Collins Unbound

I can’t believe it is already my third week in the archives!

This week I’ve mainly been working on editing and writing my first ever Wikipedia article. One of the articles I edited had to do with Oregon and Washington state history, and I thought I’d share a few of my favorite images that I’ve come across looking through the John M. Canse Pamphlet collection. Both images are from the Snohomish Country brochure from June, 1905.

Loggers (and the cook!) in the Puget Sound area

Photos of the “Indians of Snohomish County”

Though I’ve lived in the NW all my life, it’s been fun to see history in a more hands-on way by combing through this collection.

P.S.  This will be my last post for a few weeks, as I will be leaving for vacation next week, but look for more posts in July!

By: Kara E. Flynn ‘15

My first week as Wikipedian in Residence got off to a great start with a visit from LiAnna Davis, head of communications and external relations for the Wiki Education Foundation, and a UPS Alum!

The Wiki Education Foundation is a non-profit that works with educators in the US and Canada to help them utilize Wikipedia editing in the classroom, and has created a wealth of resources for both educators and students who are editing Wikipedia as a class assignment.

One of the most interesting projects that LiAnna discussed during her visit was the work that the foundation is doing with Arabic-speaking countries. Arabic is one of the world’s most spoken languages, but the Arabic Wikipedia has very few articles compared with the English Wikipedia (205,000 compared to the English Wikipedia’s 4.2 million). Recently, the Wiki Education Foundation has been working with university students in Egypt, Algeria, Jordan, and Saudi Arabia to grow the content of the Arabic Wikipedia. Already, students participating in the program have contributed over 8 million bytes!

As someone who knew next to nothing about the inner-workings of Wikipedia, LiAnna was an invaluable resource and so friendly and approachable. From giving presentations to faculty and student researchers, to giving a few of us at the library a hands on Wikipedia editing tutorial, I learned so much not only about navigating Wikipedia, but about all of the opportunities that Wikipedia has created for students and educators around the world.

Speaking of navigating. . . (yes it’s a stretch, but I needed a segue) here are some cool old-school tools for navigation, from Peter Apian’s Cosmographia (1584). There’s always something new to discover!  (See illustrations above)

By Kara E. Flynn ‘15

This summer, I am working as the University of Puget Sound’s Archives & Special Collections Wikipedian in Residence. Now, you might be wondering, what is a Wikipedian in Residence? What do they do? I thought Wikipedia could be written by anybody, why do you get a fancy title?

I too wondered these things when I first heard about the Wikipedian in Residence Summer Fellowship, and really only started to understand all that it entails over the last few days, so you are not alone in your confusion!

What is a Wikipedian in Residence?  What do they do?

In the words of Wikipedia, a Wikipedian in residence “is not simply an in-house editor: the role is fundamentally about enabling the host organization and its members to continue a productive relationship with the encyclopedia and its community after the Residency is finished.”  Essentially, I will be going through our Archives & Special Collections to identify ways in which our holdings here at the library can be made accessible through Wikipedia. I will be editing existing articles and adding links to articles that will take a Wikipedia reader directly to the collection or piece connected to that article. I also hope to write new articles for material we have in our Archives & Special Collections that haven’t yet been covered in a Wikipedia article.

Why the title?

It is true that anyone can edit and write for Wikipedia. The key difference between what I will be doing and any other Wikipedia user is that I work in connection with an institution in order to share our resources with the world via Wikipedia. In the Wikipedia world, the institutions that hire Wikipedians in Residence are encompassed by the acronym GLAM- Galleries, Libraries, Archives, and Museums. Since I work with (and for) a GLAM institution, I get the fancy title J

A little preview. . . 

To give you a better idea of the kind of work I will be doing, here is an example.

Richard Knolles (1545-1610) was an English historian who wrote the first British history of the Turks written in English. We happen to have a few different editions of his text, The Turkish History, From the Original of that Nation, to the Growth of the Ottoman Empire, with the Lives and Conquests of Their Princes and Emperor in Special Collections.

Title page from the 6^th edition (1687)

Also from the 6^th edition (Amurath is my favorite- look at that mustache!)

Sadly, Richard has only a very short description in Wikipedia. I hope to expand upon his entry and add a link to our copy of the text so that when someone doing initial research on Richard is skimming Wikipedia, they will be able to link directly to our Archives & Special Collections and find a physical copy of the text.

P.S.  If you are interested in seeing Knolles’ history of the Turks, there are two volumes on display in the “Stan!” exhibit at Collins Memorial Library through May 31^st!

By: Kara E. Flynn ‘15

The best part about working in the Archives & Special Collections?  Stumbling across something you did not expect to find.

This past year, Maya Steinborn ’14, Zeb Howell ’16, and Morgan Ford ’17, have chronicled the materials they found interesting and exciting while working in the Archives & Special Collections.  A BIG thank you to each of them for their contributions!

Most often an archival collection arrives at our door in complete disarray, a pile of boxes with folders, objects, books, and even some Q-tips thrown in.  There is no order and little identification.  We go through these boxes making sense of the madness so that researchers might spend less time digging through boxes and more time studying the material that is actually relevant to their research.  In the past six years I have come across quite a few unexpected discoveries while digging through boxes: copious amounts of hair, a sombrero, a powder horn, letters signed by U.S. Presidents and Civil War generals, and most recently an issue of the Ulster County Gazette, January 4, 1800.

This item emerged from the papers of Walter S. Davis (1866-1943), a professor of history and political science from 1907-1943.  I was quite excited to find this issue; it is the first paper to report the death of George Washington!  Then I began to do some research, it turns out this issue of the Ulster County Gazette was widely reproduced as a historical souvenir.  In fact, only two originals are known to exist, one at the Library of Congress and the other at the American Antiquarian Society.

Stop by the Archives & Special Collections to see this exciting reproduction of the Ulster County Gazette and learn how to distinguish the originals from the fakes!

The Archives & Special Collections is pleased to welcome its third summer research fellow, Kara Flynn ’15!  Kara, a double major in English and Sociology and Anthropology, will serve as Wikipedian in Residence.  Kara’s work will focus on increasing access to and awareness of the rare and unique material in the Archives & Special Collections through Wikipedia.  In addition, Kara will arrange and describe an archival collection, organize a Wikipedia event (for Fall 2014), and record her progress on our blog or Tumblr.  Stay tuned for Kara’s first post on May 22^nd!