feature

Lede
The magnitude of what they have
Who works there?
What they have
Recent Expansion
Angling
Where they come from
Where it’s going
How digital age if affecting it
How they have kept up
Where it headed


Head line: Hidden Treasures of WSU
Lede: Through the doors of Holland-Terrell Library, into the Manuscripts, Archives and Special Collections, and then down a secret elevator you enter a world of history not many students know about.
That is where you will find, a well dressed, complete with a bow tie, Trevor J. Bond, intern head of manuscripts, archives, and special collections also known as MASC.
In total the MASC collection houses about 53,000 rare books and 17,000 linear feet of archives, a linear foot being one box full of documents, therefore one linear foot can hold up to hundreds of papers.

“Yeah it’s a lot of shelving and were just about full downstairs. The University just approved getting another 1800 linear feet and that should hold them over for about five years,” Bond said.

The university acquires its collection from various forms such as alumni, state grants to buy special collections, donations bases on our already existing collections, and other gifts to the university. The university receives about 100 linear feet a year in University Archives and an additional 200 linear feet a year in manuscripts, although they do not take everything they are offered.

The largest gift that is in the process right now of coming in is related to angling fishing.

“The collection holds about fifteen hundred books, and is the largest, most complete, and best collection of its kind, in the country,” Bond said.

This collection includes fragments of first book ever printed about fishing from 1476, The Compleat Angler from 1653, and multiple books from the 17th century.

With such a large collection of valuable manuscripts and documents the university goes to great lengths to protect them.

“They are in a secure, climate controlled environment, and all documents are in acid free folders. We have a complete conservation lab and an active conservationist who repairs, mends, cleans, and makes custom enclosures for the documents,” Bond said.

As society moves more toward a digital world archives and manuscripts are also moving in that direction. With programs such as Griffin, Summit and E-journals, which allow students to see documents digitally, not only at their university but others within the program has made digitalization of archives a key part in making them accessible to students.

“MASC is convenient because it has a wide variety of materials available to WSU students. The materials cover a wide range of time periods. The Woolf library was added to the collection which I think is interesting because Virginia Woolf was such an influential American writer,” Megan Kozarek, a senior was WSU said

With more traffic on the website than in the department digital technology to be very organized and has allowed archives to out into the public sphere more.

When Bond came to WSU there were four collection guides and with the help of technology they have expanded and organized the materials into more than 800 collection guides. With space as a restriction digitalization of works allows for a lot more material to be stored.

“I think that archives and special are going to continue to thrive and become more visible. Libraries are becoming more homogeneous, digitally; UW is the same as WSU as UI the subscriptions are the same so the only thing that will make then more unique will be what they have in house, and so what they inside will set them apart,” Bond said.

As technology advances we adapt and move forward. These archives are a pinnacle part of our history and now though technology can be preserved forever.




Megan Kozarek
Majors: Anthropology and History
Email: megan@koszarek.org


Trevor James Bond
TJbond@wsu.edu

Rosa Pazhouh
student
rpazhouh@wsu.edu