University Daily Kansan/Wednesday, Aug. 19, 1987
15
KU Archives is history warehouse
By WENDY ELDER
Special to the Kansas
Special to the Kansan
It is possible to find a sword, 3,500 reels of movie film, 200,000 photographs and the Board of Regents meeting minutes in one place on the KU campus.
Since its inception in 1968, the KU Archives in the Spencer Research Library has been a warehouse for more than 14,000 linear feet of the University's history and memorabilia.
Among the historic documents and memorabilia that call the archives home: a former KU chancellor's Civil War Army sword, models of campus buildings and a large sports film library.
Barry Bunch and Ed Kehde, two of the archives employees, have kept watch over KU history for more than 10 years.
Bunch said that the establishment of the archives coincided with the national recognition of the importance of preserving institutional history.
Before the archives' establishment, University departments and offices kept their non-current records and documents themselves.
Eventually, the departments began running out of space, Bunch said.
"When they ran out of space, sometimes they would just throw
things away, which is not necessarily what you want to do." Bunch said.
"Some stuff can be thrown away, but there is stuff of historical importance that should be kept.
"What we do is keep the non-current records of the University. We are a little bit like a warehouse in a way." Bunch said.
Bunch said the archives was established to accommodate both the storage crisis and to provide a centralized location for all important KU documents.
"Any institution that's as big as the University of Kansas generates an immense amount of paperwork, just an unbelievable amount of paper," Bunch said.
Kehde said the Chancellor's office and the office of research, graduate studies and public service used the archives the most.
But the archives has received foreign visitors from Japan and Germany, Kehde said, and cross-country calls are relatively common. Most of these callers request information from the KU collegiate sports collection, which includes film footage of KU sports teams since 1940.
"We get lots of calls from all over the country asking for information, sports in particular, because we have one of better collegiate sports archives in the country," Bunch said.
"Sometimes other schools will
want film footage of their teams. We keep thousands of films. Football, basketball, track, is generally what we have.
"If the University of North Carolina wants film footage of a game they played against KU, they'll call us, and often we'll have it."
and often the unofficial archives' historian is Thomas Ryther, 86, professor emeritus of journalism.
Ryther has been an archives volunteer, since his 1970 retirement.
Initially, he worked at the archives cataloging 52 boxes of journalism documents recovered during the remodeling of Stauffer-Flint Hall.
He said that for love of the University and to allow his wife to entertain her bridge parties without his interference, he logged about 35 hours a week at the archives.
He recently compiled card files of all KU student athletes using student enrollment cards dating back to 1866.
"The cards provide a wealth of information about former students. They come in very handy in checking back on students and where they come from. One of the most intriguing things is what silly names people tack onto their children," Ryther said with a grin.
He said he was disappointed that KU students, especially journalism students, don't visit the archives more often.
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Ed Kehde at work at the KU Archives in the Spencer Research Library. The Archives is a warehouse for the University's history and memorabilia.
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