Some of my professional interests and publications:
Australian interests |
Although I have been doing HTML markup for about a decade, I still do not understand enough about the process to build a website from scratch. This format is the result of my first attempt to build a personal page after lifting the design from another site. Every time I try to renew the text on this page, I make a broken promise to myself to experiment with a different design, but the wheel ruts run pretty deep here in cyberspace and I continue to plod along with this layout. My professional career began at the University of Arkansas in January, 1987 when I convinced the director of the library's Special Collections division to give me a job. My only qualifications at that point were a master's degree in history and a great deal of chutzpah (I still have the master's degree). I started out as a manuscript processor and found I really enjoyed the work, specializing in the department's extensive Civil War materials. Aside from a break in 1990 to attend the University of Texas at Austin to get a master's degree in library science, I worked for the University of Arkansas until August, 1994 when I got hired by Montana State University in Bozeman. During my career, I have climbed the three rungs of the academic latter from assistant, to associate, to full professor, and I am quite relieved the climb is over. My research interests have changed over the years, and I am glad about that. Continuing curiosity is the only cure for boredom, and every time I discover a new line of inquiry to explore I feel refreshed and energized. Over the years I have published quite a few historical articles on the Civil War, frontier journalism, and the frontier period in Montana. My first book was published by the University of Arkansas Press in 2003 and is an edited version of Albert Bishop's Loyalty on the Frontier. My second book is a biography of Captain Gustavus Cheyney Doane, Second United States Cavalry, and is called Yellowstone Denied. It was published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 2006. My third book, Splendid on a Large Scale: The Writings of Hans Peter Gyllembourg Koch, Montana Territory, 1869-1874 is now available in fine bookstores everywhere. (Not really, but you ought to buy one anyway. Isn't that what Amazon is for?) Old Main Reunion 2011
Harriet Cushman photographsThe photographs listed below are actually rather unique. They are from Collection 1253, the Harriette Cushman Papers. This collection includes many glass plate negatives and color transparencies, ca. 1887-1905 taken by John M. Cushman, the father of MSU Extension agent Harriette Cushman. John Cushman took many images in and around Jamestown, New York where he and his family lived around the turn of the twentieth century. The images are unique because Cushman frequently recorded the street address, direction of orientation, and time of day on the storage envelopes. The color transparencies on glass are extremely rare, being likely the very first color photography done via the autochrome process invented in France and not patented in the United States until 1907. I believe these images predate the American patent. I have put the image number after the title of each photograph to link it back to the inventory of the collection |
| My Professional Resume | Cooper Park Cottage | Society of Southwest Archivists |