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Today while working with the Oscar Howe Papers, I found the following short statement by Oscar Howe about Vincent Price, “…for forteen (sic) years, Vincent was commissioner of the Indian Arts and Crafts Board of the Department of the Interior. Just last year, he requested that he be replaced by a Native American, an Indian. […]

I felt that I could start this blog post with some cheer before I say my farewells. Since winter break is coming up and the holiday season is nigh, I thought I would dig through the Archives and Special Collections for some Christmas-related items. The object that caught my eye was Ellen S. Mills’ diaries, of the […]

Collections held by the Archives and Special Collections: Arthur Amiotte Oscar Howe Robert Penn Charles Trimble Cato Valandra Rosebud Yellow Robe Image of Charles Trimble from the Digital Library of South Dakota.

I recently found this interesting article “The University and the War Call”, by Robert W. Jones, Dept. of Journalism, USD Bulletin Series XVIII, No. 3, April 1918 in a collection called USD Publications. The article tells us that hanging in the chapel was a flag with 200 stars, one for “every man now in […]

Herbert S. Schell Annual Lecture in History is Tuesday, November 3rd, 2015, in Farber Hall at 7:00 pm. The presentation is “Crescent City Girls: the Jim Crow Justice System and Black Girlhood in New Orleans” by LaKisha Simmons. She is an assistant professor of global gender studies at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. The lecture […]

Did your grandparents or great-grandparents attend the University of South Dakota? The Archives and Special Collections has the following sources to help you find out. Sources listing graduates and those who attended but did not graduate: University Catalogs, 1883-1884 school year to the current school year. Early catalogs often list enrollees. Coyote Yearbooks, 1903 through 1986. Student, […]

The Student Activities Council, Program Council poster collection is now open to researchers. It consists mainly of posters advertising events at the University of South Dakota sponsored by the Program Council. The events include concerts, movies, lectures, speakers, Dakota Days, the opening of the Muenster University Center (MUC), Martin Luther King Jr. Day, and Wacipi. […]

Archiving is not about history looking backward, but about storing and securing for the future. Archiving – all the activities from creation and management to the use of records and archives – has always been directed towards transmitting human activity and experience through time and, secondly, through space. It has the quality of the archive […]

This collection of letters between Gordon Aadland and Al Neuharth is now open for research. Aadland and Neuharth met at the University of South Dakota, where they both worked on the student newspaper the Volante. Aadland graduated in 1949 and Neuharth in 1950. After college, both worked on SoDak Sports, a statewide weekly newspaper on […]

The Mahoney Music Collection in the Archives and Special Collections contains wonderful books related to violin construction, which include but are not restricted to books about varnishes and woods. Below is just a sample. Hammerl, Josef, Reiner Hammerl and Jess Nierenberg. Violin varnishes: interesting information on resins and basic materials for violin varnish and […]

The Archives and Special Collections has the Map of the Missouri River: from its mouth to Three Forks, Montana, published by the Missouri River Commission in 1892-1895 on eighty-four sheets plus nine index sheets. With this mapping expedition, “modern mapping had arrived, and the river was now mapped with precision from its mouth to Three […]

Did you know there was a plan to build the United Nations headquarters in Rapid City, South Dakota? See the Paul E. Bellamy Papers in the Archives and Special Collections for more information.

Well, this is it. It’s my last day. Today I get to turn in my key, submit my last time sheet, and clean up all my files on the computer, and I have to take home my sweater, wrist warmers, blanket, and refillable Einstein Bros. coffee mug . . . plus say goodbye to probably the […]

The Archives and Special Collections has recently digitized Pierre Baillot’s Methode de violon from the Mahoney Music Collection. This French treatise was published in 1793 with contributions from Pierre Rode and Rodolphe Kreutzer. It can be viewed, with a number of other treatises from the collection, on the Digital Library of South Dakota.

Summer projects in the archives can be tedious, monotonous, and seemingly endless. Luckily (this time) I got something fun . . . The expansive Mahoney Music Collection is slowly being cataloged by the University library, and much of what is yet uncataloged lives in file cabinets and is simply called “Mahoney pamphlets” — though most […]

Have you seen the concrete USD letters? They can be found by going to lower Vermillion and turning east on Burbank Road. The letters are in the vicinity of the golf course. This project “ … was a successful effort by the Vermillion Association of Women’s Clubs (Civic Council) to construct large white USD letters on the hillside […]

The following articles are from June 14, 1883, and July 19, 1883 issues of the Dakota Huronite newspaper. Typescript copies of some of the issues of this paper are in the Chilson Collection. Does anyone know how long this steamboat operated?

Maganga By A.M. (Alfons Michael) Dauer Trephination, the act or process of making a hole in the skull by drilling and/or removing a piece of the bone, is believed by many to be an early form of brain surgery. It is found in Neolithic Europe, pre-Columbian America and in other places in the world during […]

In 1665 “the English Royal Society published the first popular science book, Micrographia, (with the subtitle Or Some Physiological Descriptions of Minute Bodies Made by Magnifying Glasses with Observations and Inquiries Thereupon). It was written by Robert Hooke, then a 30-year-old hunchbacked, cantankerous, neurotic hypochondriac who was also a brilliant natural scientist, polymath and an […]

Today is the 100th anniversary of Joe Foss’s birth. The following summary is from the guide to his papers at the Archives and Special Collections: Collection size 21 linear ft. “Joseph J. Foss remains an important figure in South Dakota history. He was born on a farm outside of Sioux Falls, South Dakota on April […]