Annual Report 2023

https://libguides.usd.edu/Annual_Report

 

1972 Rapid City Flood

 From USD's Digital Library collections...

On June 9, 1972 a devastating flood ravaged Rapid City and the surrounding area in the Black Hills.

The South Dakota Oral History Center has a collection of oral histories about the flood.  https://tinyurl.com/RapidCityFlood

Addition information and primary resources can be found at

https://tinyurl.com/RapidCityFloodPictures

https://1972flood.omeka.net/collections/browse

https://www.sdpb.org/blogs/images-of-the-past/the-1972-rapid-city-flood/

Have You Considered?

Have you considered using oral histories as sources for your paper or project? The South Dakota Oral History Center (SDOHC) contains stories from throughout South Dakota and its peoples—including Black Americans who have lived and worked in South Dakota.

The Black History oral histories at the SDOHC are comprised of thirty-four oral histories (about two-thirds have transcripts), virtually all of which were recorded in the 1970s. A little over one-third of the interviews are with Black women. Many of the interviews focus on the Civil Rights Movement in South Dakota during the 1960s, particularly in Sioux Falls and the Black Hills, but also other large towns  such as Yankton and Huron. Other topics include experiences of Black settlers, veterans, laborers, churches, as well as race relations.

"Patrons may read transcripts and listen to any audio files that we have here in the SDOHC, including those that do not have signed releases. We just cannot make copies of items that don't have copyright releases. So that's why we just encourage patrons to make an appointment to come visit us in person if they can and if they're interested in something that we find that does not have a copyright release,” Sam Herley, SDOHC Curator, explained.

To see of list of these with a brief explanation of those available digitally and listen to five excerpts, please see the SDOHC: Black History in South Dakota LibGuide.  
 

New treatises from the Mahoney Music Collection added to the Digital Library of South Dakota

https://archivesandspecialcollections.wordpress.com/2021/01/21/new-treatises-from-the-mahoney-music-collection-added-to-the-digital-library-of-south-dakota/

“Veritas” available in the Digital Library of South Dakota

“Veritas” was a college newspaper created to jointly feature the University of South Dakota and the city of Vermillion. “Veritas” was published by T. H. Ayres of the “Vermillion Plain Talk,” and only six issues were published.

May 25, 1889

June 1, 1889

June 8, 1889

June 10, 1889

June 11, 1889

June 12, 1889

originally posted at https://archivesandspecialcollections.wordpress.com/2019/10/21/veritas-available-in-the-digital-library-of-south-dakota/

Herbert T. Hoover 1930-2019

Photo credit: South Dakota Magazine

Herbert Theodore Hoover (1930-2019) was a Renaissance man. He served as a U.S. Marine during the Korean War, studied multiple languages, nearly majored in chemistry, thought seriously about a career in pharmacy, worked for a time in healthcare, and ultimately became one of the longest-tenured, most prolific, and most influential historians in the history of South Dakota. Although he came to document and understand the kaleidoscopic interactions between virtually all groups of people in the state, he became particularly noted for his keen insights into the complex relationships between Native Americans and whites. His passing in March 2019 marked the end of an era. But it also marked a time to celebrate a legacy that has served, and will continue to serve, as one of the pillars of modern academic life at the University of South Dakota.
    Born in the small town of Wabasha, Minnesota at the start of the Great Depression, Hoover eventually used the G.I. Bill to begin his academic pursuits. He often cited the notable historian John Baptist Wolf at the University of Minnesota as his greatest influence but was always quick to express gratitude to all historians who helped him navigate a career that “beats working,” as Hoover liked to say.
    “I was only using the best that I learned from those models. I think there has to be something behind you like that,” he said in 2007. “You must have learned from some of the very best.”
    After receiving his Ph.D. in history at the University of Oklahoma, Hoover taught and researched for a time in Texas, where he claimed he learned to do state history. He developed his philosophy that regional and thematic considerations are more important to state history than strict adherence to geographic borders.
    Hoover came to USD in 1967 to help fill the seemingly unfillable void then being left by historian Herbert Schell, who had served more than forty years in higher education and – among other accomplishments – had written what was at that time considered the definitive history of South Dakota (History of South Dakota, 1962).  Shortly after arriving at USD, Hoover came to chair a committee on the operations of the newly-created South Dakota Oral History Center (SDOHC). Over the coming decades, he and fellow USD historian Joseph Cash formed one of the most important partnerships in the academic history of South Dakota. Together, they led the effort to collect the bulk of resources at the SDOHC, which now houses more than 6,500 oral histories and recordings, making it one of the largest oral history collections in the United States.
    By 1970, Hoover and Cash had secured funding from the South Dakota state legislature to collect oral histories from every county in the state. By 1971, they published To Be an Indian, an anthology of fifty-two oral history excerpts. Donald Fixico, the prominent Native American historian and recent president of the Western History Association, recognized To Be an Indian as one of the most important and groundbreaking collections of Native American oral histories ever published, particularly with regard to the subject of Native American identity.
    Drawing upon his family heritage and intellectual ability, Hoover in his classes and numerous publications was able to show balanced insights into the relationships between Dakota, Lakota, and non-Native American groups in the region. His sharp sense of humor is evident in many of his writings, as well as the more than half-dozen recordings (from 1972 to 2007) for which he agreed to be interviewed for the SDOHC. South Dakota Leaders, which Hoover published in 1989 as an editor with Larry J. Zimmerman, became one of the first studies of general South Dakota history to gain widespread acclaim under peer review.
    As he entered his twilight years as a historian, Hoover became a leading advocate for a new comprehensive state history of South Dakota. As part of a landmark collaboration with more than a dozen scholars from around the region in the early 2000s, Hoover worked tirelessly for the project. The result was a magnum opus, A New History of South Dakota (first printed in 2005), for which he wrote the introduction and served as a primary contributor.

    After the project, Hoover continued on in a professor emeritus role in the USD History Department for many years. Reflecting upon his half century of work with the university, Hoover called it “the ideal job.”
    “It couldn’t have been any better for me,” he said.
    It could not have been any better for USD, as well. Like the great historians who influenced him, Hoover will continue to stand as a model for students and scholars who come through the university. His lectures and publications will become all the more important in the coming decades, as concepts of identity continue to be crucial to Native American individuals and communities in the twenty-first century, and also as stories of all South Dakotans continue to unfold.

An oral history interview with Herbert T. Hoover from 2007 is available on the Digital Library of South Dakota.

https://explore.digitalsd.org/digital/collection/sdohc/id/98/rec/11