Van Pelt and Opie Library Blog

Please join us for a presentation by visiting scholar Camden Burd at 4:00 pm on Tuesday, October 14 in the East Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library on the Michigan Technological University campus. This event is free of charge and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

In this presentation, Burd will address an environmental approach to the history of natural resource extraction in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Where once the Upper Peninsula was a booming industrial region, it is now a draw for vacationers to experience its sprawling forests and apparent wilderness. Between this era of environmental degradation and natural appreciation, there were disputes over the future of the U.P.’s environments. In the midst of the environmental movement of the 1960s and 1970s many voices attempted to understand, define, and direct how the Upper Peninsula would be perceived by future generations. This talk examines the different voices of the environmental movement and show the complexities behind today’s UP environmental identity.

Camden Burd is a PhD student at the University of Rochester where he studies American Environmental History. He earned his MA in History from Central Michigan University and BA of History from the University of Utah. He has received numerous travel funds from Central Michigan University and was the recipient of the Grace H. Magnaghi Visiting Research Grant at Northern Michigan University to study the environmental perceptions of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Originally from Grand Rapids, Michigan he is especially interested in the environments of the Great Lakes Region and the connection between people and place.

Burd’s research visit and presentation are supported by a travel grant from the Friends of the Van Pelt Library. Since 1988, the Michigan Technological University Archives Travel Grant program has helped scholars advance their research by supporting travel to the manuscript collections at the Archives.

For more information, feel free to call the Michigan Tech Archives at 906-487-2505, email at copper@mtu.edu, or visit on the web athttp://www.lib.mtu.edu/mtuarchives/.

The Library is sponsoring a trial of ARTstor through Oct 3, 2014. ARTstor contains over 1.8 million images from museums, libraries, artists and scholars around the world. The images are cross-disciplinary and include visual arts as well as other forms of visual culture.

ARTstor can be found on the Library website in the Database A-Z list. Going through the library site will make use from off-campus possible through your campus login.
http://www.lib.mtu.edu/eresources/eressearch/eressearch.aspx

Explore this resource and let us know whether it is useful to your studies, teaching and / or research.

Send responses to collman@mtu.edu

Anthropologist Carol MacLennan from Michigan Tech’s Department of Social Sciences will offer remarks and a slide presentation on her recently published work, Sovereign Sugar: Industry and Environment in Hawai’i. The book unravels the tangled relationship between the sugar industry and Hawai’i’s cultural
and natural landscapes. It is the first work to fully examine the complex tapestry of socioeconomic, political, and environmental forces that shaped sugar’s role in Hawai’i.

New Date: Tuesday, September 30th
4:00 pm
East Reading Room
Van Pelt and Opie Library

This event is part of the library’s Nexus: The Scholar and the Library series. Join us at 4 pm for refreshments. The talk begins at 4:15 pm.
Parking on campus is free after 4 pm.

Michigan Technological University’s Van Pelt and Opie Library welcomes alumni, family and friends to visit the library for special services and exhibits during Alumni Reunion. Our Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections staff encourages visits and will have expanded hours.

SPECIAL HOURS DURING ALUMNI REUNION

The archives reading room will be open Th. (Aug. 7) – Fri. (Aug. 8), 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

LIBRARY TOURS

Thursday, August 7

Take a guided tour of the library’s resources and services. Tours begin at the Library and IT Service Center. No need to sign up in advance. Tours begin at 10AM, 1PM and 7PM.

EXHIBITS

Michigan Tech Remembers When…

Location: Library Main Entrance Hallway

The main hall past the Library and IT Service Center will feature an exhibit, Michigan Tech Remembers When…. This exhibit showcases early photographs from campus and student life as well as a display case showing a progression of Michigan Tech’s visual identity through the years.

Yearbooks and University Publications
Location: Archives Reading Room

Yearbooks and other university books are available for browsing in one of the archives’ book case displays.  This is a nearly complete range of Keweenawan yearbooks from 1924-2002 and a copy of the Engineer from 1915. The display case also includes popular university publications such as the book Michigan Tech Centennial 1885-1985, alumni bulletins from the Michigan College of Mining and Technology (MCMT), the MCMT Freshman Bible, and various years of the University’s Winter Carnival Pictorial. Also available for viewing: Lode on microfilm: 1921-2005 (digital copies of the Lode from 2009-2014 available on their website: http://issuu.com/michigantechlode), Michigan Tech vertical files: newspaper clippings and printed ephemera related to campus activities, sports, organizations, and academics, and Michigan Tech photo vertical files: photos related to campus activities, sports, organizations, and academics. Photocopies are available.

North to Adventure: A New Old Perspective of the Upper Peninsula

Location: Archives Reading Room

In the 1960s two tourists, Harold and Beatrice Putnam, visited the Copper Country and documented their journey with a Rolleiflex twin lens reflex camera. Ultimately, the images from this trip made their way into the Putnam’s self-published travel guide, North to Adventure in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

The Putnam’s photographs capture the landscape of the Copper Country, an important part of the Michigan Tech experience.

Keweenaw Exhibit

Location: Hallway just outside the main entrance to the Archives Reading Room

This exhibit is an installation of photos related to University and community history. The exhibit is divided into four series; Early Keweenaw, Changing Campus, Town & Gone, and Copper Mines and Miners. This exhibit is in memory of our former Student Assistant, Jonathan DeCleene (1987-2007). Financial support for this exhibit was provided by Jonathan’s family, Gloria Kennedy and Valerie DeCleene, and the Friends of the Van Pelt Library.

Please join us for visiting scholar Shannon Kirkwood at 4:00 pm on Thursday July 17 in the East Reading Room of the Van Pelt and Opie Library on the Michigan Technological University campus. This event is free of charge and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

In this presentation, Kirkwood will address the politics of female space in a male-dominated labor movement, as well as class consciousness based home, kin and neighborhood networks. These themes will be discussed in the contexts of the Copper Country, Seattle and Glasgow.

Kirkwood is a doctoral student at Central Michigan University and a recent presenter at “Retrospection and Respect: the 1913-1914 Mining/Labor Strike Symposium of 2014”. Her research has focused on the participation of miners’ wives in the 1913-14 Copper Strike and the indirect relationship these women had with the mining companies, their relationships with their men, and their relationships with each other.

Kirkwood’s research visit and presentation are supported by a travel grant from the Friends of the Van Pelt and Opie Library. Since 1988, the Michigan Tech Archives Travel Grant program has helped scholars advance their research by supporting travel to the manuscript collections at the Archives.

For more information, feel free to call the Michigan Tech Archives at 906-487-2505, email at copper@mtu.edu, or visit them on the web at http://www.lib.mtu.edu/mtuarchives/.

The Van Pelt and Opie Library will offering a repeat of our workshop, “Copyright and Your Thesis or Dissertation” on Thursday, May 29, 2014 at 2:00pm.

This workshop will examine the role U.S. Copyright law plays in the thesis or dissertation writing and publishing process. The use of copyrighted material, publishing agreements and the role of the Digital Commons at Michigan Tech repository will be explored.

The workshop will be held in room 242 of the Van Pelt and Opie Library and is limited to 25 attendees. Register at Copyright by Friday, May 22nd. For questions, please contact Nora Allred, Scholarly Communications and Copyright Librarian at nsallred@mtu.edu.

100 years ago, our nation was rocked by incidents that shook our community to its core. Labor challenged management, neighbor fought neighbor, and children died. Finnish immigrants played a major role in the strike at the heart of this turmoil, and have continued to be a major influence in the community today. Thus, it is only natural that the two events investigating these themes be brought together to form a unified experience.

Retrospection and Respect: 1913-1914 Mining/Labor Strike Symposium of 2014

Retrospection & Respect: Michigan’s 1913-1914 Mining/Labor Strike Symposium is to be held in Houghton, Michigan, April 11-12, 2014, on the occasion of the centennial of the cessation of the 1913-1914 Western Federation of Miners labor strike against copper mining companies in the Copper Country of Upper Michigan. Presenters will explore the role of labor organizations in the historical and contemporary American and European mining industries, the effect of historical European immigration on labor organization, the impacts of early twentieth century labor organizational practices and strikes on American managerial practices in mining and other industries, and women’s activism in early twentieth century labor organization in mining and other industries, as well as other topics connecting issues of ethnicity, identity, class, gender, and other cultural divisions to civic discourse and the historic struggle for civil liberties within industry. The symposium is co-sponsored by Michigan Technological University’s Archives and Copper Country Historical Collections, the Department of Social Sciences, and the Department of Humanities, the Keweenaw National Historical Park, and Finlandia University’s Finnish American Heritage Center and Historical Archives..

FinnForum X: Work, Workers, and the Finn Factor in 20th Century Labor Relations: Strikes, Political Economy, and Transnationalism

The symposium is being held in conjunction with the 2014 meeting of FinnForum, a professional association of researchers who investigate northern European migration to the United States. Presenters will address a range of disciplinary perspectives on topics such as fraternal organizations in labor movements, the development of corporate power in mining districts, ethnic identity, and image-making through labor-themed music. FinnForum X is sponsored by the Institute of Migration in Turku, Finland and the University of Turku’s History Department, along with Finlandia University’s Finnish American Heritage Center and Historical Archives, with support from Michigan Technological University’s Department of Humanities.

Special Exhibits and Events

To commemorate the event, several special exhibits will be on display in the area. The “Tumult and Tragedy: Michigan’s 1913-1914 Copper Strike” exhibit, produced by the Michigan Tech Archives, will be on display in the first floor lobby of the J. Robert Van Pelt and John and Ruanne Opie Library on Michigan Tech’s campus. This exhibit chronicles one of the confrontations between organized labor and mining companies. There will be even more to see at Finlandia University’s Finnish American Historical Archives’ reading room. Displayed for the first time, courtesy of the Keweenaw National Historical Park, there will be an exhibit of the two lithographs that were hanging on either side of the Italian Hall lodge room stage the night of the Christmas Eve disaster in 1913. One features the Italian royal family, circa 1908, and the other depicts a montage of the five founders of the modern Italian state, circa 1905. In addition to the exhibits currently on display, the Finnish American Historical Archives’ will be featuring artifacts from the Italian Hall, as well as “People Place and Time: Michigan’s Copper Country Through the Lens of J. W. Nara (1874-1934),” produced by the Michigan Tech Archives.

On Thursday, there will two showings of a special feature for the Nordic Film Series at Finlandia University, the film “To My Son in Spain: Finnish Canadians in the Spanish Civil War.” Filmmaker Dr. Saku Pinta will be present to field questions. Friday morning, the Finnish American Heritage Center will be sponsoring a morning open house with refreshments. Later in the day, FinnForum X will be offering a 3 hour tour of the area on the Red Jacket Trolley company, departing from Finlandia University. See the full schedule of events.

Registration

Attendees have the option of registering for any combination of three separate portions of the joint event. Registration for the presentation series is $30.00 and includes a Friday reception featuring special guest speaker David Salmela, concurrent sessions on Saturday from the 1913-1914 Mining/ Labor Strike series and FinnForum X series, as well as a light networking breakfast and lunch. Registration for the keynote dinner, to be held Saturday evening, is $25.00. FinnForum X is also offering a 3 hour tour of the area on the Red Jacket Trolley from 1:00-4:00 on Thursday for $15.00. Seats for the trolley tour are limited, so attendees are advised to reserve a spot as soon as they are able. The registration deadline is April 9, 2014. Walk-in registrants are welcome, but meal tickets will not be available. Register now using our online store.