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The national woman suffrage story ultimately became a success because of the success of suffragists at the state and local levels. Next year, as we celebrate a century since the ratification of the 19th Amendment, it is important to remember the significance of the state and local stories as well. Simultaneously the most fun and […]

Kent Scribner Collection (MS 270) is now open to researchers. This newly processed collection consists of the campus events from Scribner’s time as a University of South Dakota undergraduate student from 1956-1960. The other part of the collection consists of Scribner’s work at the USD Foundation mostly with the capital campaign named Campaign South Dakota. […]

April is National Poetry Month, and the Archives and Special Collections is celebrating with two exhibits on the 3rd floor of ID Weeks. At the top of the main staircase sits a small exhibit containing samples from Linda Hasselstrom, James Foley, and Kathleen Norris; with art by Ed Colker accompanying Norris’s work. Linda Hasselstrom’s works […]

Betty Turner Asher was the first woman president of any public higher education system in South Dakota. She served at USD from 1989-1996, resigning after seven years of service. At the time, her tenure was tied with two other presidents for the fourth longest term of any president at USD. Asher was previously the Vice […]

The 36th Division Campaign Maps mystery has been solved. After speaking with many other archives and museums that had the same amount of information as the USD archives, I spoke with someone from the Texas Military Forces Museum. She was able to provide much more information than we were expecting, and it’s some interesting stuff! […]

The Archives and Special Collections contain some great materials, but we don’t always know the full story behind them. To provide some background, the maps below are from Frederick Cullen Burton’s collection of manuscripts, photos, documents, and poems. Frederick attended USD as a journalism major before joining the Royal Air Force in Canada to fight […]

When I took the graduate class in historiography in Fall 2016 as a requirement of the Master’s degree program in USD’s history department, I was very excited when my professor Dr. Molly Rozum announced that the class would be working directly with historical materials in the USD archives. My class had the responsibility of doing […]

It’s that time of year again! Halloween is slowly approaching once again. If you are a book lover and very festive during this time of year, come take a look in the Archives and Special Collections. We have some very interesting and spooky stories up here. From documents of ghost towns to books with […]

Archives and Special Collections is pleased to announce that a small selection of material from the Larry Pressler Papers has been digitized and is now available in the Digital Library of South Dakota. These documents have been selected to coincide with the recent publication of Senator Pressler’s book, Neighbours in Arms: An American Senator’s Quest […]

One hundred years ago, South Dakota elected its first native-born governor; this governor, Peter Norbeck, proved to be one of the most progressive governors in South Dakota history. Norbeck was born in Vermillion, Clay County, on August 27, 1870. Though he did not receive an official degree, Norbeck attended the University of South Dakota in […]

In honor of the 50th anniversary of the I.D. Weeks Library building, the Archives and Special Collections has organized a special exhibit to display the changes of the USD library through the years, from the beginning of the university in 1882 through today. The first exhibit on the second floor of I.D. Weeks focuses on […]

Growing up just a half hour away from Mt. Rushmore, I can tell you that the beauty and grandeur is as great as the hype about it is. Though as a Rapid City native I have not visited the monument as often as one would guess, really I can count on my hands and feet […]

The Osborne Collection of Early English Children’s books, were donated by Edgar Osborne, to the Toronto Public Library after he visited the library in 1934. He was so impressed with their children’s program that he donated 2,000 books to the library. Since then the collection has grown into a large collection of over 80,000 children’s […]

Freshmen Initiation Friday, September 19, 1913, otherwise known as Black Friday, the newly acquired graduating class of 1917, gathered outside of Main Hall (today one could assume they meant Old Main) promptly at 7:30 pm to begin their journey through the time honored tradition of hazing the incoming freshmen. Though this practice has gone by the […]

The first week of May everyone on campus was cramming for finals and preparing for summer. I was in the same boat as everyone else, cramming for finals and preparing to head home for a week. It was within that week that I was informed that a position in the archives was open and I […]

Beginning to work at the Archives and Special Collections department at USD’s I.D. Weeks Library seemed to be a little mysterious at first. What would I find in that special back room? Will I be putting books back on shelves all day? Will I be able to listen to music?! These concerns were alive and […]

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 […]

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 […]

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.