Primary Sourcery

Trees and their fruits have taken over the display cases in the Andersen Horticultural Library and Minnesota Landscape Arboretum Visitor’s Center to illustrate "Turning over a New Leaf." The exhibit, co-curated by Andersen Librarian Kathy Allen and Library Assistant Adrienne Alms, accords with the Arboretum’s theme for this summer — the Season of Trees. The exhibit runs through Oct. 31 at the Andersen Horticultural Library, open Tuesday-Friday, 9 a.m.-4:30 p.m., Saturday 10 a.m.-4:30 p.m. on the grounds of the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.

Formerly a student staff employee in the U of M's Performing Arts Archives, Joseph Moen brings prior research experience and a strong measure of enthusiasm to the work, as helps researchers uncover and use material deep in the archives.

World War I, the Great Depression, and immigration all contributed to a growing number of people who were unattached — unmarried and not linked to communities in significant ways. To study these single people, most of whom were men, Doris Brossard, a doctoral student of modern U.S. history, gender, and women’s history at Rutgers University, recently came to the University Libraries to access the Social Welfare History Archives and the Kautz Family YMCA Archives.

Collecting materials about the University’s response to COVID is not only important, "It's critical," says Professor Michael T. Osterholm, Director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) at the University of Minnesota. “If we are not to repeat ourselves, we best learn from this information,” says Osterholm, an infectious-disease expert, best-selling author, frequent news source, and member of then President-elect Joe Biden's Transition COVID-19 Advisory Board. 

Erika Lee wrote an opinion piece published in the Los Angeles Times on July 4, titled: "What does it mean to be American? Ask an immigrant." The Regents Professor of History and Asian American Studies traced American xenophobism — fear and hatred of foreigners — from the mid-19th century through 1916, then jumping a century, to Donald Trump’s election as U.S. President in 2016 and its follow-up. Read more and link to the L.A. Times article and video

Fans of the Transcripts podcast — a project of The Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies that first launched in June 2020 — have something new to get excited about: another new podcast episode. In the recently released Episode 2 of, Transcripts focuses on trans people of color housing activists who were interviewed for the Tretter Transgender Oral History Project (TTOHP). 

By Allison Campbell-Jensen Architect Dewey Thorbeck faced an issue about 10 years ago when moving his office from Minneapolis’s Loring Park neighborhood to his home...

Posters and programs demonstrate the growth of Pride celebrations in the Twin Cities over the years. These materials and more about Pride from the Tretter Collection in Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Studies can be found in the Libraries' UMedia collection.

Terrestrial and celestial globes created in 1696 arrived at the University Libraries the day after the shutdown for COVID-19 last year, destined for the James Ford Bell Library. Curator Marguerite Ragnow wanted to figure out how to put them on the web but initially she was stymied. Then a breakthrough appeared in January 2021, when she learned of the 3D scanning capabilities in the Health Sciences Library.

Working remotely during the pandemic has had its benefits — including time for Tretter Collection staff to improve access to its GAZE-TV collection by writing meaningful descriptions of episodes, making them easier to find in search. GAZE-TV was a Twin Cities public access program that ran from 1986 until the early 2000s and was hosted by Brad Theissen.

In 1984, what was then the Minnesota Jewish Historical Society was founded by local community leaders concerned that, with the passage of time, stories and materials were being lost. They began to collect both items and oral histories. By the late 1990s, however, they were running out of space. Then in 2000, former Gov. Elmer L. Andersen invited the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest to place a portion of their collection in the Archives and Special Collections at the University Libraries.

The Social Welfare History Archives received a $10,000 Legacy Amendment grant from the Arts and Cultural Heritage Fund through the Minnesota Historical Society for the digital preservation and access project Public Health in Minnesota: Digitizing Recordings of “A Public Health Journal” TV program.

Library student John Cole is scanning artifacts from the Wangensteen Historical Library in 3D, offering an advantage for very fragile items — as well as for virtual instruction.

An impactful Libraries exhibit, "A Woman's Place: Women and Work," is now online. Curators Kate Dietrick, Linnea Anderson, and Caitlin Marineau decided at the start of this labor-intensive project that they wanted it to have a second life as an online exhibit. After it was taken down, they didn’t return all the materials immediately but instead had a student worker scan them all.

Children’s literature connects with readers, and Lisa Von Drasek has never lost her love for it. The Curator of the Kerlan and Children's Literature collections remembers fondly from her childhood “Little Plum” by Rumer Godden. “I loved that book so much because the children in that book were bad — they behaved badly, they had bad thoughts,” Von Drasek says. “They were not the Bobbsey Twins.”

To get started in his career, Robert “Bob” Jansen first had to be fired. After the College of St. Scholastica in Duluth fired him from teaching in their theater program, he sued the college. Jansen won and he used the settlement money to establish the Main Club for gay people in 1983. The bar became not only a watering hole but also a center for the gay community. Now Jansen is honoring that history by remembering the Jean Nickolaus Tretter Collection in GLBT Studies in his will.