Explore the contributions of women to the railroad industry with hands on activities, re-enactors, speakers, and a special art exhibit! Free, and all are welcome!
Drop by the Archives & Special Collections between 1pm and 3pm for a special open house dedicated to love in its myriad forms. Handle rare artifacts from our collections – including love letters, vintage valentines, and beautiful rare books – and see how love has been depicted over four centuries. Bring your own favorite valentines to share with the group!
Curious about the crime rate in the United States?
Want to access census data?
Curious about data related to Puget Sound students, faculty and staff?
Need help with managing your own data?
Look no further!
International Love Data Week is observed around Valentine’s Day each year celebrating data, and raising awareness about the importance of data science and management. Love Data Week provides us with an opportunity to share some important data resources available to the Puget Sound community.
Institutional Research: Sound Reports, which provide access to commonly requested information about Puget Sound, is available via the Institutional Research webpage. The webpage provides a direct link to a Google folder where the information is housed, and also lists the reports by overall topic; it is available here. If you prefer to go directly to the Google folder, which lists all of the reports individually, it is available here. If you encounter difficulty accessing the reports, please contact us at IR_Staff@pugetsound.edu.
The Sound Reports also include the most recent Common Data Set, which is the foundation for data that is submitted to most of the college guidebooks, and copies of The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System (IPEDS) Reports. IPEDS are federally mandated and submitted to the National Center for Education Statistics annually. They generally reflect official data reported for the institution on topics such as Finance, Human Resources, Admission, Enrollment, Graduation Rates, Library, and Student Financial Aid. Comparable IPEDS data for other colleges is available from the National Center for Education Statistics.
Librarian Eli Gandour-Rood can offer workshops and consultation associated with developing a data management plan. Many funding agencies now require data management plans and as our students become more engaged with research projects that require data collection it is important to manage data effectively. Data Management Plans outline how researchers will store and document their data, and make them available for review and/or reuse. Researchers are asked to provide information about tools and instruments that generate or capture data, file types, file sizes, description, storage, backup and access plans and policies. Check out Eli’s useful guide: https://library.pugetsound.edu/dmp
Statistics and Data Sources:
Need data? A good starting place is Andrea Klyn’s guide: https://library.pugetsound.edu/findstats. Compiled in one easy to use location you will find links to domestic, international, state and local sources, as well as links to data repositories and archives.
Scripts, Scribes, and Scribbles (On display until April 26, 2023)
This exhibit is all about hand lettering including medieval manuscripts, hand written books, 19th century penmanship textbooks, pens and inkwells, examples of contemporary calligraphy, personal handwritten journals and letters, writing desks, a “doodle wall,” and much, much more! Scripts, Scribes and Scribbles brings together examples of handwriting and illustrates how handwriting has been taught, reproduced, and reimagined over the past five hundred years. Displaying a range of books and manuscripts from the Collins Library collection and many private donors and collectors, the exhibition addresses the role of handwriting in the age of print newly legible.
Future Exhibits:
Puget Sound Book Artists Annual Members Exhibition (June 1 – July 31)
Dreams(August 20 — November 17, 2023) This is an internationally juried show and additional details can be found here: https://23sandy.com/pages/dreams
The World through Abby’s Eyes(January 2024 – May 2024) The World Through Abby’s Eyes, is about the nuanced life of women in the American West in the early twentieth century. The focal point of the exhibit will be Tacoma resident Abby Williams Hill (1861-1943), and specifically four significant roles she held: artist, advocate, mother, and woman. Building on these themes, we will also draw on the rich and vibrant history of Tacoma through documents, photographs and artifacts from the Archives & Special Collections, as well as the Hill art collection, that showcase these themes and time period. This exhibit will utilize the Hill Collection, a prominent teaching resource for Puget Sound, in a unique way. We hope to engage multiple disciplines across our campus, as well as the greater Tacoma community, as we consider the life of women in the West during the twentieth century.
At Collins library you have access to experienced staff, including librarians, student peer research advisors, and subject experts. We are happy to help you learn to use the library and find materials for your research papers and course assignments.
The library provides access to an abundance of physical and digital collections. If you do not find what you need in our collections, we are part of a network of libraries called the Orbis Cascade Alliance that can easily deliver materials through a system we call Summit.
Our distinctive collections provide unique opportunities for students and researchers to work with one-of-a-kind items. Visit our Archives and Special Collections to learn more about the history of Puget Sound and opportunities to work with historical rare books and documents.
On behalf of all the staff at Collins Library, we hope you will all visit the Library often and freely share your thoughts about our services, facilities, and resources. You can email me directly: jcarlin@pugetsound.edu or use our Tell Us What You Think link.
With best wishes for a successful and fulfilling academic experience.
-Jane A. Carlin, Library Director
Note to visitors: Some services are restricted to Puget Sound campus staff and students. If you are a visitor to Puget Sound we strongly recommend that you work with librarians at your own college, school or public library. They may be able to uncover resources that you overlooked and/or make a referral to a library that best suits your needs. If you need to use another library, your librarian may be able to make arrangements on your behalf. You are also welcome to call our Library Services desk at 253.879.3669 with questions before you come to visit.
The Collins Memorial Library staff actively support the University in advancing equity, diversity, creating inclusive experiences for all members of our community and confronting institutional bias and structural racism. Together with our partners in the Orbis Cascade Alliance of Academic Libraries and the Oberlin Group, we seek to build diverse collections and environments that foster and honor a wide array of perspectives, thoughts, and experiences. We commit to work that overcomes cultural, historical and divisive biases and recognize the importance that diverse perspectives bring to our society. We also recognize the history of our profession in regard to marginalizing underrepresented individuals and groups and work toward eliminating barriers to services, spaces, resources and scholarship within academic libraries.
Teaching, Research and Reference Services: The library pursues an intense and multifaceted instructional program that intentionally incorporates practices in support of DEI.
In research consultations with students, we utilize a strengths-based approach, meeting students where they are, listening to and validating their interests, and collaboratively creating a research action plan with them, instead of prescribing particular approaches or sources. In addition, librarians offer research appointments outside of the M-F, 8-5, traditional business hours in order to be available to students who may have school and work schedules that otherwise would prevent them from meeting with a librarian.
In both individual and classroom work, librarians use diverse examples to illustrate information literacy concepts–highlighting scholarly and creative works by minoritized authors; using a more expansive list of genres; introducing collections of diverse voices; and using social justice themes to inform inquiry and search strategies, for example:
Highlighting Prince and Purple Rain in a research class on American song
Encouraging students in Biology 101 to think about structural inequities that could contribute to the health impacts that could be caused by wildfire exposure
Introducing algorithmic bias and inviting students to reflect on all the ways that such bias impacts them in both their personal lives and in the lives of those different from them
Analyzing zines as primary sources, and promoting zines as a means of creative expression
Whenever possible, librarians incorporate principles and practices of critical information literacy pedagogy, such as:
Explicitly discussing the social, political, and economic structures of information networks and inviting critical reflection on instances of information privilege
Using student-centered learning scenarios such presenting an open-ended problem that requires student collaboration to generate multiple possible responses
Access to Information: We are cognizant of the bias in the Library of Congress subject headings and continue to evaluate ways we can address this. For example, librarians in the PNW took action after learning from the Change the Subject video, an important film documenting a group of Dartmouth students who challenged anti-immigrant language in the Library of Congress subject headings. Our library consortium, the Orbis-Cascade Alliance replaced the term “Illegal aliens” with the terms “Undocumented immigrants” in the online PRIMO catalog. We continue to review subject headings and how information is categorized to reflect a more inclusive taxonomy.
Archives & Special Collections Archives & Special Collections staff actively collect materials that represent a diversity of voices. This includes a collection of artists’ books by artists of color, selected in collaboration with the African American Studies liaison librarian, and zines created by indigenous authors and members of the LGBTQ+ community. The Archives also hosts regular class sessions on topics such as systemic racism, women in science, the origins of University of Puget Sound’s Queer Studies Program, and Japanese-American incarceration during World War II. Digital teaching kits available on the library’s website complement these lesson plans.
Links to some of the digital teaching kits are below:
Collections: We have set aside special funding to support book purchases associated with DEI themes. We have also added a number of digital resources:
AVON (Academic Video Online): a video subscription that delivers almost 70,000 titles spanning subject areas including anthropology, business, counseling, film, health, history, music, and more.
Black Thought and Culture: A collection of approximately 100,000 pages of non-fiction writings by major American black leaders, teachers, artists, politicians, religious leaders, athletes, war veterans, entertainers, and other figures, covering 250 years of history. Includes letters, speeches, prefatory essays, political leaflets, interviews, periodicals, and trial transcripts.
LGBT Thought and Culture: An online resource hosting books, periodicals, and archival materials documenting LGBT political, social and cultural movements throughout the twentieth century and into the present day. The collection illuminates the lives of lesbians, gays, transgender, and bisexual individuals and the community.
North American Indian Thought and Culture: Brings together more than 100,000 pages, many of which are previously unpublished, rare, or hard to find. Integrates autobiographies, biographies, Indian publications, oral histories, personal writings, photographs, drawings, and audio files for the first time. The result is a comprehensive representation of historical events as told by the individuals who lived through them. Supports scholarly research into the history of American Indians, Alaska Natives, and Canadian First Peoples.
In a previous Collins Library Links, we shared information on University Archives and Manuscripts. Today we share information on our special collections. We know that students benefit from working with the unique items in our collections. To examine a medieval manuscript, turn the pages of a book hand printed hundreds of years ago, or discover the artistry of a contemporary hand made book, they develop a connection with the past and present and reflect upon how knowledge is transmitted.
Cosmographia (1584)
The University of Puget Sound Archives & Special Collections is home to hundreds of linear feet of books, including rare materials, artists’ books, and zines. Our earliest books date from the 16th century, including a 1584 edition of Peter Apian’s scientific text Cosmographia and a 1538 edition of Plutarch’s Lives. Special Collections is also home to a Geneva Bible, the same edition of the Bible used by William Shakespeare, John Donne, and numerous other 16th century English Protestants.
Areas of strength in our collection include religious and philosophical texts, local history, literature, the sciences, and artists’ books.
What are Artists’ Books?
Books are My Utopia (2020)
Artists’ books are works of art inspired by the form and function of the book. They may look like traditional codices, or they may take on entirely new forms. Formats in our Special Collections include accordion books, books made from fabric, and even a set of documents housed in a lunchbox. Numerous artists’ books from Special Collections are included in the current Collins Library exhibit, Changing the Conversation, which is on display through December 11th.
One of the newest additions to our artists’ books collection is Books are My Utopia (pictured above), a collection of aphorisms about books and reading. Each page features a printed quote along with hand-rendered calligraphic embellishment by artist Will Rueter.
What are Zines?
A selection of Collins Library zines
Zines are small-format, low-budget, inexpensive booklets that are self-published and ephemeral in nature. The zine scene is inherently democratic: anyone can make a zine about anything for any reason. Many zines celebrate niche interests, embrace creative expression, foreground personal narratives, or argue for a particular political or social position. Special Collections is home to more than 500 zines exploring topics as varied as reproductive health, electronic music, LGBTQ rights, women in prison, and environmental concerns.
Special Collections in the Classroom
The Archives & Special Collections encourages faculty to visit our space with their classes to familiarize students with rare books, artists’ books, and zines. Students can handle books that are hundreds of years old and discover how books, reading, and subject areas such as science and literature have changed over time. They can also explore the creative possibilities of book design and learn new ways to tell their own stories through nontraditional book arts. To discuss a session or set up a time to visit Special Collections, contact archives@pugetsound.edu.
This exhibit is all about hand lettering including medieval manuscripts, hand written books, 19th century penmanship textbooks, pens and inkwells, examples of contemporary calligraphy, personal handwritten journals and letters, writing desks, a “doodle wall,” and much, much more!
Scripts, Scribes and Scribbles brings together examples of handwriting and illustrates how handwriting has been taught, reproduced, and reimagined over the past five hundred years. Displaying a range of books and manuscripts from the Collins Library collection and many private donors and collectors, the exhibition addresses the role of handwriting in the age of print newly legible.
