Author: Ushriya

Author: Ushriya

Go out for beer and history at the theater at Kennedy School. Monday, March 30th at 7 p.m., at the McMenamins Kennedy School (5736 NE 33rd Ave, Portland)
In 1913, Caroline Gleason, later known as Sister Miriam Theresa, worked in Portland factories, surveyed working women across Oregon, and helped craft the nations first compulsory minimum wage law. Although that first version only applied to women and minors, Gleason’s work laid the foundation for the Fair Labor and Standards Act of 1938 and the minimum wage rates in place today.
Speaker (and NHN associate) Janice Dilg is an independent scholar from Portland, OR. She holds and MA in history from Portland State University and has contributed to numerous regional public history projects. As the Oral History Liaison, she coordinates the oral history project between the ORegon Historical Society and the US District Court of Oregon Historical Society. Since 2006, she has been an adjunct instructor at Portland State and is developing the Women’s City Builder’s website, which highlights women’s civic contributions to the city of Portland. She is currently working the upcoming centennial of women’s suffrage in Oregon in 2012.

Sponsored by the Oregon Historical Society, Holy Names Heritage Center, and McMenamins. Free; bring canned foods to donate to the Oregon Food Bank — all ages welcome. History Pub is the last Monday of every month.

Art DeMuro, chairman of the City of Portland Historic Landmarks Commission, sent this letter to John Herman, President of the Board of Trustees of the Oregon Historical Society on March 17th.
Dear Mr. Herman,
The members of the Portland Historic Landmarks Commission have discuss the recent closure of the Research Library of the Oregon Historical Society. We have considered the dismissal of the entire professional staff of the library, the likelihood of future reduced hours, the proposed us of untrained staff and the likely long-term deterioration of accessibility to and care for the Society’s irreplaceable research materials.
The OHS Research Library functions as the chief repository of historical information about Portland’s built environment, and it is used by homeowners, property developers, real estate agents, architects, landscape architects, neighborhood and community historians, genealogists, archaeologists, and many other people who have occasion to come before the Landmarks Commission, or to deal in some way with historic properties. The closure or restriction of access to these unique and invaluable materials will have a dramatic and deleterious effect on our work. Historic preservation is a major component of the city’s efforts to reduce waste, conserve materials, reduce our carbon footprints, and reuse and recycle the craftsmanship and the natural resources hat we have in our hands.
The Commission has gone on record as encouraging the Oregon Historical Society to expend every effort either to retain and enhance the collections and professional staffing f its library, or if necessary to work with its stakeholders to place the collections with anther organization that can and will provide the necessary support. the commission endorses the resolutions of the Northwest History Network of March 1, 2009, which is included with this letter.

The OPB program Think Out Loud is going to have a show on the OHS library closure Tuesday, March 24, from 9-10 a.m., at 91.5 fm. 

NHN board member James Hillegas did talk to Julie Sabatier of TOL, and gave her our perspective on the situation. Please listen, call, and email during the show. Sometimes they read emails out loud, or even call to follow up. 
Some things that we had discussed trying to emphasize on the show was that the Oregon Historical Society executive director and board need to work with community stakeholders, openly and publicly, to find a sustainable solution for the library — which is a unique, vast resource important not only to historians, but many other people doing research about Oregon and the region. The collections are held in the public trust, and must be accessible and protected by trained archivists and librarians.