Collins Unbound

Figure 1 Event Poster for Friday’s event.

At the beginning of this academic year, the Archives & Special Collections department decided that one of our goals would be to collect more student life materials. With that in mind, I attended LogJam in September to meet some student club leaders and let them know that the archives existed and we’d be interested in preserving their materials. It was great to meet a few student leaders, but I left unsure whether I’d made an impression.

Much to my delight, I received a message from the Hawaiian student group, Ka ‘Ohana Me Ke Aloha. They said they’d recently gone through their storage area and realized that some of their belongings could be better protected in the archives. As of the beginning of the year, we only had a small box of Hawaiian student life items, containing three Lū’au programs and a few VHS tapes and CDs. We met a week or so later so I could get a feel for the types of things they had and then we discussed the logistics of transferring the items to the archives. Although it took a while to transfer the materials, we now have a collection of Ka ‘Ohana Me Ke Aloha materials that more accurately reflects their time and impact on campus.

Figure 2: Photo from the 1976 Lū’au

To celebrate nearly fifty years of Hawaiian student life on campus–their predecessor Hui O Hawaii became a ratified ASPUS club in November of 1970–the Archives & Special Collections is hosting an Open House to showcase the new materials before this year’s Lū’au. The Open House will highlight Lū’au and the other achievements of Ka ‘Ohana Me Ke Aloha over the years, including scrapbooks, awards, photographs, Lū’au programs and recordings. This event is free and open to campus members, alums, and the outside community. Our hope is that the Open House will honor the many contributions of our Hawaiian students to campus life, as well as garner excitement for their upcoming 50th anniversary in 2020. We highly encourage everyone to come to the Open House this Friday!!

Event details:
Date: Friday, April 13th
Time: 4-5pm
Location: Archives & Special Collections, 2nd floor Collins Memorial Library

If you’re a part of a student club that would like to transfer your materials (historic or current) to the archives, please contact Adriana Flores, Archivist & Special Collections Librarian, at archives@pugetsound.edu.

The Archives & Special Collections is open on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 10:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m. or by appointment.

By Adriana Flores

Since 1938, the American Library Association has awarded the Caldecott Medal to the artist who created the most distinguished “American Picture Book for Children” published in the United States during the preceding year. The medal is named after British illustrator Randolph Caldecott (1846-1886). Caldecott had a significant impact on the illustration of children’s books during his time and published sixteen books of nursery rhymes and poems for children between 1876 and 1885. The American Library Association states that Caldecott’s illustrations “were unique to their time in both their humor, and their ability to create a sense of movement, vitality, and action that complemented the stories they accompanied.” We have three books illustrated by Randolph Caldecott in the Archives & Special Collections: The Three Jovial Huntsmen, The Diverting History of John Gilpin, and The Owls of Olynn Belfry.

The Three Jovial Hunstmen (1880) is a version of an old Lancashire County rhyme which had been circulating in England for centuries. An odd fun fact about this book – Beatrix Potter’s father purchased the original illustrations for this book in 1884 for 80 pounds! Potter was a children’s book author and illustrator herself, famous for the “Peter Rabbit” series.

The Diverting History of John Gilpin (1878) is notable because the illustration on the front cover of John Gilpin on a runaway horse is replicated on the front of the Caldecott Medal itself. This is also the only one of Caldecott’s 16 books that contains full color double page pictures, the process of which ultimately proved too costly to reproduce cheaply. Caldecott’s books were sold for only one shilling each.

The Owls of Olynn Belfry (c. 1885) was illustrated by Caldecott but written by an author identified only as A.Y.D. This book is of interest because many of the scenes and people depicted by Caldecott were from Chelsfield, Kent in England, the home of his wife, Marian Brind.

Head to the Archives & Special Collections to see these and other children’s books from the 19^th and 20^th centuries!

The Archives & Special Collections is open on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 10:00 a.m.-3:00 p.m. or by appointment.

By  Laura Edgar