Museum of History and Industry

MOHAI Sophie Fry Bass Library

I still work at the MOHAI library one afternoon a week. The library collection and staff moved to Georgetown last year, and I've only been to the new museum once since it opened in January. They did a great job on the new museum and we should go more often, but the South Lake Union area has endless construction and parking is hard.

On the other hand, the new MOHAI Resource Center is just a 10 minute drive and my work there is exactly the same. I do most of the research at home on my laptop, anyway.  The ancient volunteer's computer at the library is usually busy, plus I'm attached to the exasperating Microsoft technology I learned in the 1990's.

The first two years at MOHAI I worked on collections dating from the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. I lost count of just how many, but we wrote at least 15 new finding aids.  The photos, clippings, souvenirs, etc. had been tucked away at the museum since 1963, and other things trickled in over the years when someone cleaned out Auntie's closet and decided to donate her scrapbooks.

Anyway, this was part of MOHAI's preparation for the 50th anniversary of the World's Fair in 2012, and the research requests the library anticipated.  It was fun to be a small part of it and the anniversary was a big deal in Seattle.  After all that work it was gratifying to see random bits and pieces of those finding aids showing up in magazines and newspaper articles.

Since then, I'm on to more diverse subjects.  Other volunteers come and go, but I love each new project the librarian gives me.  It's detailed work, and I like taking my time to get it right. After all, those finding aids will still be "out there" long after I'm gone.  The best part of the research is I learn all sorts esoteric things about NW history. Here's a few examples that give an idea of the variety of collections in MOHAI's archive. 

This glamorous lady was Boeing's first female engineer.  Bessie Hall Dempsey started out as a dancer and vaudeville performer.

Model Donna Rydberg epitomized high fashion in the 1960's, and John Easton was milliner to Seattle's society set.

The elegant sloop Sir Tom was built in Seattle by the Blanchard Boat Company, and it was once the fastest racing sailboat on the west coast.  Handcrafted Blanchard boats are still prized in the Northwest.

In 1928, crews laid a telephone cable between Alki and Bainbridge Island.  In 1 hour 36 minutes, the crew laid 16,010 feet of cable. Since the surveyed distance between the two points is approximately 16,000 feet, this indicated a nearly perfect submarine cable lay.

My last project was a collection of photos and records from the historic Malmo Plant Nursery. Yesterday, I started on a collection of photographs from the once famous (but now defunct) Rhodes Department store in downtown Seattle.  And so on...

Here's links to some of my finding aids published on Northwest Digital Archives:

The Guide to the Mark Dempsey Collection on Bessie Hall Dempsey

The Guide to the Donna Rydberg Fashion Modeling Album

The Guide to the Norman C. Blanchard Family Photographs

The Guide to the William R. Bainbridge Collection on Submarine Cable Laying