Collins Unbound

Greetings music majors and music lovers alike! I’d just like to take a quick minuet to conduct some music related business. Little do people know, the Archives & Special Collections has a vast collection of material pertaining to the music department. Yet this is but a prelude, because perhaps even more fascinating is our collection of Leroy Ostransky papers!

Leroy Ostransky was an American composer, educator, and author born in 1918. During his career as a musician he obtained his Doctorate in musical arts before becoming the professor emeritus of music and composer-in-residence right here at the University of Puget Sound! In addition to founding one of America’s earliest experimental jazz bands, he also published many books on jazz before his death in 1993.

How lucky are we to have had such a sharp staff member here at UPS?! A true cymbal of the tone of our university, as our current staff most certainly measures up! If you aim to be in tune with what’s going on here in the Archives, I highly recommend coming by to reed through Ostransky’s collection. We have original compositions, publication drafts, photographs, newspaper clippings, composition notes, correspondence, research, unpublished works, and even recordings! Peer into his life and see what major developments emerge within your own! I realize with our busy schedules it is often difficult to find the time to take a rest from what you’re currently tambourine with to snare some personal research materials, without a minor setback, but you never know what you may discover on accident! I don’t mean to harp you about it, but it is sure to be a repeat offense.

I’d also like to pitch one finale idea! If music isn’t your forte, the Archives & Special Collections is guaranteed to have materials that won’t de-bass your interests, so please come by and check it out!

On a high note, I will cease trying to be clef-er before my jokes fall flat. It only ever leads to treble.

http://archiveswest.orbiscascade.org/ark:/80444/xv13647

The Archives & Special Collections is open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 12:00-3:00 p.m. or by appointment.

By Monica Patterson

File → Print. Today, that’s all it takes to print a document. Going back sixty-three years, though, it wasn’t that easy. Pictured below is the College of Puget Sound’s copy center in 1953. According to A Sound Past, the lady in the picture is operating a “mimeograph machine which made copies of documents from a stencil wrapped around the central drum that picked up ink as the drum was turned. Each revolution of the drum cranked out another copy of whatever was on the stencil. This was the copy machine of its era and most course syllabi and examinations were made on the mimeograph machine. All you had to do was type your document on to stencil and take the stencil to the copy center where the mimeograph machine operator made your copies.” You can get a workout in while you copy especially if you messed up the stencil or had to copy a long document…pressing the Print button gives me enough anxiety.

Check out more pictures in the Archives & Special Collections or go online to A Sound Past. The Archives and Special Collections is open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 12:00-3:00 p.m. or by appointment.

By Sierra Scott

The Canse pamphlets are a lot of fun to wander around in. According to our finding aid on Archives West, John M. Canse was a pastor for the University Methodist Episcopal Church in Seattle in 1909. Most of his collection of pamphlets are relevant to this area, particularly travel pamphlets in the Washington and Oregon area. Among these are railroads, highways, bridges, expositions, national parks, forts, and other material. Again, I say they’re a lot of fun because a lot of them are very colorful and have a very vintage, not-necessarily-correct-anymore info, though this one is pretty close still.

This specific one I’ve chosen to take photos of is Tacoma: where to go – what to see in the Evergreen Playground. It also happened to include another pamphlet for the Floating Bridge in Seattle. So in case you’re wondering what exactly there is to do in our lovely city, here are some ideas!

Check out the State Historical Museum!

Go wander around Wright Park (it also has a very nice botanical garden).

Look at McChord Field, a Northwest Army Air Base. From a distance. They won’t let you on.

Tacoma is the fifth city in the nation in flour milling.

Point Defiance Park has excursion boat trips during the summer (supposedly).

The Archives & Special Collections is open on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays from 12:00-3:00 p.m. or by appointment.

By Morgan Ford