Someone recently asked me to create a source that would make it easy for people to know what the archives considers…well…archival! The image linked below leads to a slide show designed to help clarify how YOU can help me save your history for future generations.
This slide lists some of our major collecting points, but if you have questions feel free to ask!
Let me know if you have questions about anything in this overview!
Terry Garbe of Touch of Glass recently created a lampshade that is now available for use — or just admiring up close — in Tate Archives & Special Collections’ Reading Room.
Mr. Garbe and his staff were responsible for the restoration of the Pembroke Windows that accent the library’s 4th floor rotunda. Pieces left over from that restoration still remain, but 
only enough for one complete shade containing many of the windows’ motifs were available.
Stop by, have a seat, enjoy the new shade and the view; and you can also ask about the other treasures hidden in Tate Archives & Special Collections!
While looking into the history of the Alice Millar Center for the Fine Arts last week, I came across a photo taken in 1973 on the day the date stone was placed in what we now call the Joyce Eichhorn Ames School of Art Building. If anyone reading this has details on what might be in it, contact the archives because all we have is a photo!
With all that have been previously reported, we now can confirm a total of eleven campus buildings with time capsules:
Hedding Hall (1870; time capsule removed in 1966)
Science Building (1910)
Memorial Gymnasium (1921)
Buck Memorial Library (1922)
Memorial Center (1946 and 1947 dedications and 1965 addition)
Shaw Hall (1954)
Dolan Hall (1955)
Sheean Library (1967; time capsule removed in 2011)
Mark Evans Observatory (1969)
Joyce Eichhorn Ames School of Art Building (1973)
State Farm Hall (2013)
IWU history texts are now available in the Internet Archive! Through our membership in the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) we were able to digitize the seven published histories on Illinois Wesleyan this semester. CARLI funded the scanning and they are now available online through an agreement with The Internet Archive, a non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library.
The Internet Archive hosts this and any other content we choose to add in the future with a customized homepage available at http://archive.org/details/illinoiswesleyanuniversity, but of course all of the texts are fully searchable and discoverable through any search engine.
Tips and links for researching these and other historical IWU sources are available at http://libguides.iwu.edu/IWUHistory.
In a previous post, a list of buildings containing time capsules was provided. While looking into a request for information about the Buck family today, we came across a copy of the local newspaper, The Pantagraph, dated June 15, 1922 that described the Buck Memorial Library cornerstone laying in detail. A line reading “After the contents of the box contained in the cornerstone were read by the president of the board of trustees, benediction was pronounced by Bishop Hartzell.”
Sadly, the “Laying of the Corner-stone” program held in the archives only mentions that a “Reading of Contents in Box” was planned; no separate listing of the contents is available and no photographs of the dedication are in our files.
But with the recent creation of a time capsule for the nearly complete “New North” classroom building, we now have a total of ten campus buildings with confirmed time capsules:
Hedding Hall (1870)
Science Building (1910)
Memorial Gymnasium (1921)
Buck Memorial Library (1922)
Shaw Hall (1954)
Dolan Hall (1955)
Memorial Center (1946 and 1947 dedications and 1965 addition)
Sheean Library (1967)
Mark Evans Observatory (1969)
“New North” (2013)
A recent donation to IWU’s Special Collections from Emeritus Theatre Professor Jared Brown contains primary sources, including recordings and transcripts of over 150 interviews, he used in the publication of four books:
The Fabulous Lunts: A Biography of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne (1986),
Zero Mostel: A Biography (1989),
Alan J. Pakula: His Films and His Life (2005), and
Moss Hart: A Prince of the Theatre (2006).
A complete collection description is available in the finding aid for the Jared Brown Collection of Biographical Sources.
The Tate Archives & Special Collections homepage has a fresh, new look. Many thanks to my student assistant Melissa for her great ideas about jazzing it up and making it more user friendly!
While outlining my hopes for the changes, I mentioned that not many current students use our collections and asked her to keep their perspectives in mind during the revision.
I’d be thrilled to have anyone’s feedback on these changes. Current students, alumni, administrators, faculty, staff and outside researchers are always welcome…inside our walls and on the Web!
In a previous post, I described the time capsule traditions on IWU’s campus through the years. In the summer of 2011 we removed one capsule from Sheean Library and opened it during Homecoming that fall. Inside was a reel-to-reel tape recording of School of Music student and faculty performances.
We were able to reformat the tape into individual digital files and the mp3s resulting from that project have been added to our streaming server. All 14 recordings are now available via one link that points to the home for these digitized recordings in the IWU Historical Collections interface.
Here’s an update on the time capsule post…the only item in the box that we couldn’t immediately understand/interact with was a tape of original faculty and student works from the School of Music. The tape appeared to be in good condition, but since it had been exposed to temperature fluctuations for a number of years, I decided to have it professionally transferred to digital format.
I just heard back from the vendor that the transfer went well and there was no loss of quality or damage to the tape. Hopefully, within a week or so we’ll have it back and be able to make some segments of it available. As a teaser, check out the program that was included with the tape in the time capsule. Lots of interesting musical works to look forward to…stay tuned!
Summer 2011 brought our biggest accession of the year and fulfills a need that was identified before my arrival on campus. Nearly all photographic negatives, contact sheets and slides dating from the 1960s to 1990s that were formerly stored in the basement of Holmes Hall have been transferred for processing to the archives. Once processing is complete, we estimate the collection will occupy 130 linear feet.
This collection was inadequately protected both because of the physical environment of the basement and at the item level: negatives were in legal-sized envelopes and contact sheets were in shoe boxes. We are spreading the costs over a couple of budget cycles but our goal is to re-house the entire collection and make the index publicly available.
Also included in this photo transfer were some of the newer slides stored within the campus photographer’s office in good-quality sleeves, so material from the mid-1990s only needed a stable physical space.
It should be noted that other photographic material remains in various places in Holmes Hall, but this large transfer is a great start to ensuring that the collection is protected for the future. Additionally, research requests can be handled by archives staff, instead of taking up our photographer’s already well-used time!