The Shaw Historical Library at Oregon Institute of Technology will celebrate the publication of its 25th Silver Anniversary issue of the Shaw Journal on October 20th at the Shaw Historical Library Annual Banquet. The celebration will include fine food, entertainment, and a special presentation by celebrated Western writer Linda Hussa.
The banquet takes place on Thursday, October 20th, at Oregon Institute of Technology in the College Union’s Mt. Mazama/Mt. Scott rooms. The evening kicks off with a no-host social hour beginning at 5:30 p.m., dinner at 6:30 p.m., and Linda Hussa’s presentation Western Ranch Life in Poetry and Prose at 7:45 p.m. The Link River Ramblers will perform during the social hour and a silent auction of regional artifacts will take place.The cost of attendance is $30 per person, $55 per couple, or $165 for a table of six. To make reservations, contact the Shaw Historical Library by October 13th, by calling 541-885-1772 or go online to http://www.library.oit.edu/shaw/banquet_order_form.html.
Writer Linda Hussa was born in Eastern Oregon and grew up in Northern California at the “base of the Diablo Meridian.” She has spent her life living and working ranches. Hussa has published eight books of poetry and prose including Ride the Silence, Where the Wind Lives, and Blood Sister I am to These Fields. Her published short stories include Sharing Fencelines, Lige Langston: Sweet Iron, and The Family Ranch: Land, Children, and Tradition in the American West. Hussa has read her work at the Institute of Museum and Library Services in Washington, D.C. and at the Library of Congress, and has been a featured poet at the National Cowboy Poetry Gathering in Arizona since 1991.
Hussa interprets the people and landscape of the rural Great Basin. In her words, “The Great Basin and the Western way of life figure prominently in my writing. The language of the work we do, the animals we raise and tend, the human history that defines the way I think is particular to this place. But at its heart is the human experience.”
The 25th Silver Anniversary issue of the Shaw Journal is titled Buckaroos and Barons: Cattle Ranching in the Land of the Lakes and explores the Klamath Basin’s remarkable cattle industry through the ages. The journal chronicles from the 1860s when the California cattle barons first spread into Oregon and the High Desert region to the present day. The journal examines accounts of famous, historical ranches, associations that were formed to protect and serve the ranchers, and even buckaroo traditions that became the hallmark of cattle management in Oregon and the West. The publication covers 150 years of history, saluting the men and women who continue the traditions of ranch life.
About the Shaw Historical Library
The Shaw Historical Library was founded in 1983 by Laurence L. and Dorothy Shaw. Laurence Shaw gathered his collection over a period of forty years. In his own words it was a collection "grown from reading. Each interesting book led to another until there was total immersion in Western Americana."
The Shaws intention was to establish a library to provide students, researchers, and the interested public with a place to learn about the people and history of the area known as the Land of Lakes. The Land of Lakes is generally considered to encompass southcentral and southeastern Oregon, northeastern California, and northwestern Nevada.
Since the initial donation in 1983, the collections of the Shaw Historical Library have grown, primarily through donations, to include approximately 3,000 books, as well as maps, art, manuscripts, photographs, and an oral history collection.
The library contains materials relating to American western migration and the history of the Klamath Basin. There are also significant collections on railroad, logging, and Native American History. The library's manuscript collections focus on the logging, lumber industry, and agriculture in the Klamath Basin.
The Shaw Historical Library is an affiliate of the Oregon Tech Foundation. Visit the Shaw Historical Library online at http://www.library.oit.edu/shaw/index.html.
About Oregon Tech
Founded in Klamath Falls in 1947, Oregon Institute of Technology is one of seven institutions in the Oregon University System, and the only public institute of technology in the Pacific Northwest. Oregon Tech provides degree programs in engineering and health technologies, management, communications and applied sciences that prepare students to be effective participants in their professional, public and international communities through hands-on learning. Oregon Tech’s main campus is in Klamath Falls; other sites are located in Portland, Salem, La Grande and Seattle. Oregon Tech will consolidate its campuses in the Portland area to a larger facility in Wilsonville in Fall 2012. Visit www.oit.edu to learn more about Oregon Institute of Technology.
