Exhibition Announcement: Staff Picks

University of Oregon’s Special Collections & University Archives (SCUA) is pleased to announce the opening of our summer term exhibition, Staff Picks.

SCUA is home to librarians, archivists and curators who come together to serve the community at the University of Oregon and beyond. Our work is varied and sometimes hidden, with material discovery happening in our offices and in the stacks. This eclectic exhibition brings together a few of those findings – our favorites to share.

Danielle Mericle, Curator of Visual Materials, leaned into her work as an artist in the selection of materials by Shelby Shackelford, an author and illustrator of works on natural history.

Alexa Goff, Accessioning and Processing Archivist, chose materials related to the organization of knowledge, place and space – map drawings by author Ursula Le Guin, an

artist’s book by Julie Chen, manuscript materials from the papers of writer Yoshiko Uchida and a copy of an early Enlightenment encyclopedia.

Lauren Goss, Reference Services Coordinator and Assistant University Archivist for Athletics, shares her expertise through a selection of materials from the first Olympic Village, built in Los Angeles in 1932.

Ben Murphy, University Archivist and Historian, presents a volume of Board of Regents meeting minutes documenting the early years of the University of Oregon.

While working at SCUA as a graduate intern, Austin Munsell, Assistant Director of Collections Management, discovered the “cool and creepy” drawings of Wallace Smith in the bottom of a folder.

Emily Moore, Instruction and Outreach Archivist, loves to spend time digging through the collections to find art, discovering inscriptions by Jean Cocteau and prints by early modernists.

The bindings of Cedric Chivers, selected by Ashlee Weitlauf, Collections Conservator, serve as an example of some of the fine bindings in SCUA, as well as offering insight into bookbinding method and practice.

Finally, SCUA Director David de Lorenzo offers an exemplary group of six Rubáiyát, attributed to Omar Khayyam (1048-1131), a Persian polymath known for his contributions to mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, and poetry.

This exhibition is the shared work of many of us at SCUA – extra thanks to Ashlee Weitlauf for exemplary contributions to exhibition presentation, and the Library Communications Team for their added support.

Staff Picks is on view in the Paulson Reading Room (second floor north, Knight Library) until early September.