Message from the Interim Dean
This month the WSU Libraries has partnered with the WSU Offices of Research and the Provost to support WSU faculty in publishing their research open access (OA). This means that readers around the world can access faculty research without being blocked by paywalls or needing an association with college and university libraries that pay for the journal subscription. With additional support from the Office of Research, we have also recently renewed our Elsevier ScienceDirect journal package. The agreement will waive the article processing charges (fees levied by publishers to pay for the work of editing and publishing scholarly research) for WSU authors publishing in 1,813 journals in 2025 using an OA license, potentially saving WSU more than $500,000 annually.
We are facing continued challenges with our journal subscriptions. Planning for a flat budget means that we will reduce our subscriptions this year and next by more than $600,000. A bright spot in these reductions is that thanks to our donors’ generosity, we will spend $125,000 this spring on books.
We also planned several exciting events in February, including a WSU Press open house with a panel discussion by Pacific Northwest authors Richard Scheuerman, Thomas Bancroft, and Jack Nisbet. We partnered with the WSU Common Reading Program on a lecture by WSU graduate and former library employee Amanda Van Lanen on the history and growth of the state’s apple industry. During Van Lanen’s time working in Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC), she consulted the Yakima Valley Growers Association records, which eventually led to her dissertation topic in the WSU history department and her book The Washington Apple: Orchards and the Development of Industrial Agriculture. The final event of the month features readings from the newly published A Ukrainian Dictionary of War, commemorating the third anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Poet Ostap Slyvynsky gathered the reflections of average Ukrainian citizens—such as WSU postdoctoral research associate Anna Kyslynska—as they observed the invasion unfold.
Washington State College President Ernest O. Holland was known as an avid collector of art and books. With limited funds available from the state, Holland and Librarian W.W. Foote built library collections largely through donations. The growing holdings put extreme pressure on library staff and quickly overwhelmed the storage capacity in Bryan Hall. (Today, Bryan retains the original theatre, but the building’s northern half once housed the library, which had a large reading room and mezzanine level and compact steel shelving for materials.)
For example, the library purchased 27,637 volumes in 1943 and 1944; however, 532,637 donated items were added to the collection. Librarian Foote stored the donated collections in basements and attics across campus in eight separate buildings. Aware of the lack of funding coming to the library from his administration, Holland created the Friends of the Library in 1938, with Spokane banker Joel Ferris as head. Holland called individual faculty members and instructed them to join. He also played an active role in the Friends of the Library, personally donating to the group and directing its purchases.
Holland and the Friends of the Library made some notable acquisitions during the late 1930s and 1940s. The Inland Empire Early Birds Breakfast Club of Spokane donated $5,000 to purchase Spanish, French, and English books and manuscripts in Mexico and in the Central American countries. Holland sent foreign languages professor J. Horace Nunemaker to Spain and Mexico to purchase early printed books. While in Mexico, Nunemaker acquired a significant body of 18th- and 19th-century manuscripts related to the aristocratic Regla family in Mexico.
On occasion, Holland spent large sums for items he particularly wanted. He acquired a 28-volume set of Frederick Hill Meserve’s Historical Portraits, a publication hand-produced to order that included thousands of Mathew Brady photos. Each volume was extremely expensive at $195. Holland personally purchased four volumes so WSC could have a complete set. To put this in some context, during the 1930s, the library regularly purchased English books published in the 17th century for less than a dollar. This edition of Historical Portraits is held in MASC and available for viewing upon request.
Holland was also instrumental in negotiating the gift of the library’s most highly consulted manuscript collection: the papers of Lucullus V. McWhorter. McWhorter was a rancher, author, and advocate for the Yakama and Nez Perce Tribes. The collection includes priceless interviews of participants in the 1877 Nez Perce War, manuscripts of the noted author Mourning Dove, and primary sources pertaining to the native peoples of the Columbia Plateau. After McWhorter passed away, Holland promised McWhorter’s son Virgil, a WSC graduate, that the college would complete and publish McWhorter’s unfinished book and organize his papers.
During the final decade of his tenure, Holland regularly sought out collections. He routinely requested papers for the library’s special collections area, the Treasure Room. In 1942, Holland wrote to Edward R. Murrow: “Please do not forget, Ed, that you must send us something occasionally for our Treasure Room. When this war is over, I want the material you have sent to us to be given an honored place here on the college campus. Later it can be given a special place in the new library building, which I am sure will be built shortly after the close of the present world conflict.” Murrow sent several broadcast transcripts, and his wife, Janet, later donated a collection of family photographs. Last year, Ida Lou Anderson’s grandnephew donated a small collection of telegrams that Murrow sent to his most influential professor.
Last weekend on my way to pickleball, I ran into an old friend who mentioned how much she enjoyed reading Browse. If you know of others who would like to receive our online newsletter, please let me know. We would love to expand our distribution list.
Trevor