Bill Shaman Shows Off The His Pride And Joy, The Special Collections

Although not used often the special collections is still important

Special collections plaque outside the door

By Morgan Krause

            The quaint room was filled with worn leather-bound books and the smell of musty paper. Bill Shaman, a short man, no taller that 5’5", stood at the head of the table wearing a blue sweatshirt with his glasses strung around his neck and moccasins on his feet. His hands moved about as he excitedly shared the secrets of the special collections.

            Shaman has been the director of the special collections department at BSU for 20 years but has been employed at BSU for 24 years. He began to explain all the different elements of the room and his enthusiasm showed that he really loves his job. The special collection at BSU consists of university documents and pictures, facility publications, rare books, and many first editions. “It's not a facility that is used very much,” Shaman said. “We don’t encourage a lot of use of the collections.”

            The archives are mostly used for photographs but BSU has at least one of every published issue of the Northern Student. the Northern Student was founded in 1926 and the special collection has the only set of unbound and bound newspapers. Along with the Northern Student, many issues of The Bemidji Pioneer and the former Bemidji Sentinel can be found here as well.

            With most of the rest of the library being accessible by the Internet, there has been a big push by to do the same with the collections. “Its like pulling teeth at this college like any other,” said Shaman when he was asked how long it would be before everything was digitized. Although it’s not out of the question it will just take a lot if time and effort for Internet access to archive documents. “We lose track of how many books get published,” commented Shaman.

On one wall of the room was a gated bookcase with one of the earliest publications, dating back as early as 1450. Many of the books were 16^thand 17^th century books with many different varieties. Books form theses eras are the least vulnerable to damage because of the heavy paper they were printed on. The oldest books will be the ones that hold the best over time.

An assortment of books

Shaman pulled for us “an unusually nice specimen” that is celebrating its 400^th birthday this year. “Most Bibles have astonishing errors,” said Shaman as he grabbed a King James first edition from the gated bookcase. “I myself am not interested in the Bible, I’m somewhere between an atheist and a heathen.” The Bible’s publication was estimated between the years of 1615 and 1617 and the book was still in great condition. The black bookcase also held early works of Shakespeare plays and documents signed by John Hancock himself.

 With little outside use from the public, the archives can become a “lonely job,” but all could tell that Shaman loved his work. He admitted to not knowing exactly all this work was done for. “What are we saving it for if know one is going to be interested in it?”