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William Henry Over was a natural historian who lived in Vermillion from 1913 to 1956. While in Vermillion, he served first as the Assistant Curator and then full Curator for the University Museum. He studied numerous subjects relating to the natural world, including botany; however, until recently, little was known about Over’s work with plants. […]

From Cleata B. Thorpe’s Education in South Dakota 1861-1961: Teachers will fill lamps, clean chimneys and trim wicks each day. Each teacher will bring a scuttle of coal and a bucket of water for the day’s use. Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs for the individual tastes of children. Men teachers may take […]

Gilbert C. Fite, Ph.D., a noted historian and USD alumnus, passed away on July 13, 2010. Dr. Fite, in 2002, arranged for the donation of his professional papers to the Archives and Special Collections. His son, James Fite, completed the donation in early 2011. The papers of Dr. Fite are a trove of correspondence, research […]

Last Friday, Doris and I were sent out into the world with an expensive camera as a part of a class that Sarah was teaching about using said expensive camera. It was daunting, mostly because I’m really clumsy so I was afraid of dropping and breaking the camera, but also exciting because I had never […]

The Delzell Education Center sits where a small lake once existed? According to the Dedication for the School of Education Building (1963), Due to the type of soil it was necessary to drive 271 wooden pilings to a depth of about 35 feet. These wooden pilings, which are creosoted and approximately the size of large […]

Today we got a lesson in photography. Sarah, the digitization and photographs associate at USD, taught us how to use the Archives’ Pentax digital camera to take high-resolution photographs for our student projects. She introduced us to the camera and helped us figure out everything from changing the lens cover to setting the light manually. We struggled at first but, […]

This article, published in Volume 7 of The Volante (Issue 3, December 1893, pp. 41-42), poetically describes the personal and philosophical significance of photography. The author E. Frank Peterson explains that as “we gaze upon that faded picture we forget our present environments, we live again in the blissful past, and again we pluck the […]

Herbert S. Schell was appointed the first University Archivist in 1968. He was largely responsible for organizing The University of South Dakota’s historical records into the USD Archives. Between 1968 and 1971, his extensive letter-writing campaign added the professional and personal papers of many prominent South Dakotans to the Richardson Collection. Schell joined the USD History Department in 1925. From 1936-1964, he served as the director and dean of the Graduate School.

Are any of your favorite books set in an archive or a rare book library? Do they involve characters doing archival research? Here are a few of my favorite fiction books that feature archives or rare books.

The Well-Tempered String Quartet was published in Germany in 1936 and in the United States in 1938. The book’s title may remind the thoughtful reader of the title of Johann Sebastian Bach’s eighteenth-century collection of preludes and fugues, The Well-Tempered Clavier. The reader would be correct in drawing such comparisons, as stated in the Translator’s Note: “The ‘Well-tempered’ of the […]

The Archives and Special Collections has recently received a 1799 edition of the Farmer’s Almanack. This periodical, which changed its name to the Old Farmer’s Almanac in 1832, is the oldest continuously published periodical in the United States and “has captured America’s fancy with its homespun admixture of fact, fun and folklore.” The almanack is […]

The Black Hills flood of June 9, 1972 is of particular interest to the author of this post, being a native of Rapid City. The unusually heavy rainfall that caused the flood and the death and destruction it left behind make it one of the state’s worst-ever natural disasters. While exploring the Black Hills books that are […]

Cecil Forsyth (b. 1870 – d. 1941) was an English composer and violist. He wrote mostly choral works, but he also composed a concerto for viola. Additionally, he published a famous book on orchestration that can be found in the Mahoney collection, titled Orchestration. According to the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, it […]

This section from a 1915 South Dakota map shows Cedar Pass Scenic Highway that went from the Oacoma area to Interior. In the 1920s and before, many roads in the United States received names. They were often associated with a booster group which collected dues and published trail guides and newsletters. Please contact us if you […]

Short poem printed in the May 1892 issue of The Volante.