From the Archivist

From 1938-1979, the Minnesota School of the Air brought educational programs into the classrooms of Minnesota and beyond over radio airwaves and through tape transcription. This episode takes listeners to Metropolitan Stadium to learn how to stay dry on a rainy day. 

While working with the University Archives collections to research a recent exhibit, I learned about Professor Lillian Cohen, the University of Minnesota's first female faculty member in the Department of Chemistry.

On this episode of U of M Radio on your Historic Dial take a field trip in sound to the Como Zoo in 1978 and hear a surprising story of an animal theft and why lions do not make good pets.

The 1868 Act to Re-Organize the University established the University's mission, an academic framework, and the governance and duties of University leadership. In many ways, these events of 150 years ago are the beginnings of the University of Minnesota we know today.

From its dedication as the Field House in 1928 to its remodeling and re-naming as Williams Arena in 1950 to today, "The Barn" has held a special place on campus.

On New Year's Eve 1927, former University President William Watts Folwell wrote to then President Lotus Coffman with a request. I beg leave to suggest...

On this installment of "U of M Radio on your Historic Dial," we’ll travel to the St. Paul campus to "A Clinic That’s for the Birds" – which also happens to be the title of the December 8, 1977 episode of Look What We Found.  If you haven’t yet deciphered the title of the broadcast, we are going on an audio tour of the Raptor Center.  The Raptor Center is a research and rehabilitation center for birds of prey which today cares for approximately 800 ill and injured raptors each year.

Today’s field trip in sound on the program "Look What We Found" is more of a staycation.  On the November 17, 1977 episode, program announcers Walter, Patty, and Bill, gave a tour of the KUOM radio studios and interviewed the staff at the station. 

Fifty years ago, on November 7, 1967, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed into law the Public Broadcasting Act which created the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the act, the American Archive of Public Broadcasting (AAPB) is encouraging organizations to share archival materials related to the history and preservation of public broadcasting. University of Minnesota Archives is happy to join them.

Students at the University have been writing — and publishing — opinions and short stories and literary criticism and jokes and poems and news stories since 1877. That's when the first student newspaper Ariel began publication. Its successor, the Minnesota Daily, has been in continuous publication since May 1, 1900.

In this week’s episode of Look What We Found, titled “In A Vietnamese Kitchen,” the producers teach an important lesson about cultural understanding by starting a conversation about cuisine. While interviewing the owner of Bamboo Village, Patty asked, “What made you decide to open a restaurant?” She replied, “I like a place where we can exchange the culture between the Vietnamese and the American and have something more to show, you know? We have a chance to interact with the American, to meet them on a day-to-day basis.” Episode 2, Season 2 of "U of M Radio On Your Historic Dial."

This year for U of M Radio On Your Historic Dial we’re going on a field trip in sound and time to the 1977-1978 season of the Minnesota School of the Air to look at what we found after these recordings were digitized and we were finally able to listen.

With the beginning of September, the start of the fall semester at the University of Minnesota brings the campus to life. This fall should be especially lively on the Twin Cities campus with the University welcoming its largest freshman class since 1970, celebrating the re-opening of the Tate Laboratory of Physics, and seeing the final stages of construction for the new Bell Museum of Natural History. In this post, we’re sharing a few of our historic campus photos and wishing everyone at the University of Minnesota a successful and engaging fall semester!

In the September/October (2017) issue of the Minnesota Conservation Volunteer, the young naturalists' article on "weird and wonderful" plants provides an array of fantastic images of lesser known native plant species. What follows are several images held in the University of Minnesota Archives that depict the "weird and wonderful" plants featured in this issue. Some of these photographs may be the oldest known images of these plants in Minnesota.

This installment U of M Radio On Your Historic Dial features Margeret Hasse on the KUOM program Minnesota Issues in her role as Executive Director for the Minnesota Alliance for Arts in Education. The year was 1984 and plans were underway for the establishment of an arts high school in Minnesota. Governor Rudy Perpich had implemented a task force to conduct a feasibility study for the establishment of the school. Can you guess what school this would become? That’s right, Minnesota was already laying the groundwork for the Perpich Center for Arts Education that operates today in Golden Valley. Not everyone was in favor of establishing a school that would centralize funding for arts education in the state. Margaret Hasse and the Minnesota Alliance for Arts in Education had concerns about the establishment of the school.