October is American Archives Month!

What is an archives? An archives is a place where people go to find information. But rather than
gathering information from books as you would in a library, people who do research in archives
often gather firsthand facts, data, and evidence from letters, reports, notes, memos, photographs,
audio and video recordings, and other primary sources.

MSS 006 52-002 - Len Jordan and Dwight Eisenhower,
Western Governors Conference in Boise, 1952

Why do archives exist? In the course of daily life, individuals, organizations, and governments
create and keep information about their activities. Archivists are professionals who assess,
collect, organize, preserve, maintain control of, and provide access to the portions of this
information that have lasting value. Archivists keep records that have enduring value as reliable
memories of the past, and they help people find and understand the information they need in
those records.

Boise State University Special Collections and Archives in Albertsons Library holds more than 300 manuscript collections of letters, journals, diaries, scrapbooks, photographs, and other
primary-source materials that document Idaho history, particularly the Boise and Southwest Idaho, Idaho’s past and present political and environmental history, and the literary history of the state. Research topics include politics, environment, Basque culture, filmmaking, literature, ethnicity, gender, music, geosciences, and many others.

MSS 062 p11 - Article about the opening of the new student union
at Boise Junior College, 1942

The University Archives is the repository for university publications and the official records of the President, Faculty Senate, ASBSU, administrative offices, and academic departments. Materials include the student newspaper, university catalogs, budgets, yearbooks, photographs, audio and video, books, posters, and other ephemera. Research topics include faculty, students, campus life, buildings, academic departments, athletics, student organizations, and university departments.

Everyone is welcome to do research or just look at something you find interesting. We welcome students, staff, faculty, and anyone from the community. We hope you come visit!

Cheryl Oestreicher,
Head, Special Collections and Archives

Exhibit Celebrates 150 Years of Writing in Idaho

Albertsons library is celebrating the 150th year anniversary of the founding of the City of Boise AND the Idaho territory with an exhibition about the history of writing in Idaho and Boise.

Come see the exhibit, which will run through the summer, on the second floor. Some topics include: Famous Idaho Authors, Unique Idaho Fiction, Boise Environment, Boise Communities and more! All books, magazines and manuscripts used in the exhibit are from the Library’s Special Collections and Archives, which collects books and manuscripts about Idaho.

 Jim Duran,
Special Collections & Archives

Boise State University’s Gender Equity Center Celebrates 20th Anniversary This Fall

The Women's Center was founded in Fall 1992 and was organized by a group of students, faculty, staff, and HERSWest, Boise State’s Women’s Faculty/Staff Association. Its mission is “to empower students to achieve their goals and promotes social change by providing educational outreach, support services, and a safe place.” Funding for the Center’s creation was obtained by Dr. Larry Selland, interim president at the time.

The Center was signed into being as an official administrative unit on July 1, 1993, by Selland. The university provided the Center with funding and established an advisory board during this time. The educational outreach opportunities provided by the Gender Equity Center strives to raise awareness of policies, services, and programs at Boise State that affect women. It also provides a place to meet and study, and is located in the SUB on the second floor.

The Center is well documented in Special Collections and Archives through scrapbooks, photographs, event materials, newspaper articles, and correspondence. Newsletters and other publications produced by the Center, as well as items created for Women’s History Month are also housed in Special Collections.

The materials are open to the public.Materials in ScholarWorks on the Gender Equity Center include the annual booklet published in March during Women’s History Month titled “Women Making History.” The years span 2001-2011, and the collection may be viewed at the link below http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/wmh/ 

More information about the Gender Equity Center is available at their website, https://genderequity.boisestate.edu/.

[Update 12/13/17: The Women's Center changed its name to the Gender Equity Center in 2016]

Where do Special Collections and Archives come from?

Map of Minidoka Relocation Center in Hunt, Idaho.
Mildred Pieters Papers, Special Collections and Archives.

On the second floor of the library you’ll find exhibit cases that currently feature memorabilia
celebrating Boise State’s 80th anniversary. Behind those windows are hundreds of boxes and
cabinets full of memorabilia, papers, diaries, publications, letters, photographs, scrapbooks, oral
histories, and other unique items that document the university’s history as well as the history of
Boise and Southwest Idaho.

So how do those materials end up in Special Collections and Archives? The University Archives
is the repository for university publications and the official records of the President, Faculty
Senate, ASBSU, administrative offices, and academic departments. Materials include the student
newspaper, university catalogs, budgets, yearbooks, photographs, audio and video, books,
posters, and other ephemera. There are many departments on campus who automatically donate
material to the University Archives but we also actively ask people for items as well.

The collections about Boise and Idaho are different. Most often, I receive a call or email from
someone asking if we are interested. There are a variety of reasons why people contact me:
an organization is moving an office and no longer has room; an individual is cleaning out a
basement or attic; or perhaps a family member passed away and left material behind. I often visit
homes and offices to look at the collections and see if they are what we would like.

Our goal is to collect material that documents history and provides a resource for students,
faculty, genealogists, documentary filmmakers, journalists, authors, the community, and anyone
interested in research. We want to have material that will be used!

Recent acquisitions:

Political buttons
Posters of Cecil Andrus
Record albums of band concerts from the Southern Idaho Conference, Boise, and Ada County
Articles about Japanese internment camps
A manuscript and screenplay by Idaho author Michael Corrigan
Materials from the Nordic Voice Cross-Country Ski Association
Records of the Episcopal Diocese
Diaries from 1912-1984 of a Boise woman
Student papers about Latinos in Idaho

Search our collections: http://nwda-db.orbiscascade.org/nwda-search/advanced.aspx
Search select photographs: http://digital.boisestate.edu/
Search University Documents: http://scholarworks.boisestate.edu/uni_docs/

Cheryl Oestreicher, PhD
Head, Special Collections and Archives/Assistant Professor

Special Collections joins the Northwest Digital Archives

Idaho governor Len Jordan with nine other western governors and a campaigning Dwight D. “Ike”
Eisenhower. The Len Jordan Papers now have a detailed, folder-level finding aid in the Northwest Digital
Archives. Boise State University, Albertsons Library, Special Collections and Archives, Len B. Jordan
Papers, MSS6, Box 53, Photographs.

Boise State University Special Collections and Archives, with the assistance of a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, has joined the Northwest Digital Archives, also known as NWDA. The NWDA database provides enhanced access to archival collections and facilitates collaboration with archives, libraries, and museums in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska.  Boise State has joined the ranks of over 35 other archives in the Pacific Northwest Region and, at the time of this writing, have 132 searchable finding aids on the NWDA website.

In addition to the Finding Aids which already existed on the Special Collections website, there is a wealth of new information that is now available online.  For example, the research files of the Herstory Calendars of the 1980s, which contain biographical material about over 500 women of the Pacific Northwest: from Dorothy Arzner, motion picture director of California; to Emma Russell Yearian, sheep rancher of Idaho.

The NWDA project has made it possible to post full-text finding aids with detailed folder-level and sometimes item-level description for some of our largest collections, including the 776 linear feet of papers from Idaho’s four-term Senator and 1976 presidential candidate Frank Church as well as former Idaho governor and Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus, Senator Larry LaRocco, and former Senator and Governor Len Jordan.

One real world example of the advantage of having online Finding Aids is a past query for a Congressional committee report about Bangladesh’s independence titled “The Road to Jessore.” This report has not been published by the United States Superintendent of Documents or the Congressional Information Service, and no copies can be found in the OCLC’s WorldCat, the worldwide library. However, this unpublished report is available in the Frank Church Papers and easily findable by entering ‘Jessore’ in the search box of NWDA or by entering ‘“Road to Jessore” “Frank Church”’ into Google.  This is the only discoverable - and possibly the only surviving - copy of this important document.

The free Northwest Digital Archives database is located at http://nwda.orbiscascade.org . To find BSU Special Collections and Archives items, pull down the “Boise State University” option from the Advanced Search.

Kent Randell
Archivist, Albertsons Library Special Collections and Archives

Special Collections: Bronco Branding

“Fight Broncos, celebrate the orange and blue!” The first line of the Boise State fight song highlights the importance of the colors and mascot to the identity of the Boise State University. Blue and orange have always been a key part of school history and tradition and so has the school’s mascot, Buster Bronco. The colors and mascot were picked by the school’s basketball team in the very first school year in 1932. Preston Hale, a student athlete at the time recounts:

We checked the colors of all the schools in southern Idaho and eastern Oregon before we picked blue and orange…We didn’t want to double up on another school, and there was no other school with those colors. The same goes for [choosing] the mascot. There were a few schools along the Pacific Coast with the bronco as their mascot, but none [in the region] outside of California. 

In 1935 Boise Junior College students proudly showed their support for the Broncos with a wood and paper horse, nearly twenty feet high. The bronco was named Elmer, after Elmer Fox, one of the two yell leaders that built him. Elmer was paraded through downtown Boise during homecoming week and was left at city hall overnight. The tradition continued for at least another year when students made another bronco that was again paraded downtown. In 1936 the tradition expanded to a burning of the bronco the night before the big game. “Each year, ‘Elmer,’ symbol of Bronc prowess, is cremated and from his ashes rises the spirit of new conquests and victories.”

Idaho Statesman Photo. November 21, 1935. BJC students
parade Elmer, an enormous bronco through downtown Boise.

For many years Boise Junior College never had an official bronco logo. Students often created their own bronco character for publications and promotions. In 1955 a student organization created an insignia that caught on and was used widely for both athletic and academic purposes.

Insignia created by the Pi Sigma Sigma service organization.
See the BJC Roundup, October 4, 1955, page 1.
http://digital.boisestate.edu/cdm/ref/collection/archives/id/2215

When the school entered the Idaho state system as a four year university, additional attention was given to the branding of the school’s colors, mascot, and logos. A new “BSU” logo appeared on most academic and athletic items around campus. The Athletic Department also created its own unique mascot which was only used for athletic publications.  All of these new symbols of Boise State University made perfect branding symbols for the university bookstore.

Before the 1970s, most Boise State merchandise was either created by students and staff, or only used the Boise State seal as a symbol for the university. When the Student Union expanded into its current location, the bookstore was added to in both size and capacity. For decades the students bought their text books out of the basement of the Administration Building. In 1967, when the bookstore moved into the new Student Union, the bookstore also drastically expanded its Boise State University merchandise, for sale to both students and the public.

Students posing with Bronco merchandise. University Archives photo AR 013897.

From then on, the bookstore has continued to sell t-shirts, hats, bags, and other merchandise to promote the university and help students and supporters show school spirit. Boise State University has continued to establish its brands and marks for its unique identity – including the Blue Turf -- one of the most recognizable sports complexes in the country.

Today the Boise State brand receives the full attention of the University Administration. “The Office of Trademark Licensing and Enforcement serves the University by promoting and protecting its name, marks, colors, brands, and all identifiable properties.”  The university uses most of the revenue generated from selling merchandise for student scholarships. In 2011, the Boise State bookstores raised approximately $2 million for the general scholarship fund.

To view historic examples of Boise State Broncos click here.

To read more about the Office of Trademark Licensing and Enforcement click here.

Click here to view Bronco merchandise.

Jim Duran,
Special Collections