley said. “It’s more of a challenge to get records from student groups than from faculty and staff groups since students rely more on Web pages and electronic tools to obtain information about the University.”
Which is why Deley — who has 22 years in the archival profession and just became university archivist this summer — plans more outreach for the coming years. He’ll be doing more speaking around campus in an effort to increase understanding of what the archive is and the research opportunities that it provides.
Deley will also be working with colleagues from across campus on the issue of electronic record storage, which is a challenge the archives will be facing more and more as paper records become a thing of the past. The problem, of course, is that there is no standard format for electronic storage, and the technology keeps changing.
But while the archive looks to the future, it will spend a little time next week celebrating the past. The anniversary will be marked at a “casual luncheon” at the Faculty Club to be attended by, among others, State Archivist Jerry Handfield. Rich Berner, the first university archivist, retired in 1984, but he’s spent his retirement using the archives to research his three-volume book, Seattle in the 20th Century, published in 1991.
The University Archives is open for use by all members of the University community, although there are restrictions on some collections. It is located in the basement of Allen Library. Inquiries regarding transferring records to the University Archives can be directed to jpdeley@u.washington.edu.
