By Parker Thomas Staff writer
As part of the 2016 homecoming weekend, Susquehanna hosted its first “history harvest” in Blough-Weis Library on Sept. 10.
Initially started by the University of Nebraska, a history harvest is an event in which the history of a particular topic is gathered in the forms of physical objects and oral reports from the people that lived and experienced it.
In this case, Susquehanna librarians and students collected history of the campus, particularly artifacts surrounding the Crusader nickname in recognition of the changes that the university has been undergoing since last year, including the transition to the River Hawk nickname.
Alumni were invited to bring in Susquehanna affiliated and non-Susquehanna affiliated items that they treasured during their years here on campus. Items brought to the event were scanned or photographed, depending on if they were three-dimensional or not, and then returned to the owner. The photographs and scans are to be later added to the library’s digital archives, while items that were permanently donated to the library will be stored in the archives of the Blough- Weis Library.
As part of the process, students also interviewed participants and asked them to describe the history and the importance of the items they brought.
The student volunteers handled most of the operations of the history harvest, including the scanning and photographing of items.
The concept of holding a history harvest this September originally came to Rob Sieczkewicz, an instruction and digital scholarship librarian and head of the archives, during a conference last year where he observed people from the University of Nebraska presenting a lecture on their history harvest. Intrigued by the idea, Sieczkewicz told Ryan Ake, the outlook and collection development librarian, about the presentation. Ake liked the concept and, with the recent mascot name change from the Crusaders to the River Hawks, thought that this year would be a great time to institute the idea.
“We thought that with the major changes that have been happening with the university, particularly with the name and the mascot, this was a really good opportunity to do a harvest, specifically on the Crusader and the university history and how we evolved through time since we were the Missionary Institute,” Ake said. “Hopefully it’s an opportunity for the folks that were not particularly in favor of the change to showcase why the university is so important to them, why their time here was so important and why they might disagree with the change.”
A lot went into preparation for the event. “We coordinated with Alumni Relations and University Relations to help promote this event,” Ake said. “The bulk of work was in promotion, letting people know about the event and know what they could bring and then also coordinating the students’ schedules because they are such a prominent part of this process,” he added.
Among the items brought to the event were on campus photographs from people when they attended the university and athletic uniforms, which included a baseball uniform from the 1970s, a wrestling jacket, letterman football jackets and a cheerleader uniform.
Additional items included old cups from the university’s bookstore, Susquehanna ties, a glass mug given to a student after completing his biology capstone, shirts and hats from the university’s radio station, perspective notebooks for first-year students and a Build-a-Bear like Crusader Tiger from the mid-2000s.
Rarer items included a woman’s personal letter dating back to the mid-1960s from the president of the campus thanking her for her role in keeping the peace at a football game, where a particular incident occurred between a football player and his coach.
One man brought in his diploma from 1966, which was written on sheep skin and fully in Latin. On the back of his diploma was a translation written down by his Latin professor. Another item brought in was a program from when The Doors played at Susquehanna in 1967.
Some impressive materials where brought in by local history collector and alumni, Charles Fasold. Fasold’s father, two of his aunts, his grandmother and great-grandfather all attended Susquehanna. His grandmother’s uncle, John App, donated his farm land for Susquehanna to build on.
Fasold brought in some of the oldest items, which included broadsides advertising for football games. One was from 1919 for a game against Mt. Carmel. The other was from 1918 for a game between the Susquehanna Student Army Training Core, who went on to help within the medical fields in World War I, against Lebanon Valley. He also brought a poster from 1920 advertising a play put on by the all-men Student Varsity S Club called “Hello Cootie,” which featured a live jazz orchestra.
Fasold also brought in a picture of his grandmother along with some of her classmates holding their diplomas in 1893 when the university was still a missionary school. He also had with him her diploma for Latin Science, which was well preserved because it had remained unrolled until Fasold got a hold of it and framed it. Even older than that was an invite for a picnic on May 27, 1882 that Fashold acquired. The invite was for a picnic on Blue Hill, for which the students were transported up river by boat.
In the near future all of these items will be on display digitally with old video footage of the campus on a website that Sieczkewicz is creating with help from some the students that helped at the history harvest.
Other objects will be displayed according to topic every month in the library’s display case.
Both Sieczkewicz and Ake said they are hoping to continue with history harvests in the future, with one already planned for next month based on the community of Selinsgrove and Snyder county.