Inside Iowa State
January 21, 2000
Special collections job: part sleuth, part historian
by Linda Charles
Becky Jordan's first employer may
well be her last. And she couldn't be happier. As a library
assistant in the special collections department, Jordan has
been submerged in the university's history and turned into a
bit of a detective.
Jordan, who grew up in Ames, graduated from Iowa State in
1975 with a degree in English and a minor in history. The
Friday after graduation, she started work in special
collections, first as a secretary and then in her current
position.
"I never dreamed that I would stay this long," she said. "It's an interesting job. You learn something every day. I just love the material. It's fun to find things for people."
Special collections contains rare books, manuscripts, the Archives of Women in Science and Engineering, the American Archives of the Factual Film and, of course, the university's archives, which include more than 6,000 linear feet of materials and 75,000 photos.
As a reference specialist, Jordan spends much of her time handling off-campus requests for information, such as film clips. The History Channel, Discovery and PBS frequently rely on Iowa State for film footage, she noted.
The department also has film from WOI-TV, especially the early days when WOI was the only station around central Iowa. The WOI film generates a lot of local interest from family members who want clips of faculty members who appeared in the early days of television, she said.
Some requests are from left field, Jordan said, such as one for a film clip of a concert in Des Moines at which a rock musician supposedly bit the head off a bat ("We do not have it," Jordan said) or the request from a crew shooting a sporting goods commercial that wanted clips of men in jock straps ("We don't have it either," she laughed).
There are, however, some unusual things in the artifact collection, such as a rock from the Great Wall of China sent in by an alumnus ("I don't know if he was supposed to take the rock or not," Jordan said).
There's a sword that belonged to General James Geddes, who had a distinguished record in both the British and Union armies before coming to Iowa State as the university's first professor of military tactics.
There's a large key (about 8 inches) that once opened the campanile door and carvings by Margaret Sloss, the first woman graduate of the College of Veterinary Medicine.
But perhaps the most unusual item in the artifact collection is a death mask of Margaret McDonald Stanton. Her husband, Edgar, donated the first bells of the campanile in her memory in 1895.
There's a 27 by 40 inch Audubon Society book on birds of America. Two people are needed to turn the massive pages. Jordan speculates that during Victorian times there was a special stand for such books and a page was turned daily.
Each day, students, faculty and staff contact special collections seeking information, and Jordan and the rest of the staff do their best to help them find it. Jordan says she knows about two-thirds of the collection quite well and relies on the department's intricate indexing system to find the rest.
Other special collections customers include faculty from other universities and people researching genealogy.
"They're just tickled when we can find some little bit of information that they didn't know," Jordan said of the genealogy buffs. "It turns into a detective thing, seeking out information for them. I'm always so glad when we can find something."
Sometimes Jordan stumbles onto intriguing bits of history.
"One of my favorite things is to find comments about major events in history," she said. For example, among Depression- era papers on chemical engineer Orland Sweeney's attempt to make drywall out of cornstalks, she found the comment: "They say they will be closing the banks in Ames tomorrow."
Special collections is open from 8 to 11:50 a.m. and 1 to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. More information about the department also is available through its Web site at: www.lib.iastate.edu/spcl/spcl.html.
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