Tagged: university archives

Spotlight Exhibit for the UO’s Doris Ulmann photographs collection goes live!

I am excited to announce the publication of the Spotlight exhibit for the University of Oregon’s Doris Ulmann photographs collection (1914-1934). It is now available on the University of Oregon (UO) Libraries digital exhibits page at https://expo.uoregon.edu/spotlight/doris-ulmann. In this exhibit, viewers can access over 2,000 digital images featuring Ulmann’s work sorted by topic and region. 

The exhibit features rarely seen photographs documenting social and cultural history in the American South during the Great Depression in the early 1930s. Subjects include portraits of Appalachians, rural women, literary faces, African Americans, Gullah peoples, school photography (featuring the Hindman Settlement School and Berea College), and candid depictions of American life. Ulmann’s photographs also show detailed images of Appalachian craftspeople quilting, whittling, hooking rugs, spinning, and making baskets, among other activities. 

Exhibit image examples:

Tess Ledford, Mountain Weavers (1920/1934)

African-American woman and boy (1920/1934)

Who was Doris Ulmann?

Doris Ulmann (1882-1934) was a photographer from New York City whose early work featured celebrity portraits of prominent intellectuals, artists, and writers. By 1925, her primary aim was to preserve rural traditions in the American South through documenting Appalachian and Gullah community members. Her later materials include the original photographs featured in Julia Peterkin’s Roll, Jordan, Roll (1933) of the African American Gullah community in South Carolina. From 1927, Ulmann was assisted on her rural travels by John Jacob Niles, a musician and folklorist who collected ballads while Ulmann photographed. Her work is most notable for her profound respect for her sitters and ethnographic eye for culture. 

Unfortunately, our understanding of Ulmann is hindered by the fact that very little of her own words and writings remain. An early pictorialist photographer, Ulmann adopted more modernist practices as her work evolved, generating important documentary work focused on the Appalachian and Gullah communities.  Even a cursory review of her work reveals a talented, yet woefully under-recognized photographer. In seeking to understand Ulmann’s significance, it is necessary to understand the role of women in the photographic world during that time frame in addition to surrounding sociological factors. In this light, Ulmann’s work offers a rich opportunity for researchers to investigate the social factors that generate an artistic audience, how particular images gain validity, and which photographers receive renown in the public consciousness (Kowalski, 2000).

How did this project come to be?

This project began in June 2020 as part of a student internship opportunity involving a cross-section of University of Oregon Library departments, including staff from Digital Collections, Digital Scholarship Services, and Special Collections and University Archives. The Doris Ulmann photographs collection was acquired by the University of Oregon in 1954, and has since gone through several iterations of reorganization and digitization. This has resulted in a number of remediation issues for the collection, and it was therefore selected as a focus project for my student internship. 

The main goals for this project were to both address the collection’s remediation needs, and also provide me, as the student intern, with a professional development opportunity to learn more about the management, description, preservation, and access of digital library collections overall. Tasks included working with a team of librarians and archivists to identify remediation goals to fix the description and subject headings for over 1,800 items stored on Oregon Digital in addition to learning about Spotlight exhibit creation for the collection. Through this project, I was able to improve my skills in metadata application, data modeling standards for digital collections, and written protocols outlining workflows and documentation for metadata remediation.

Student intern, Leslie Harka, reviewing photo albums containing Doris Ulmann’s work. Photographer: Danielle Mericle

Example of album photograph, pending digitization.
Untitled (1920/1934)

The end result led to the successful metadata remediation of 1,800 photographs as well as the application of metadata description for over 300 newly-digitized prints. This translates into increased discoverability of the collection within the UO’s digital repository (Oregon Digital, viewable at https://oregondigital.org/sets/doris-ulmann), as well as across internet search engines. This effort has directly impacted the online presence of an underappreciated and lesser known female photographer from the early 20th century and features the role of the University of Oregon in preserving her work. On a professional level, the remediation I completed for the Ulmann collection and the current Spotlight exhibit represents not only my goals of gaining insight in collections processing and digitization strategies but also the Digital Collections departmental goals of enhancing collections through improved metadata application and promotion of culturally significant collections.

Future Work and Limitations

Digitization of the UO’s Ulmann collection is ongoing. In its entirety, the collection includes over 10,000 archival images featuring vintage prints, proof prints, and glass-plate negatives. Staff are currently processing an additional upload of six newly-digitized albums to the exhibit within the next couple of months. 

Example of forthcoming album images (pending digitization):

Untitled (1920/1934)

Untitled (1920/1934)

Previous digitization was completed with low-resolution quality images. Future work may entail the digitization of the entire collection as well as re-digitization of previously uploaded images. This work would ensure that each photo is made available at the highest possible quality.

Previous low-resolution digitization: New high-resolution digitization:

Woman and child in front of block quilt (1920/1934)

Woman with child (1914/1934)

Additionally, metadata remediation and other descriptive work for this collection is inherently limited by the knowledge and experience of current staff involved in the project. Future work would benefit from community engagement efforts to connect with the communities represented in Ulmann’s work and seek input regarding how the collection is described and represented. Additional promotional outreach would also serve to enhance awareness and access for potential use of these materials and avail the UO’s archival resources to a broader effort. Outreach could include contacting historical and cultural institutions focused on preserving the history of the American South, including African American, Gullah peoples, and Appalachian cultural heritage institutions. Such efforts would increase awareness regarding newly available cultural resource materials that are freely accessible and unrestricted by copyright. 

To view the exhibit, please visit https://expo.uoregon.edu/spotlight/doris-ulmann. Alternatively, this photographic collection can also be accessed on Oregon Digital at https://oregondigital.org/sets/doris-ulmann.

Acknowledgements

This project was generously funded by the University of Oregon Libraries Strategic Student Employment Fund of 2020/2021.  Importantly, this project would not have been possible without the support, expertise, and mentorship of the following people:

  • Sarah Seymore, Digital Collections Metadata Librarian, Collection Services
  • Danielle Mericle, Curator of Visual Resources, Special Collections and University Archives
  • Alex Bisio, Lead Processing Archivist, Special Collections and University Archives
  • Julia Simic, Assistant Director of Digital Scholarship Services, Digital Production and Preservation
  • Randy Sullivan, Digital Production Manager, Digital Scholarship Services
  • Alexa Goff, Special Projects Processing Archivist, Special Collections and University Archives

Citations

Kowalski, S. (2000). Fading light: the case of Doris Ulmann. University of Oregon.

Roll, Jordan, roll. Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill. unattributed. “The stuff of American drama in photographs by Doris Ulmann,” Theatre Arts Monthly, v. 14 pp. 132-146. New York, NY: Theatre Arts, Inc.

New Accessions: Track and Field Materials

SCUA recently received two accessions documenting UO track and field history.  The items were donated by two alumni, Clayton Steinke and Kenny Moore, who competed during the 1960s under head coach Bill Bowerman.  These new materials complement existing administrative and coaching collections, but also contribute to understanding the unique perspective of the student-athlete.  Coincidentally, both accessions include uniforms that provide a visual component of the legacy of UO track and field.

In 1962, four members of the UO team broke the world record for the four by one mile relay.  Later that year, Steinke served as an alternate runner on the UO team invited to compete in the same relay distance in a meet against the New Zealand national team.  As representatives of both the United States of America, and the University of Oregon, Bowerman devised a unique uniform.  In order to satisfy the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union), the resulting singlet and shirt include references to the AAU and USA, but also pays homage to the University of Oregon. In addition to his uniform, Steinke donated his letterman’s jacket, scrapbooks, a memoir, correspondence and photographs.

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Progress With Limits: President Olum’s Quest for Change

This is the ninth of a series of blog posts highlighting the ongoing work of the Documenting UO History Project within the University Archives. A major part of this project is researching and documenting the often untold and hidden histories of the university’s diverse and underrepresented communities. This year our focus will continue to highlight Black history on campus, specifically Black student activism from the 1960s to present. Prior posts can be seen here.

The Governor — and others — have complained that President Olum can’ t have it both ways — continue to assert that the University of Oregon is of the quality of some of the best public universities in the United States and argue at the same time that faculty salaries at the University of Oregon are abysmally low compared with other institutions, and that this makes it extremely difficult to compete in the hiring of the best young faculty and in retaining our leading senior faculty against very large offers from various universities. Now, the truth is that it really is both ways. Our salaries are terribly, dangerously low and yet we are surely among the best 20 public universities in the United States and, in a number of areas, significantly better even than that.                            -President Olum, State of the university Address, 1987

Wartime ID badge photo of Paul Olum, courtesy  Los Alamos National Laboratory

Paul Olum stepped into the role of university president at Oregon with decades of academic experience. Having just served as provost at the University of Oregon, Olum had been groomed to take over for President Boyd (see previous post on Boyd).  Olum started his illustrious academic career in mathematics, even working on the Manhattan Project at one point.  He earned his bachelors in physics from Princeton in 1940, an M.A in physics from Princeton in 1942, and a PhD in mathematics from Harvard in 1947. Olum later served as a very popular and distinguished professor of mathematics at Cornell, and had a short stint at the University of Texas before beginning his tenure at Oregon.

Olum quickly developed a positive repoire with both students and staff.  Politically progressive, Olum publically called for nuclear disarmament and fought to make the University of Oregon more inclusive for all students. Although Olum’s tenure avoided the contention that filled the 1960s and 1970s, Olum faced recurring budget restraints and struggled to recruit more minority students to the Eugene campus.

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The Bureaucracy and Red Tape: President Boyd’s Obstacles to Change at UO

This is the eighth of a series of blog posts highlighting the ongoing work of the Documenting UO History Project within the University Archives. A major part of this project is researching and documenting the often untold and hidden histories of the university’s diverse and underrepresented communities. This year our focus will continue to highlight Black history on campus, specifically Black student activism from the 1960s to present. Prior posts can be seen here.

President Boyd and “Animal House Director John Landis 1977, Courtesy University of Oregon Libraries

President William Beaty Boyd served as the University of Oregon President from 1975 to 1980. Boyd is remembered for restructuring the universities administration, and giving the provost predominant control of daily operations. He also worked with production crews from the creators of “Animal House,” and secured a contract so that the Oregon campus could serve as a backdrop for the film. Boyd’s tenure followed an incredibly contentious time for the university, though Boyd enjoyed a relatively calm period for the university. This post highlights his brief tenure and specific achievements related to committees and minority activism.

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A Step In the Right Direction: Honoring DeNorval Unthank, Jr.

This is the seventh of a series of blog posts highlighting the ongoing work of the Documenting UO History Project within the University Archives. A major part of this project is researching and documenting the often untold and hidden histories of the university’s diverse and underrepresented communities. This year our focus will continue to highlight Black history on campus, specifically Black student activism from the 1960s to present. Prior posts can be seen here.

DeNorval Unthank Jr. 1951, The Oregon Quarterly, Vol. 90 No. 3

Until recently, DeNorval Unthank Jr.’s remarkable life was a perfect example of how black history at the University of Oregon and Eugene has been suppressed. Despite graduating from the University of Oregon Architecture program in 1952, becoming an accomplished architect and professor at Oregon, and even designing prominent buildings throughout Eugene and on campus, his story remained, for the most part, untold. In fact, outside of historians and a select few community members, it is difficult to find someone in Eugene who is familiar with Unthank Jr.’s work, legacy, and strong connections to the University of Oregon. Fortunately, recent events and the building renaming process of Cedar Hall has brought Unthank Jr. well-deserved recognition. In late May, University of Oregon President Michael Schill announced that Cedar Hall would be named after Unthank Jr. after months of deliberating on potential name options ranging from Mabel Byrd to Unthank Jr. We are honored to highlight his life and career as a professor and prominent Eugene architect.

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