Category Archives: Behind the Scenes
Getting to Know Jennifer Olguin, Rio Grande Historical Collections Archivist
Getting to Know ASC Staff is a series spotlighting employees of the NMSU Archives and Special Collections Department.   Background information: As the saying goes, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” This certainly applies to my career within the academic library. I was introduced to the library profession while an…
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ASC News, January-May 2021
In case you missed it (ICYMI), the links below document news coverage of the staff and collections at the Archives and Special Collections (ASC). Recent published and broadcast stories highlight the Esther Chavez Cano papers and the scholarship into Orville Wanzer’s 1965 film The Devil’s Mistress. ASC staff have also been busy producing several published…
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C.H. Tyler Townsend – Early Swashbuckling ProfessorÂ
The University Archives here in the NMSU Library contain some real gems of the early history of the college. These include papers of early administrators (most notably founder and first president Hiram Hadley), manuscript minutes of the earliest meetings of the Board of Regents, real estate deeds and records on the initial land acquisitions for the college, and an…
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New Mexico Archives & Archivists Group Organizes
In early 2020, fifteen New Mexico-based archivists planned to meet in Santa Fe to discuss organizing a “community of practice” within the state.[1] Prompted by informal discussions held at the 2019 Society of Southwest Archivists (SSA) Annual Meeting in Tucson and that fall’s New Mexico Library Association (NMLA) Conference in Albuquerque, attendees hoped to organize…
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Keith Wilson: A Desert Voice
I write down the words I hear, but I know it is the Dead who speak them.       Keith Wilson (1927-2009) from “The Voices of My Desert”            While Dancing Feet Shatter the Earth            (Utah State University Press, 1978) [In recognition of National Poetry Month, we have a guest…
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The Open Stacks: One-Year Anniversary
Last year, due to the global pandemic, the Archives and Special Collections (ASC) had to adapt to the new normal of relying on technology to continue to serve our users. Before the pandemic, we provided in-person reference assistance and class instructional sessions in the Caroline E. Stras Research Room. These served as great opportunities to…
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An Archivist’s COVID-19 Journal, Part V: Year 1
Today marks the one-year anniversary of receiving my work-from-home mandate. The uncertainty over the rapidly spreading coronavirus prompted NMSU leadership to order nearly all university employees to begin teleworking. I wrote about the COVID-19 pandemic in four previous posts, but have not provided an update since last July. As I have been working back on…
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Guest Post: Larry Creider, former special collections librarian and ASC Department Head
ASC staff occasionally publishes guest posts from former New Mexico State University Library employees. These guest posts help capture the history of the library and department, as well as document the work of librarians and archivists in southern New Mexico. Our first guest post comes from Larry Creider, emeritus professor, who spent 16 years at…
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RamĂłn OrtĂz and Mesilla’s Beginnings
You know how sometimes you’re looking for one thing, but you end up finding something else? It’s usually that way when I’m looking for batteries around my house. When I’m looking for the AAs, I find the 9 volts. When I need a 9 volt, I only find the AAAs. But on some rare occasions you find…
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The Wendell Chino papers – Mescalero Apache Leader, New Mexico Legend
While NMSU Archives and Special Collections (ASC) has long held significant collections of political content, particularly in the Rio Grande Historical Collections, the Library’s manuscript repository, the Political Collections unit was not created until 2008. Nearly 2,000 linear feet of records from Sen. Pete V. Domenici (R-NM) were donated then and the university hired a…
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