Axe Digital Provides Online Access to Two Major Collections

Axe Library is digitizing many of its leading photograph and manuscript collections to form the Axe Library Digital Collections. At present there are two collections available for public view. The Ira Clemens Photograph Album is a collection of over 250 photographs and postcards compiled by Ira Clemens in 1923 to document mining communities and towns in Crawford and Cherokee Counties in Kansas, and Barton County, Missouri. The collection includes images of schools, churches, union halls, miner's homes, and downtown business districts. The Pittsburg part of the collection in particular contains many beautiful color postcards of Pittsburg buildings and streets in the early twenties.

The Gordon Parks Collection consists of 82 photographs taken in 1968 on the set of his autobiographical film, The Learning Tree, filmed in Bourbon and Linn Counties in Kansas. Most of the images feature Gordon Parks directing the film, setting up shots, and conversing with the cast and crew.

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From the Ira Clemens Collection:

Color post card of the Masonic Temple in Pittsburg, KS.

Crawford County Community School, Cherokee, KS.

From the Gordon Parks Collection:

Parks admires the Bearded Lady while shooting the Carnival scene in the film The Learning Tree, 1968.

Actor Dana Elcar chatting with Gordon Parks while filming The Learning Tree. Elcar played "Kirky", the sheriff.

11th annual Gene DeGruson Memorial Lecture

October 9, 2008 will mark the 11th annual Gene DeGruson Memorial Lecture. And to commemorate this occasion, we have invited Mr. Shelby Horn, attorney and one of Gene DeGruson's best friends and closest collaborators to present a talk about Gene’s much loved pet project The Little Balkans Review. This literary, historical and cultural journal from Pittsburg State University was edited by Gene, Shelby and other talented writers and artists. This journal, comprised of articles written by PSU faculty as well as citizens of Pittsburg and the surrounding area included stories, histories, photo and art essays and poems all relating to the history, culture and art of Southeast Kansas. (The "Little Balkans" refers to the unique Eastern European immigrant culture which came to Southeast Kansas along with the coal miners who left their home countries to work in the mines around Pittsburg.

Once again the lecture will take place on October 9th at 7p.m. in Axe Library in the Special Collections Department which is in the basement. After the lecture, refreshments will be served in the browsing area

For further information, contact Randy Roberts (4883, rerobert@pittstate.edu) or Jane Victor (4886, victor@pittstate.edu). We will be very glad to see you there.

Jane Victor
Director of Special Projects
Friends of Axe Library.

Library sees interior, exterior improvements

By KEVIN FLAHERTY

The Morning Sun

PITTSBURG — As Pittsburg State University students begin to move back for the year, they’ll be treated to a renovated Leonard H. Axe Library, both on the inside and the outside of the building.

Paul Stewart, PSU facilities planning director, said the exterior improvements were needed to keep water, and carbon off the library’s finish.

“We’ve done a lot of preventative work over the summer,” Stewart said.

Workers took time Monday cleaning the limestone on the building’s front, re-caulking and putting a waterproof membrane over the area.

Stewart said workers also took time to put new steps in.

“The old ones were brick and were starting to shift and settle,” Stewart said. “So we actually removed the old ones and put in new concrete steps.”

Other improvements include brick tuckpointing around the building, repairing some of the planters around the side of the building.

SEAN STEFFEN/THE MORNING SUN
Jerry Rich, left, and Eloy Diaz of Mid Continental Restoration out of Fort Scott, do work above the front entrance of Axe Library on the Pittsburg State campus Monday afternoon

All of those repairs were designed to modernize, clean and weather-proof the building, Stewart said.

But the exterior isn’t the only place that will be updated. Randy Roberts, curator of special collections at Axe Library, said the special collections had been upgraded and gone more online.
Among those exhibits to go online, Roberts said he was working on a Laura Bridgman exhibit that would focus on the writings, and a knitting done by Bridgman, a blind woman who taught herself to write. Bridgman, a New Englander, corresponded with a woman in Thayer.

“So there’s our Kansas connection,” Roberts said.

He said other collections included one on 1920s coal mining, a Gordon Parks collection, one featuring aerial shots of World War II, a log book for the Pittsburg Fire Department and records from the Picher, Okla., mining museum.

Overall, the special collections area has seen heavy upgrades in the last five years or so. More than 30 years ago, special collections was housed in a tiny room on the third floor of Porter Hall. Then, it was moved to another third floor, this time at the then-new Axe Library in 1979. The collections remained there until about five years ago, when they moved down to their current home in the basement of the library, where temperature and humidity could be controlled.
Roberts said the collection would continue to expand through the future. He said there were plans to add two more photo histories to the collection by the spring, one capturing the history of the city of Pittsburg in photos, and the other a feature on Pittsburg State.

“We’re very excited about the potential and the future of our collection,” Roberts said.


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SOURCE: The Morning Sun, August 19, 2008, p [A1]

Posted Aug 18, 2008 @ 10:38 PM

© 2008, The Morning Sun - Used by permission.
http://www.morningsun.net/news/x1543320130/Library-sees-interior-exterior-improvements

Jefferson Highway Association, Crawford County Division, Records, 1915-2005

A new series of records have recently been added in Special Collections. The Jefferson Highway Association, Crawford County Division, Records, 1915-2005 contains items such as correspondence, minutes, maps, newspaper clippings and other related items to the Jefferson Highway, basically a precursor to Highways 69 and 71.

Here's the official description from the Special Collections page:

The Jefferson Highway Association, named after Thomas Jefferson, was formed in 1915 to build a highway through the Mississippi Valley. The highway was the idea of Edwin T. Meredith, publisher of Successful Farming and Better Homes and Gardens and later Secretary of Agriculture under President Woodrow Wilson, who thought the highway would be economically beneficial to the region's farmers. In November 1915 a meeting was held with representatives from all the Louisiana Purchase states to organize an association for the purpose of constructing an international highway from Winnipeg in Canada to New Orleans, Louisiana. This convention was also held to determine the route of the new highway. Several Kansas counties were competing against each other and against the state of Missouri to get to be part of the highway. A contest was to be held to determine the route between Kansas City and Joplin, Missouri, the winner to be determined by whichever state, Kansas or Missouri, completed the most miles of new road by September 1916.

The Crawford County division of the Jefferson Highway Association was formed after the 1915 convention to help plan and fund the highway. Townships and private landowners were to be the primary sources for funding. It was decided initially that the Kansas route would go through Pittsburg, Girard, and Fort Scott but there were several disagreements that took place while the road was being built. Some places did not want to fund the road and did not see it as a benefit. Girard was later excluded from the route, in spite of many protests, in favor of the Commercial Highway, which went north from Pittsburg to Arcadia and then to Fort Scott. The contest between Kansas and Missouri, in a decision that angered some, ended in a stalemate with both states being awarded the highway between Joplin and Kansas City. After these dual roads were built they were considered too narrow and rough. Despite all these problems, the highway was eventually competed and used by the area communities for many years. The federal and state governments later passed laws that enabled them to build and maintain better highways. The Jefferson highway designation eventually faded away with sections of the road becoming parts of US Highway 69 and US Highway 71.

Jefferson Highway Association members departing on a road inspection
trip from Pittsburg in July 1916. They are in front of Kettler
Furniture and Carpet Company, 409 North Broadway.

New Special Collections Page

A new Special Collections page has been added for the Midlands Magazine, a locally-produced, daily, thirty minute news and feature program produced and aired by KRPS Radio, a National Public Radio affiliate station located at Pittsburg State University, from 1988 to 1990. The recordings contain news broadcasts, weather, business reports, and interviews pertaining to regional activities and guests.

The 201 audio tape recordings are arranged in chronological order from 20 June 1988 to 14 February 1990. "Midlands Magazine" aired Monday through Friday and tapes exist for nearly every date during this period.