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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 […]

In addition to books, magazines, pamphlets, and ephemera, the Mahoney Music Collection also contains unpublished material such as the John Gould’s Violin Instrument Appraisals – 1945-1984.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 […]

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 […]

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. […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]