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Within the Chilson collection, there is a great wealth of information on the Battle of Little Bighorn. Within these books, there are a delightful little bunch of narratives regarding the animals of Little Bighorn, most of them focusing on Keogh’s horse Comanche. One book, Marching with Custer by Elwood L. Nye, outlines the hardships the […]

Women’s History The following collections in the Archives and Special Collections are by or about women: American Association of University Women Anderberg, Ina Anderson, Rebecca Collection on Whiteclay, Nebraska Beede Family Breeden, Jane Rooker Broughall, V.V.H. [textiles] Cooper-Foote, Dorothy (Wright) Cramer, Petrea Diaries Dillion, Charles H. and Frances J. Scrapbook Dimmick, Lauretta Edelen, Mary B. […]

The Faculty Woman’s Club collection has been processed and is available for research. The Faculty Woman’s Club was a group at USD that was formed for female faculty members and wives of professors. On a program cover letter from September 21, 1954, program chairwoman Edith M. Eyres states that the Faculty Woman’s Club’s “purpose is […]

What if everyone in South Dakota read the same book?” This is the premise behind One Book South Dakota. Dammed Indians Revisited by Michael L. Lawson is the 2012 One Book South Dakota selection. Discussions on this book will be held on campus March 18 and April 15, 2013. Dammed Indians Revisited and five of […]

Although Edith Wharton may be best known for her novels analyzing New York’s upper crust, the author lived in France from 1907 until her death in 1937. There, she witnessed the ravages of World War I, especially the hardships endured by refugees. She helped by establishing The Children of Flanders Relief Committee and The American […]

While wandering through the labyrinth of books in the Archives and Special Collections, I came across a title that caught my eye. Taking it off the shelf, the tale of Ellen McGowan Biddle was unveiled in her memoir Reminiscences of a Soldier’s Wife. The story mainly focuses on experiences that occurred after the Civil War […]

In the Archives and Special Collections are watercolor reproductions of three University of South Dakota buildings: Slagle Auditorium (now called Aalfs Auditorium), the Carnegie Library (now houses the National Music Museum) and the Coyote Student Center (demolished in 2007, current location of the Muenster University Center). These images were created by Gray’s Watercolors. The Archives and Special Collections copies […]

Once again, Dakota Days has come. Though the festivities have begun early in the week, the parade is still an exciting highlight of Game Day. A screaming sea of red and white converges upon the Dome to cheer the Coyotes to victory. One lucky girl is crowned Miss Dakota. In the evening, merry USD students […]

While the Chilson Collection focuses on Midwestern history and culture, it also has many other interesting gems. One in particular that caught my eye was Water Birds of North America by Baird, Brewer, and Ridgway, a two-volume set containing hundreds of illustrations of heads and portraits of birds. In the set that can be found […]

Recently the Archives and Special Collections initiated a project to convert the 16mm movie films in the Educational Media Film Collection to digital formats. We hope to digitally copy 5-10 films per year. These movie films were originally part of the Educational Media Center on the USD campus. Some of Ed Media’s 16mm films were […]

Here is a sample of the books about Denmark and the Danish culture in the Chilson Collection and the Mahoney Music Collection. Crichton, Andrew. Scandinavia, ancient and modern: being a history of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway: comprehending a description of these countries, an account of the mythology, government, laws, manners, and institutions of the early […]

In addition to books, magazines, pamphlets, and ephemera, the Mahoney Music Collection also contains unpublished material such as the John Gould’s Violin Instrument Appraisals – 1945-1984. This collection is 2 linear feet of violin appraisal and identification forms. The Gould material is a “wealth of day-to-day material covering years in the life of an important […]

Within the Mahoney Music Collection, is a wonderful collection of illustrated Lyon and Healy catalogs. The Lyon and Healy Company was started in 1864 in Chicago by George W. Lyon and Patrick J. Healy. They began with a sheet music store but soon expanded into instrument selling and manufacturing. In 1871, “Healy developed a new […]

Atlas photographique de la lune by Loewy and Puiseux, a French atlas of the moon, is the largest book in the Archives and Special Collections. It is 83 cm by 63 cm (33 in. by 25 in.). This is a big book. The images of the moon were photographed through the Observatory of Paris’ telescope […]

Preliminary List of USD Campus Projects 1997-2011 For my first project as a volunteer at the University of South Dakota archives, I compiled a list of building projects that occurred from 1997-2011. This list will be added to for use in the Buildings, Other Structures, and Utilities collection at the archives. The main resource for […]

The Artistic Diversity of the Mahoney Music Collection […]

Lately I have been assigned to the exciting task of carefully vacuuming books and wiping the shelves clean in the Chilson collection. It is a task that would be boring if there weren’t so many interesting books on every shelf. I’ve been working my way through beautifully illustrated Native American children’s books, histories of Wounded […]

Well, all of the University Herbarium specimens collected by W.H. Over have been photographed and put back into their proper folders/cabinets. Altogether, we photographed 1,154 specimens! Now we are working on metadata and digital specifications in order to upload the photos, batch by batch, onto the Digital Library of South Dakota. We’ll start the upload […]

The earliest atlas of Dakota Territory in the Chilson Collection is Andreas’ Historical Atlas of Dakota published in 1884. Andreas’ atlas has county maps showing physical and cultural features, though the majority of the atlas is general thematic histories, county histories, biographies, and business descriptions. During the late 19th century, many state and county land ownership […]