Come visit us and check out the view from our new space in the library at the University of South Dakota.

This month we say goodbye to our archivist as she moves on to the next stage of her career. She taught us many things, including how fun cookbooks are and how these books have historical research value. Cookbooks are a valuable historical source because “the study of culinary history isn’t about food – it’s about the people who prepare and consume this food.” (Sarah Lohman. Eight flavors: the untold story of American cuisine. New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016, p. xvii. Below is a list of cookbooks (or cookery as the library catalog calls them) found in the Chilson Collection in the Archives and Special Collections. The books are listed from newest to oldest. South Dakota’s governors residence cookbook: a culinary legacy celebrating the first families of South Dakota. Kearney, NE: Morris Press Cookbooks, 2007. Gueldner, R. M. H. German food & folkways: heirloom memories from Europe, South Russia & the Great Plains. Fargo, ND: Germans from Russian Heritage Collection, North Dakota State University Libraries, 2002. Spuka Sni Win. Lakota traditional and contemporary recipes. Pine Ridge, S.D.: Spuka Sni Win, 1999. Luchetti, Cathy. Home on the range: a culinary history of the American West. New York: Villard Books, 1993. Young, Kay. Wild seasons: gathering and cooking wild plants of the Great Plains. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1993. Walker, Barbara M. The Little House cookbook: frontier foods from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s classic stories. New York: Harper & Row, 1979. Grandma’s cookbook: pioneering recipes of Northeastern South Dakota. Watertown, S. D.: Friends of the Kampeska Heritage Museum, 1976. The homestead cookbook: for home and family use. Seattle: Superior Pub. Co., 1976. Kreidberg, Marjorie. Food on the frontier: Minnesota cooking from 1850 to 1900, with selected recipes. St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society Press, 1975. Marquiss, Toots. Buffalo cook book. Rapid City, S. D.: Crane Publ. Co., Inc., 1972. Century Czech recipes of Tabor community: Tabor, South Dakota. Tabor, S.D.: [1972?]. McGovern, Eleanor. The Eleanor McGovern cookbook: a collection of South Dakota family favorites. Mitchell, S.D.: Citizens for McGovern, [ca. 1970]. Beeton, Isabella Mary. The book of household management. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1969. Adams, Ramon F. Come an’ get it; the story of the old cowboy cook. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, [1952]. Another year with Your Neighbor Lady. Sioux City and Yankton: Radio Station WNAX, 1949. Robinson, Eva Roberta. The timely cookbook. Aberdeen: South Dakota Food Administration, 1918. Good things to eat and how to prepare them: over two hundred choice recipes. Buffalo, N.Y.: Larkin Co., 1906. Help one another cook book. Aberdeen: Dakota farmer, [19??]. If you want to do research using local cookbooks, The Hilton M. Briggs Library at South Dakota State University is currently collecting cookbooks created by South Dakota schools, churches, hospitals, families, and other organizations. They are displaying them online as the South Dakota Community Cookbook Collection on the SDSU site Open Prairie.

I have been waiting. Image from Catalogue of the University of South Dakota for the year 1892-3.

Salute to Oscar Micheaux, who homesteaded near Gregory (SD) before becoming a film maker and author. The Archives and Special Collections at USD has many books by and about him. Books by Micheaux in the Herman P. Chilson Collection of Americana: Micheaux, Oscar. The Conquest: The Story of a Negro Pioneer. Lincoln, Nebr.: Woodruff Press, 1913. E185.97.M62 M6. First edition? Micheaux, Oscar, and C. W. Heller. The Forged Note: A Romance of the Darker Races. Lincoln, Neb.: Western Book Supply, 1915. PS3525.I1875 F67x. First edition? Micheaux, Oscar. The Wind from Nowhere. 1st Ed.]. ed. The Black Heritage Library Collection. New York: Book Supply, 1941. PS3525.I1875 W55x. Micheaux, Oscar. The Case of Mrs. Wingate. 3d ed. New York: Book Supply Co.: Book Supply, 1945. PS3525.I1875 C37x. Micheaux, Oscar. The Story of Dorothy Stanfield, Based on a Great Insurance Swindle, and a Woman! New York: Book Supply Company, 1946. PS3525.I1825 S76x. First edition? Micheaux, Oscar. The Masquerade: An Historical Novel. New York: Book Supply Company, Publishers, 1947. PS3525.I1875 M37x. First edition? Micheaux, Oscar. The Homesteader: A Novel. College Park, Md.: McGrath Pub., 1969. PS3525.I1875 H6x. Not the first edition, which is 1917. Books about Micheaux in the Herman P. Chilson Collection of Americana: Bowser, Pearl, and Louise. Spence. Writing Himself into History: Oscar Micheaux, His Silent Films, and His Audiences. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2000. PN1998.3.M494 B69 2000. Green, J. Ronald. Straight Lick: The Cinema of Oscar Micheaux. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. PN1998.3.M494 G74 2000. Green, J. Ronald. With a Crooked Stick: The Films of Oscar Micheaux. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2004. PN1998.3.M494 G76 2004. VanEpps-Taylor, Betti Carol. Oscar Micheaux: A Biography: –Dakota Homesteader, Author, Pioneer Film Maker. Rapid City, S.D.: Dakota West Books, 1999. PN1998.3.M53 V36 1999.

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 a specific aspect of the library’s construction – Operation Book Lift, which was held in April 1967. Of particular note is an actual fabric bag that was used by USD students and faculty to help haul books from the original library building from 1912 to the new library building. The second exhibit, outside of the Archives and Special Collections room, focuses on the role of women throughout the library’s history. Several women were head librarians and some even had the role of dean. Another aspect discusses the large donation by a Sioux Falls woman, including a rare 1817 edition of Homer’s The Iliad, and the final aspect analyzes the discrimination against USD’s female students. The final and biggest portion of the exhibit is a timeline of the library. Though most of the library’s original books were destroyed in a massive fire in 1893, students, faculty, and community members donated books to help the university’s library to grow. In 1912, Andrew Carnegie donated a library building, allowing the library to be housed in its own place for the first time since the university’s founding. After various expansions and renovations, and a rise in students, President I.D. Weeks (who was president of USD from 1935-1966) reached out to the Board of Regents in hopes to build an entirely new library building to house the library’s almost 300,000 volumes. The new library opened in spring 1967 with an official dedication in fall 1967. Over the next few months, the exhibit will be on display; for those unable to view the exhibit in person, photos will be attached with this post! For more information regarding the exhibit or any of the materials used, please visit the Archives and Special Collections on third floor for a list of the collections consulted.

Her photograph collection “chronicles life in Veblen, South Dakota and includes photographs taken by Vivian Steen as well as others. ” They date from circa 1900 to 1930s. The photographs range “from scenes of the downtown, scenes of store interiors, storekeepers, harvesters, ranch work, farm animals, road trips in both horse drawn vehicles and motor vehicles, the Missoula Stampede, a flood, the building of a dam, winter farm scenes, games with the Veblen Railmen (city baseball team), young men boarding the train in WWI uniforms, WWI tent camps, logging camps, river boat transporting an early gasoline car, and men at the University of Minnesota to intimate family photographs.” The Vivian Lucille Steen Anderson photograph collection is in the Archives and Special Collections at the University of South Dakota. The Image from is the collection, and the above information is from the finding aid.

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 simply to bring you and your family into the larger family of the University faculty, and to let you meet your University friends and enjoy their fellowship.” Throughout its years of existence, the Faculty Woman’s Club has coordinated several events. Annually, they would hold a President’s reception, which was traditionally hosted at the university president’s house. Other annual events include salad luncheons, fall brunches, and spring parties. Occasionally, the Faculty Woman’s Club would arrange additional events for fundraisers. The proceeds usually went to a scholarship fund. One such event was Meeting of the Minds, which was a quiz competition that any faculty member or their spouse could participate in. Another charitable deed that the Faculty Woman’s Club organized was helping with the maintenance on the Danforth Chapel. They funded the insurance policy on the stained glass windows and also helped the Alumni Association raise funds for their restoration. Below is a photograph from the dedication of a tree that the Faculty Woman’s Club donated.

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. This collection is organized into seven series: Diaries, Fraternity Materials, USD Event Programs, USD Foundation, USD Publications, Photographs, and Video Tapes. Scribner’s collection includes his correspondence with Mary Jean (Hynes) Fine, and his role in the translation and obtainment for the Archives and Special Collections of her Native American family diaries. These are in the Mary Jean Fine Collection of Thomas Hunter Diaries, likewise in the Richardson Collection. Scribner also kept copies of Blast, a student magazine that includes what campus life was like in 1959 and in 1967. This collection also includes information for the USD building dedications programs, history and videos that relate to the Buildings, Other Structures, and Utilities Collection in the University Archives. Contact the Archives and Special Collections for a copy of the guide to the collection. Blast, 1967 in Kent Scribner Papers (MS 270), Richardson Collection, Archives and Special Collections, The University of South Dakota

Archives and Special Collections recently received a scrapbook created by A. L. Wilson. This scrapbook contains approximately 80 programs for voice student recitals, university choir, and other music groups from 1916 to 1965, plus a few news clippings. It complements another collection we have of music programs. Alvin Leroy (A. L.) Wilson taught voice at the University of South Dakota 1915 to 1968.

-while at the time having a region called New South Wales Close-up of New Holland 1798 World Map in a book with a long title in the Chilson Collection in the Archives and Special Collections: Payne, John. A New and Complete System of Universal Geography; Describing Asia, Africa, Europe and America; with Their Subdivisions of Republics, States, Empires, and Kingdoms: The Extent, Boundaries, and Remarkable Appearances of Each Country; Cities, Towns, and Curiosities of Nature and Art, Also Giving a General Account of the Fossil and Vegetable Productions of the Earth. The History of Man, in All Climates, Regions, and Conditions; Customs, Manners, Laws, Governments, and Religions: The State of Arts, Sciences, Commerce, Manufactures, and Knowledge. Sketches of the Ancient and Modern History of Each Nation and People to the Present Time. To Which Is Added, a View of Astronomy, as Connected with Geography; of the Planetary System to Which the Earth Belongs; and of the Universe in General … Being a Large and Comprehensive Abridgement of Universal Geography. New York: Printed For, and Sold by John Low, Book-seller, at the Shakespeare Head, No. 332 Waterstreet, 1798. Call number Chilson Collection G114 .P34 .