From the Archivist

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.

In this episode of U of M Radio On Your Historic Dial, you’re going to hear about an explosive week on the University of Minnesota campus, which occurred during an era of global tension, when the political felt intensely personal, especially to students and other young people. Forty-five years ago this month, anti-war protests in and around the University of Minnesota boiled over as angry demonstrators and police clashed in the streets.

May 7 marked the anniversary of the Guthrie Theater’s first ever performance in 1963, a production of Hamlet starring George Grizzard and Jessica Tandy. In this episode of "U of M Radio On Your Historic Dial," we’ll hear Sir Tyrone Guthrie explain his vision of the future of American theater in his own words, followed by interviews with the Guthrie staff from ten years later.

Science is at the forefront of this episode of U of M Radio on Your Historic Dial. In the late 1980s, there was a growing consensus that within 20 years, we would see a dearth of graduates in science-based fields, an issue that spurred the creation of today’s featured program, "Science Lives: Women and Minorities in the Sciences."

It’s starting to feel like spring, or what this Minnesota transplant refers to as “outside time.” With so much natural recreation to offer, it’s no surprise that Minnesota has a strong culture of conservation that goes back decades. Earth Day isn’t until April 22, but on this week’s program, Down the Conservation Trail, we’re getting a head start.

Welcome back to U of M Radio on Your Historic Dial! The podcast has returned in time for Women’s History Month. The KUOM archive is full of interviews, lectures, and stories featuring dynamic, history-making women. Today, we will focus on a program featuring Minnesota Legislature Representative Helen McMillan, on the state of women’s rights in 1971.

  The University of Minnesota Archives is celebrating Women's History Month with a series of social media posts on Twitter. The University of Minnesota has been...

Hedley Donovan is the subject of this installment of "From the Archivist." Donovan, University of Minnesota alumnus, '34, was a prominent and successful journalist. While attending the University, Donovan was editorial chairman of the student newspaper, the Minnesota Daily. His journalism career spanned four decades, beginning as a reporter with the Washington Post and ending as Editor-in-Chief for Time Inc., where he oversaw Time, Fortune, Money, Life, Sports Illustrated, and People magazines.

To start the new year, this month we are focusing on the Minnesota School of the Air programming. Our episode today — from from Old Tales and New — achieved a national award for Education by Radio and for its timeless lesson. Betty T. Girling wrote the stories as well as a few adaptations heard on this program for approximately 38 of the 41 years this program aired, 1938 until 1979. This particular episode