Stillwater Public Library's Special Collection Center and Workspace

FAIN: PG-52541-15

Stillwater, City of (Stillwater, OK 74074-4449)
Stacy DeLano (Project Director: May 2014 to October 2016)

The purchase of mobile shelving for the Stillwater Public Library’s Special Collections storage and workspace area.  Stillwater was the first settlement in the Unassigned Lands in Oklahoma, the focus of white settlement during the late 19th-century “Boomer Movement” and the 1899 Land Rush.  Stillwater is also the geographically isolated home of Oklahoma State University, the state’s only land grant university and its second largest.  The 2,300 books and bound serials include Stillwater city directories and telephone books, Stillwater High School annuals, Oklahoma State University annuals and campus directories, Oklahoma maps, books on local and state history, and works by local and state authors.  Of particular interest is a recently discovered 140-volume set of Payne County Agricultural Census records dating from 1898 to 1906.  The collection also boasts the archives of local organizations such as the Stillwater Writer’s Club, Lion’s Club, Rotary Club, Garden Club, Sewing Club, Woman’s Club, and Round Table.  In addition to research on former students and faculty of the university, the collection has been used in studies of local business history, civic life, and architecture, as well as public programming for Boy Scout troops, displays, and a walking tour of Downtown Stillwater.

The Stillwater Public Library owns a collection of directories, annuals, archives of local organizations, Stillwater, Payne County, and Oklahoma history material and other archived items that help detail the Stillwater area and the hundreds of thousands of residents and students who have passed through our community. Currently the majority of our collection is housed in a small closet that has no temperature control, is underneath a system boiler, abuts the plumbing of a restroom and contains built-in untreated wood shelving. The remainder of the collection is dispersed throughout the library in unsuitable conditions. The library will relocate its archives to an appropriate location suggested in our preservation evaluation which will allow us to create a storage and workspace area to house, digitize and preserve our items, and consolidate our entire collection. The grant will be used to purchase recommended shelving in the Special Collections Center.