Collins Unbound

I can’t believe the summer is coming to an end and that I’ll be wrapping up my work in the Archives and Special collections this week. This summer has been wonderful and I’ve absolutely loved exploring history through the archival collections I’ve worked with. There has rarely been a dull moment, as my research has covered topics that have spanned hundreds of years and crossed international borders. Every day I got to learn about something new and different!

Despite how much I’ve come to love my work this summer, I was initially unsure about what my work would entail, given my title as “Wikipedian in Residence.” While my goal was to improve the accessibility and visibility of the archival materials in the Archives & Special Collections through Wikipedia, it was initially difficult to see past the more technical aspects of writing on Wikipedia- figuring out formatting and wiki code, etc. But ultimately, my job wasn’t really about simply writing for Wikipedia, but about improving access to information and quality primary materials. That is what a Wikipedian in Residence really does.

I think the most difficult part of my work this summer wasn’t the work itself, but justifying it to others. Despite the ever increasing use of Wikipedia in higher education through the Wiki Education Foundation, many still scoff at the mention of Wikipedia in any context, let alone in connection with higher education. I’m not suggesting that students should be able to cite Wikipedia in a research paper- it is after all a tertiary source, and any tertiary source, in print or online, is not a suitable source for a college-level research paper. Rather, I think complaining about Wikipedia’s faults is a bit like someone who didn’t vote complaining about the president in office. If you’re not willing to take action, why belittle those who are working to improve something you’re not willing to improve yourself?  I would also point out to critics that, for better or worse, Wikipedia is an incredibly popular source of information for millions of people. When you contribute to Wikipedia using the quality sources that you are lucky to have access to, you can help improve the quality of information that hundreds of thousands of people read on a daily basis.

I’ve learned so much this summer, not just about archives, but about what I want to do after I graduate. By my 5^th day in the Archives & Special Collections, I was positive that I wanted to go to library school and work in archives and special collections for the foreseeable future. If anything, my desire to pursue archival work has only intensified over the course of the summer!

Thanks for everything, A&SC!

P.S. If you’re interested in editing Wikipedia yourself, please, please drop by our Wikipedia Edit-a thon on September 20^th, from 2-4 at Collins! We will be focusing on improving the diversity of representation of authors and activists on Wikipedia in anticipation of the Race and Pedagogy Conference. No Wikipedia experience necessary!

By: Kara E. Flynn 

This week as I was researching a past president of the University of Puget Sound, I stumbled upon someone I found a bit more interesting in a 1909 edition of The Trail: Mable Electa Buland. The Trail article introduced Buland as a new professor of English at the University, and the article mentioned that at the time at which Buland received her Doctorate, she was the youngest PH.D. in America.

Intrigued, I decided to do some further research into Miss Buland so that I could write a Wikipedia article about her. Buland was raised in the west, and received both her B.A. in 1904 and her M.A.  in 1908 from the University of Washington. During the 1904-1905 school year, Buland was an assistant in the Department of Pedagogy at UW, before teaching at Castle Rock High School for a year. She then did graduate work in English at both Columbia and Yale, and received her PH.D. in English from Yale in 1909, making her the youngest PH.D. in America. This was quite a feat, particularly for a woman, considering that in 1900 only 2.8% of women in the U.S. attended college, and yet only about 10 years later, Buland became the youngest person to earn a PH.D. in America.

After completing her PH.D., Buland taught English at the University of Puget Sound for a year (1909-1910) and at Whitman a year later (1910-1911).

After marrying George Norman Campbell in the fall of 1911, Buland stopped teaching, but continued to be involved in education, as she served as the City Superintendent of Schools in Kalama, Washington from 1915-1916. Buland gave birth to a son in February of 1917, and, as was customary at the time, stopped working outside the home.

While the societal expectations for a woman of Buland’s status excluded her from teaching after she had her son, Buland didn’t withdraw from community life. Buland remained involved in the community through “women’s clubs,” which were particularly important at a time when few women had access to education. Women’s clubs provided a more intellectual community for women who had few educational opportunities, and discussed current issues, with a focus on women’s suffrage.  In the fall of 1924, when  well-known feminist Emma Smith Devoe resigned from her position as vice-chair of the State Central Committee for the Republican Committee, Buland took over the position, which was meat to help establish women’s clubs and to organize Republican women for upcoming elections.

While I have enjoyed researching various personalities through the archives, looking back at my past posts, it becomes apparent that they have pretty much exclusively been about men (just look at how many times I make reference to ridiculous forms of facial hair and you’ll see what I mean). While this isn’t a surprise given the time periods I’ve been dealing with, it was refreshing to come across a woman who wasn’t just another wife who got less than a sentence of recognition in her husband’s bio. Buland deserved to be written about in her own right, at a time when very few women were able to take advantage of newly available educational opportunities, let alone excel in higher education.

By: Kara E. Flynn

I would like to open this blog post with a quote from my friend from this week’s archival research, Dr. Henry Brown:

“Indeed our common Christianity is in jeopardy from the universal prevalence and insidious attacks of the forces of evil resident in, and emanating from, the popular amusements of the day”

– From the preface of his book, Impending Peril, Or, Methodism and Amusements

After spending the first half of my week with Dr. Brown, I have found Brown to be a surprising character with deeply held, but sometimes seemingly contradictory beliefs.

Brown lived from 1848-1931, and thus experienced some very interesting periods of American history. Our collection of his papers includes the autobiography that he dictated to his wife as he was nearing the end of his life, which details some of his more important life experiences. Only a teenager during the civil war, Brown fought for the Union, and turned 16 on a battlefield. He was a deeply religious and moralistic man, and became a minister as a young adult after the Civil War ended. He first preached in Iowa, but after 14 years, in 1885, Brown was transferred to Ellensburg, Washington. Brown, his wife and their two small daughters traveled across the country by train. Brown spent the bulk of his career in Eastern Washington, staying in Ellensburg a year before moving to Walla Walla and eventually to Spokane.

In addition to his autobiography, the collection includes two albums in which Brown collected newspaper clippings. A quick perusal of the clippings reveals Brown’s near constant back and forth with the editors of the Walla Walla Daily Journal, and The Oregonian throughout the 1890s. Brown was a staunch prohibitionist, a sentiment that the editors of the two newspapers did not seem to share. Brown would write a scathing letter to the editor critiquing their representation of prohibition and its supporters, and the editor would write an equally impolite response, which would in turn prompt yet another letter to the editor from Brown. At one point, The Union Newspaper goes so far as to title his letter to the editor as, “Brown the Irrepressible.”

Brown was also a passionate supporter of women’s suffrage, and wrote many a letter to the editor about the way that women’s newly legal right in Washington territory (which was one of the first territories to grant voting rights to women) was represented in the Walla Walla Daily Journal, which stated that “The Union does not believe in forcing the women of the territory to vote.”  In response, Brown pointed out that men were not “forced” to vote either and that in saying that the Union did not believe in forcing women to vote, the Journal was really saying that, “the Union does believe in forcing the women to refrain from voting. In other words, the Union would strengthen and perpetuate the manmade legal barricade that now stands between women and the polls.” Brown also took issue with the claim made by the paper that women had only voted in the first election merely for the novelty and curiosity of it, but had since refrained from voting, writing that he, “would be glad to know the names of some of those intelligent women who had no higher notion in casting their first ballot than simply to gratify their curiosity.”

Brown’s vocal support of his causes did not end with letters to the editor, however. In 1904, Brown published his first and only book, The Impending Peril, or, Methodism and Amusements: A Compilation of Testimony, Rules, Speeches, and Articles on the Amusement Question with an Argument in Review, which describes the dangers that popular past times pose to Christianity- going to the theater, to concerts, to dance halls, or to the race course, and of course the consumption of alcoholic beverages at any of these amusements were all deemed unacceptable past times for Methodists.

Brown eventually retired and spent the remainder of his life in Pomona, Ca, where he was still an active member of the Methodist church, and where, I’m sure, he wrote at least a few letters to the editors of the local papers.

Brown has thoroughly entertained me for the past few days- while he has at times confused me by his seemingly contradictory beliefs which don’t quite fit so neatly into the stereotype of his peers from the same era, I have found that his deeply held convictions come from his very strong belief in morality. A man who didn’t believe in war, Brown fought for the Union in the Civil War because he felt it to be a just cause. Brown was a vocal supporter of both prohibition and women’s suffrage (two pretty unpopular causes during his day) because he believed in the innate rightness of these two issues. And even though I find some of his arguments problematic, to say the least, particularly concerning prohibition and those in his book on the evil of popular amusements, I have to admire the guy for his commitment to his beliefs.

And he does have a pretty great beard, so there’s that too. By

By: Kara E. Flynn