My Friend, the Library

Korrin B.

February 24, 2009 - 10:10 PM

I have to do this research project for a class I'm taking called Visualizing Queerness. It is an Honors College colloquia class, so it fulfils one of my requirements. I have to admit that it has been about what? Nine weeks now? Yes, nine. I still don't get this class. I don't really know what's going on in it or what precisely I'm supposed to take away from it, but nevertheless, I march onward! I am determined to make something out of it even if it is just a good grade! However, this post is not about the class. It is about the UO libraries and how libraries are actually kind of cool.

My freshman year, I had to write a fifteenish page paper for my spring term of the Honors College history sequence. I began this project not at all knowing what I wanted to do. Somehow I decided on focusing on something to do with civil rights. Still, that was pretty broad. That term, I discovered the UO Special Collections Archives in the Knight Library. This library contains rare, and often original, documents from way back when. I started to explore this place and soon found all of these amazing pamphlets and letters of correspondence and newspaper articles and more concerning civil rights in Portland, Oregon during the World War II and post-World War II era. Soon I found myself completely enthralled in these resources. How cool was it to be actually holding a pamphlet that was distributed during this time of change? I would spend my time in the Special Collections Archives from the moment they opened until the moment they closed most days. I was such a nerd about it, but it was because it was so interesting! I ended up writing a paper entitled "The Urban League of Portland: Ending World War II Discrimination in the name of Democracy." I got the highest grade in my class on it and received an honorable mention in the Honors College History Essay Contest for it. I have the library to thank for that. That was the first time I realized how much you could find in that place!

However, after that, my relationship with the library quickly turned back to what it was before. I would stop by occasionally if I needed a quiet space to study, but there was no way that I was going to look at any books. Therefore, I soon forgot how helpful and resourceful it could be. That is, until this week!

Ok, now we are back to the beginning. This really has nothing to do with my Honors College essay, but instead my beautiful reunion with the library. I was recently in a similar situation as I was my freshman year. I am required to do a research project for my Visualizing Queerness class and we can pick really, whatever we want as a topic. I had no idea what I wanted to do. At all. So, I finally just picked an artist and decided to go find a couple of books on him. Andy Warhol. I went onto the UO library website and searched the catalog. It looked as though there were several books of interest located in the Architecture and Allied Arts library. I had never been there before. This would be an adventure.

So, I finally went one night and it was incredible! I found so many books that gave me so many ideas! I was thrilled with myself for using the library, my resources here at the UO, to do research! I felt so cool! Reading books and actually getting ideas from them! In the end, I still have a long way to go to pull this project off in time, but I do have to hand it to the library for sparking my interest, sending me in the right direction. Libraries have everything you need to do research right inside them! I'm glad that we've been reunited. My suggestion to all students - the library is your friend, use it! Don't put off getting introduced to it until it's too late!