University of Idaho Library Administration records, 1905-1990

The records of M. Belle Sweet and Lee Zimmerman were in file cabinets and retain their arrangement upon receipt by Special Collections and Archives. The records of Warren Owens and Eileen Hitchingham were transferred to Special Collections at various times during and after their administrations and were put in alphabetical order during processing. The papers of Richard Beck and Stan Shepard, which were sometimes in their own accession and sometimes in the files of the administrator, were placed together and arranged alphabetically. Therefore, each official has his or her own alphabetical file; original folder headings were retained. Occasionally the material from one administration will overlap materials from the next administration.

Each director has his or her own series. The records of M. Belle Sweet are the first extant records of the library, the previous records having been destroyed in the 1906 fire. It appears from typed notes in some of the folders that the papers were arranged after her departure and that some material was discarded. Copies of outgoing correspondence from 1906-1915 are in three letterpress books.

The papers of Lee Zimmerman may also have been sorted and arranged shortly after his retirement. They are arranged in broad subject areas, with specific related areas following. The first section of correspondence is an A-Z arrangement, with a few folders for specific names inserted. In the second correspondence section, each folder has a specific organizational name. The university departmental correspondence is arranged by college, then department. A number of folders in this series concern the planning of the new library building, which opened in 1957.

The papers of Warren Owens are in a single alphabetical file. In addition to library-related correspondence, memos, budgets, etc., the records of his administration include references to the Barnard-Stockbridge photograph collection, the Basque book collection, and the founding of ICOSAL (Idaho Council of State Academic Libraries).

Likewise, the papers of Eileen Hitchingham are in a single alphabetical file. Her records contain material relating to the University of Idaho centennial celebration in 1989, as well as library-related correspondence and committee minutes.

The records of Associate Director Richard Beck and Assistant Director Stanley Shepard are in Series V; each has his own sub-series. Beck was Associate Director for Public Services, and his records include the staff attitude survey, committee records, and memos. Many of his papers are included in the records of the several directors under which he served.

Shepard was Assistant Director for Technical Services. Some of his correspondence concerns arrangements with commercial binderies, committees looking into the problems of conversion to the Library of Congress cataloging system, and other technical services committees, his work on ILA and PNLA Bibliography and Publications committees, and his service on the University of Idaho ROTC/Officer Education committee.

Series VI contains material not associated with a specific administrator. Included are bound volumes of library expenditures from 1931 to 1956 (lacking only the records for 1946-1948), faculty and staff handbooks, library guides, the periodicals printout in microfiche form from 1978 to 1987, the microfilm of the library shelf list done in 1973 with a 1978 supplement, Robert Hook's notes for a history of the library that he wrote in 1972, and five scrapbooks (1950-1988) with articles relating to the university library.

Monthly financial records were discarded. To preserve confidentiality of personnel records, including applications and evaluations, and because the Human Resources Office of the university is the official repository of such records, the library's copies of these records were destroyed. Likewise, time cards and other material concerning student workers was discarded. This reduced the records by 30 cubic feet. In 2024, an additional bankers box of material was added to the collection from Stanley Shepard. Due to the location of Shepard's previous materials within the collection, it was decided to create a new series, leaving previously-added material in its existing place in the arrangement. Materials were refoldered during processing. Arrangement is by topic; some folders are separated into two sections, all relating to similar topics. These materials relate to Shepard's time at the University of Idaho and prior (1942-1984).