By sheer serendipity, I found a very interesting book in the stacks this morning. It is titled “Early Dorm Daze” written by Wilna “Mom” Koch, who was the Director of Dormitories at the UM in the early days. Students affectionately called her “Mom,” as she treated them as her own children. The essay is 24-pages long and was printed circa 1954.
Please come visit the library and read Mom’s own story of her years at the University.(click the link below for bibliographic info) I appreciate the author writing the wonderful story and donating it to the library.
In January 2012, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) launched an innovative crowdsourcing program called “National Archives Transcription Pilot Project,” which allows participants to look at historical photographs and documents to identify the people, transcribe the documents, and add comments to them.
Such information would be shared with others, who could add to the work or correct it. The Archivist and Metadata librarian will review the information, verify facts, and post the information on the website.
Crowdsourcing can help build a virtual community, engage students, faculty, staff, and alumni, and build a large knowledge database about the people and programs of the University of Miami.
Can you name someone in the picture above? Are you there or do you know someone in the group? When was it taken? Where on campus? What was the occasion? Currently, we can only describe the image as a group of female students, and we assume it was taken during the 1950s.
Please go to the link below and click the words “Tags” and/or “Comments” at the bottom of the page to name the students and tell us something about the picture.
My colleague Matt Carruthes, Metadata Librarian, has written a wonderful instructional document titled “UM Historical Photographs Crowdsourcing Guidelines and Directions.” Please contact me if you would like to obtain it by email.
We look forward to hearing from you on thousands of images in the historical image collection! Please contact me if you have any questions or need further assistance.
In University Archives, cheerleaders from another era sport an M rather than the now-familiar U.
Southern Suns and Sky Blue Water Showcases Student Life Over the Decades
University of Miami Libraries University Archives’ exhibition, Southern Suns and Sky Blue Water, is on display through January 2014 at the Otto G. Richter Library, and features photographs, fanfare, memorabilia, and publications that reflect student life at the University during the 1960s, 1980s, and early 2000s.
“There is a vibrant history here at UM,” says Koichi Tasa, University archivist and the exhibition’s lead curator. He notes that the exhibition’s title, the first line of the University’s Alma Mater, alludes to the timeless backdrop that unifies University athletics, student activities, and campus events across many generations.
Among the exhibition’s ’60s generation mementos is a vintage photograph of soul music pioneer Ray Charles performing at the UM Homecoming Concert in 1963, just two years after the University officially desegregated the campus. Research Services Supervisor Marcia Heath, a curator of the exhibition, said that Charles’s performance was a catalyst in raising morale among the student body during the racially charged period.
“These materials really show us where we’re coming from…how far we’ve come,” she said, also referring to the transformation in the University’s physical campus. One 1962 photograph of the Richter Library shows the completion of the main floors and stacks addition, which earned a design award by Florida Architect in 1964. The library now houses a print collection of more than four million volumes.
The exhibition, also curated by Education and Outreach Librarian William Jacobs and Special Collections Research Assistant Steve Hersh, includes IBIS yearbook spreads chronicling the evolution of traditions like Carni Gras, where students in the ’60s and ’80s strutted in high gear to embrace the Carnival spirit.
The exhibition even houses traditional fanfare such as a dink, once-required headgear freshmen sported until Miami’s first touchdown, and then tossed into the air. “Like the world, the University is changing daily,” said Cynthia Cochran, director of alumni programs. “The opportunity to visit some artifacts from those periods only enriches [alumni’s] visit back to campus, for some of whom it has been 50 years.”
Since he started at the University Archives in 2007, Tasa has worked closely with the UM Alumni Association. In 2010 artist Jacobina Trump created a mural at the Alumni Center, inspired by collection materials, conveying an unchanging horizon over the many generations to walk the campus. Like the exhibition, it also bears the words Southern Suns and Sky Blue Water. “Those words hit home for us all,” Tasa said.
Recently, I stumbled upon an amazing YouTube video titled “Roads to Romance: Coral Gables, Florida, Sunland on Biscayne Bay” presented by Chevrolet in 1950.
It is a wonderful promotional film for Miami and Coral Gables in Technicolor. Also, it is an excellent visual documentary for the University of Miami, because the first one third of the three minute footage shows off the stunning Coral Gables Campus in 1950.
I was so surprised to hear the name “Miami” pronounced differently, the university buildings looked brand new and modern, and the campus was so open and spacious then.
In late October, we received an out-of-town researcher. The friendly woman looked straight at me, shook my hand enthusiastically, and said “Hello, I am from the Brockway Museum!” The name rang a bell right away, because everyone at Richter Library calls the name at least once a day.
Mr. George A. Brockway was one of the first major supporters of the university library. He was an industrialist from Cortland, NY, wintered in Miami Beach, and in October 1943 he gave $100,000 in war bonds for a new library funding. For him the Brockway Lecture Hall in the Otto G. Richter Library was named.
The researcher seemed very pleased to know Mr. Brockway’s contributions for the Library and other University causes have been documented in University’s historical collections and we could produce copies of them while she waited. Later, we have also sent a complementary high-resolution image of Mr. Brockway presenting a check to the UM’s first president Dr. Ashe from the Historical Photograph Collection (below) for the museum.
Please go to the link below to research and browse the University of Miami Historical Photograph Collection.
University of Miami Archives -- Let's Archive It 