Digital Maag Collections

I’m working on another project with the Center for Working-Class Studies, who are holding a panel discussion tonight at 7:30pm in the Ohio Room and Kilcawley Center on the YSU campus to discuss 2008 election reporting on the working class and Youngstown.

This new project involves creating entry points to the Steel Valley Voices collection on Digital Maag. Digital.Maag is a remarkable collection of, well, collections. These are as diverse as the Agenda of a November 29, 1932 Youngstown College Board of Governors meeting. Among the members present were James L. Wick, Jr., Clarence J. Strouss, W. E. Bliss, William F. Maag, Jr., Franklin B. Powers, and Director Howard W. Jones. The total number of students that year was 727. Among the motions was one to raise money for a library, and William F. Maag, Jr. was appointed committee chairman.

Missed a YSU Symphonic Wind Ensemble concert between 1974 and 1979? You might be in luck. The Dana School of Music Centennial Online Audio Archive contains at least a dozen performances from this era. I recommend this 1975 performance of Meyerbeer’s Torch Procession, featuring my friend and teacher Ron Gould on organ.

Please note that the only confusing thing about browsing these on your own is that once you click on a collection’s name, nothing is listed by default. You have to click one of the browse buttons (Titles, Authors, Subjects, or By Date) or search for something.

There are 511 records in Oral Histories collection, including “print and digital transcriptions of the original oral history interviews”! (Tapes are stored in the History Department. Maybe someday they’ll be digitized?)

There are 1,236 photos in the University Archives and Special Collections University Photograph Collection.

There are 3,299 records in The Jambar newspaper archive collection, including editions stretching back to January 1931!

One of my favorite finds, though, is a WKBN interview with library staff during the move of books from Tod to Maag. This is from the Business and Media Archives of the Mahoning Valley. (You can find more of this collection at the Mahoning Valley Historical Society.) Here’s the transcript:

YSU: Well, moving a library–where you’re taking books from a shelf in sequence, and they’re all numbered–you have to put them back in sequence. Otherwise, once we leave here, the library staff would have a very hard time finding any particular book.
WKBN: You have both men and women working on your staff. How’s that working out?
YSU: It’s working out fairly well on this particular move, because we’re putting a girl with a fella moving a book truck. And we find that girls at this age are a little more mature, a little more dependable, than the fellas. So, we are utilizing some girls, although it is very hard work for them.

Browse through and check out some of the collections. I guarantee you’ll find something interesting.

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