The Oregon Historical Society’s research library reopened in October after nearly two years of renovation. The library’s collections include photographs, oral histories, diaries and other historical treasures. Shawna Gandy is the library director. She shares details about the library and its role in helping researchers and the general public connect to Oregon’s past.
The following transcript was created by a computer and edited by a volunteer:
Dave Miller: This is Think Out Loud on OPB. I’m Dave Miller. The Oregon Historical Society’s research library reopened in October after nearly two years of renovations. Its collections include photographs, oral histories, diaries and other historical artifacts. It’s the largest Oregon-specific collection in the world and once again it is open to the public. Shawna Gandy is a library director and joins us now. It’s good to have you on Think Out Loud.
Shawna Gandy: Thanks so much for having me. It’s an honor to be on Think Out Loud.
Dave Miller: Well, it’s great to have you on. What did the renovations entail?
Shawna Gandy: It was really a complete redo of the library in terms of taking things down, removing the carpet, removing the ceiling, doing some reconfiguration of spaces and opening things up and refreshing them. Our building was built in 1966 and the law library had been essentially untouched since then. So a lot of upgrades were needed.
Dave Miller: Has the idea of how a research library like this should function, has that changed significantly in almost 60 years?
Shawna Gandy: I would say it has changed. The basics are still the same. We are stuck in trade are the original materials that we have, those primary resources, firsthand accounts and people love to come in and use them hands on. For most of our collection, that’s what’s required. But more and more people also like to interact with things online, have things at their fingertips. So we have been making an effort to make as much of our collection available online as possible. The tiny fraction, the huge job, but I think expectations have changed a lot as people are more and more connected.
Dave Miller: The expectation is that if there is some photo in your archive or some bit of something that they should be able to see it online as well?
Shawna Gandy: That’s correct.
Dave Miller: Can you give us a sense for the breadth of the collection?
Shawna Gandy: Gosh, it’s really wide ranging. Our collecting focus is on Oregon history. But what Oregon is changes over time. The Oregon country is a very broad region that includes the entire Pacific Northwest. Further back in time, it’s a broader footprint and then narrows down to the state of Oregon. Although our collections do represent a lot of the Pacific Northwest and all kinds of topics from overland experience all the way up to the present day, we [also] have a large collection of gay and lesbian archives and just everything imaginable. I am never really surprised at this point that I find something that has to do with whatever questions somebody is looking for the answer to. We have film and photographs and sound recordings and publications and business papers, architectural plans, just the whole gamut.
Dave Miller: Maybe this is a hard question, like talking about someone’s favorite children or something, but do you have favorite parts of the collection?
Shawna Gandy: I think I have new favorites every day. There are some things that spring to mind. I can mention a few if you’d like me to go ahead.
Dave Miller: Yeah, please.
Shawna Gandy: One, going back to the early roots of the Oregon Historical Society as an offshoot of the Oregon Pioneer Association. We do have quite a few Oregon Trail diaries and among those, really one of my most favorite ones is a diary written by twin sisters, Cecilia Adams and Parthenia Blank. Their maiden names were McMillan and they were born in New York. They moved to Illinois, were married there and then came overland with their father. Their brother had already come over and with their husbands. They were 23 years old, and they wrote this diary on these large sheets of papers, not a bound thing. They wrote it together, so you can see that it’s in two hands. When it was originally published in 1904, it was published under the sole authorship of Cecilia Adams. But when, in fact, it was actually written by both of the sisters.
Dave Miller: And you can see the different handwriting on those pages?
Shawna Gandy: You absolutely can. If you dive deep into it, you can see different perspectives or just different ways of looking at things. Cecilia Adams writes poetry in the diary and then her sister has an account of Cecilia playing the accordion, which she said she did every night. So it’s just a really lovely piece and it’s also really informative, especially as they get closer and closer to their destination.
Dave Miller: How often do curious folks just show up, as opposed to historians or writers or researchers who have some kind of a professional reason for being there?
Shawna Gandy: It’s much better to come to our library to have a reason, and it doesn’t have to be a professional reason. It can be your own desire to understand your family, your neighborhood, some aspect of history that you’re really interested in. But we do have people who like to just come up and see what’s there. The challenge with that is that we are a special collections library so there aren’t a lot of things to see in the reading room. Everything is in closed stacks, which means that we retrieve materials.
Dave Miller: In other words, people have to know to ask you to retrieve something in order for them to even be able to see it. There has to be some knowledge. They can’t just browse.
Shawna Gandy: That’s correct. And that’s typical of a library like ours because we have so many special materials that are unique or rare. Also, people can’t check things out and take them out of the library. That’s important to understand.
Dave Miller: Where would you recommend that people start, though, if part of the mission of the Historical Society and the Library is to encourage people to know more about the state or the territories’ origins, this land’s history? Where could people start if they want to take advantage of the many resources you have in your holdings?
Shawna Gandy: Well, I would recommend a good place to start is online because we have a number of web resources that can help give people a grounding in the basics. We have a whole suite of digital history websites. The most prominent are the Oregon Encyclopedia and the Oregon History Project and those give really good contexts. The Oregon Historical Quarterly, which has been published by the Oregon Historical Society since 1900 is another good place to look. If folks want to come in and read general histories, we have those in our library as well. And normally, we’re open to the public set hours when people can come in, admission to the library is always free. Right now because of COVID, we’re open by appointment only. And that gives our librarians an opportunity to ask folks what it is that they want to research so that we can be prepared and have recommendations and have materials ready for them.
Dave Miller: Shawna Gandy, thanks very much for joining us today.
Shawna Gandy: Thank you so much.
Dave Miller: Shawna Gandy is the Director of the Oregon Historical Society’s research library, which is newly renovated and reopened after about two years of work.
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