Library celebrates 50th anniversary of archives
June 22, 2015
The Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska Fairbanks will celebrate the 50th anniversary of its Alaska and Polar Regions Collections and Archives on Tuesday, July 7, 2015.
The celebration, which will feature the official naming of the Paul H. McCarthy Research Room, will begin at 4 p.m. on Level 2 of the library. Tours of the archives will be offered.
In 1965, Paul McCarthy, a librarian at the University Library, and Ted Ryberg, university librarian, established the archives in a small classroom of the Bunnell Building. The following summer, operating on advice from old-timers, they paddled a canoe from Eagle to Circle on the Yukon River, stopping at deserted mining claims and trapper cabins and collecting abandoned papers and photographs with which they established the archives. In the ensuing 50 years, those few boxes have expanded into a world-class historical collection.
The Alaska and Polar Regions Collections & Archives serves UAF students and faculty and researchers from around the world with more than 11,000 rare books and maps, more than 20,000 linear feet of archives and manuscripts, more than one million photographs, tens of thousands of historical films and videotapes, and over 11,000 hours of oral history recordings. Notable collections include the Alaska Commercial Co. station ledgers, statehood movement records, political papers from early state leaders such as Ralph Rivers and Ernest Gruening, and oral history interviews with aviation pioneers.
ON THE WEB: http://library.uaf.edu/blogs/aprca50/
Photos are available upon request. Contact Suzanne Bishop, Rasmuson Library development officer, 907-474-6997, sbishop@alaska.edu.