The Biomedical Communications Unit (BCU) in the College of Veterinary Medicine dates to at least 1978 and the opening of Bustad Hall, when it housed carrels equipped for autotutorial instruction and facilities for production and broadcast of closed-circuit television for teaching. In 1981 it added photographic processing to its services. Eventually printing and production became a major part of its role, and it served as one the main campus printing centers for several decades. It was closed at the end of May, 2021.
The collection consists of electronic media which had been held at the BCU printing center. Many of the materials appear to be videos of veterinary medicine events, or of news stories related to them. The full contents of the collection remain to be evaluated.
Box 1 contains six video laser discs from the 1990s, with three accompanying manuals. Some of these appear to be commercial produced, and need evaluation. Also in Box 1 are 275 DVDs, most in 5 plastic containers which maintain the order and arrangement in which they came to the archives. Most DVDs are labeled with title and/or date, and appear to be from the 1990s and 2000s.
The bulk of box 2 is 230 miniDV tapes from the 2000s. Many of the MiniDV tapes are in small cardboard boxes of six tapes each; those are how they came to MASC and those boxes retain the order that they came in. Also in the box are 6 VHS tapes, 2 u-matic tapes, and 3 VHS-C tapes, and six VHS tapes. Most of the items in these latter four formats are undated; the VHS range form 1996-2004.
Box 3 contains 24 hard drives, as well as a variety of power supplies which came with them. Most are labeled with dates, between 2004 and 2015.
This is an unprocessed collection. Any arrangement reflects either a pre-existing order from the records' creators or previous custodians, or preliminary sorting performed by staff.
Materials are clustered by format, and the larger sets maintain their original (as of time of transfer) arrangement in most cases.
This collection is open and available for research use.
Copyright restrictions apply.
[Item description]
Preliminary Guide to the Washington State University Biomedical Communications Unit Electronic Media, 1990s-2010s (UA2022-08)
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
Gary Turner donated these materials to the Washington State University Libraries in December of 2022, where it was retained as UA2022-08. Turner had inherited part of the BCU’s repurposed space, and had held no affiliation with the BCU.
Priority needs to be given to moving these materials from their current storage to archival drives for preservation purposes, which should then allow both evaluation and processing of the materials.
Given the BCU’s role as an arm of Veterinary Medicine, it is possible we may want to parse these materials into VetMed materials and BCU materials. Other BCU materials were received in July of 2021 as UPC 2021-03, and should be evaluated for possible joint processing with this accession.
Other unprocessed BCU materials (generally printed formats rather than e-media) are held as UPC 2021-03. MASC holds many Veterinary Medicine collections and accessions.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.