Browsed by
Tag: Washington State

Exploring the 1918 Influenza Pandemic with the State Library’s Digital Collections

Exploring the 1918 Influenza Pandemic with the State Library’s Digital Collections

In 1918, while Washingtonians were anxiously awaiting for their boys to come home near the end of WWI, reports were coming over from Europe about soldiers dying from a mysterious Spanish Influenza. Reports of “la grippe,” the “flu,” and “pneumonia,” the epidemic was caused by a strain of Pfeiffer’s Bacillus, named after the epidemiologist who discovered it in 1892. By mid-September, before the war was over, it had reached the shores of Washington and at least 23 other states. Warnings…

Read More Read More

Wherefore telephone books?

Wherefore telephone books?

It wasn’t that long ago that telephone books played a fairly significant role in our daily lives. Whether you used one as a booster seat at dinner, or you were looking up the number of a neighbor or local business, telephone books were an incredibly handy tool. One could argue that they were the single most important resource about a local community before the internet. To preserve the wealth of information contained in old telephone books and the precise “moment…

Read More Read More

Be aware of potentially fraudulent solicitors

Be aware of potentially fraudulent solicitors

Each year, the Washington State Attorney General’s Consumer Protection Division (AGO) and the Office of Secretary of State’s Charities Program (OSOS) reach out to grocery store managers across the state to provide important information about charitable solicitors. Increasingly, solicitors are asking for donations outside of retail establishments and will often set up a table at an entrance or exit of a store. They ask patrons for small cash, check, debit, or credit card donations, purportedly for various causes, such as…

Read More Read More

Archives Spotlight: Washington’s official state monster

Archives Spotlight: Washington’s official state monster

Just over 50 years ago, Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin unleashed their Bigfoot video, better known as the Patterson-Gimlin film, on the world. The 59.5 seconds of original footage were met mostly with criticism and accusations—and not much has changed. To the delight of conspiracy theorists around the world, Patterson denied hoax allegations until his death in 1972, and Gimlin still maintains the film ’s legitimacy. Pretty much everyone else, however, fully acknowledges the film was a hoax. That certainly hasn’t stopped…

Read More Read More

Making the Season Bright

Making the Season Bright

It’s the giving season and the Holiday Kids’ Tree symbolizes it in the best way. Each year, the Association of Washington Business (AWB) hosts the Holiday Kids’ Tree lighting marking the end of their Holiday Kids’ Tree Project of that year.  The project collects donations and funds to be given to children and families in need in rural areas. According to the AWB website, more than $390,000 in cash donations and thousands of gifts since the project started in 1989….

Read More Read More

‘Tis the season!

‘Tis the season!

The holiday season is officially here and the smell of evergreen fills the Legislative Building with the arrival of this year’s Holiday Kids’ Tree! The tree, delivered November 28th, comes from Rainier, WA and was donated by Weyerhaeuser’s Vail Tree Farm. The Noble fir stands at 30-feet tall and will be adorned with over 7,000 LED lights and stuffed animals for this year’s theme of “Friends of the Forest”. The “Friends of the Forest” theme features animals native to the State of…

Read More Read More

Lights, Signals, Buoys, and Daymarks — Our Rich Heritage

Lights, Signals, Buoys, and Daymarks — Our Rich Heritage

From the desk of Rand Simmons The meagre lighthouse all in white, haunting the seaboard, as if it were the ghost of an edifice that had once had colour and rotundity, dripped melancholy tears after its late buffeting by the waves. ~Charles Dickens, Little Dorrit A lighthouse is … Although we often think of a tower with a bright light at the top, located on an important or dangerous waterway, lighthouses are quite varied in architecture. They had, and still have, two…

Read More Read More

The Sea Runners: A Novel, by Ivan Doig.

The Sea Runners: A Novel, by Ivan Doig.

The Sea Runners: A Novel. By Ivan Doig. (New York: Atheneum, 1982. 279 pp. Map.) Recommendation submitted by: Will Stuivenga, Cooperative Projects Manager, Washington State Library, Tumwater, WA. There exists an actual letter-to-the-editor published in the Oregon Weekly Times, mentioning three Scandinavians who had managed to travel by canoe from Russian Alaska to Shoalwater (now named Willapa) Bay in 1852/53. Doig’s novel imagines what their trek must have been like, full of trepidations and tribulations, all the way up to and including…

Read More Read More

Another facet of the Green River Killer story unfolds as a graphic novel

Another facet of the Green River Killer story unfolds as a graphic novel

From the desk of Sean Lanksbury. PNW & Special Collections Librarian Green River Killer: A True Detective Story. By Jeff Jensen; Illustrated by Jonathan Case; Lettering by Nake Piekos. (Milwaukie, OR: Dark Horse Books, 2011. 233 pp. Illustrations, map.) Recommendation by PNW & Special Collections This graphic novel provides an often neglected perspective to the Green River Killer investigation by recounting the ordeal that his father, King County Detective Tom Jensen,  endured since 1984, when he was assigned to the investigation, through to the 188…

Read More Read More

Newly Received Federal Publications — April – August 2016

Newly Received Federal Publications — April – August 2016

The following are publications received during April – August 2016. The purpose of this list is two-fold: one, to create an awareness of the breadth and depth of the Washington State Library’s federal documents collection and two, to alert readers to specific titles available to them either online or through a local federal depository library. Business “Mineral Commodity Summaries 2016.” USGS Mineral Resources Program. N.p., n.d. Web. 12 July 2016. at At WSL: I 19.166:(1998-). Ask about format. Online at: http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/mcs/2016/mcs2016.pdf. This publication is…

Read More Read More