About This Site
Oregon State Baseball: 100 Years to a National Championship, 1907-2006 commemorates the centennial of intercollegiate baseball at Oregon State University. The site is a collaborative project of the University Libraries and Intercollegiate Athletics and includes materials from the OSU Archives and OSU Sports Information.
Planning for the project began in the spring of 2005 before the OSU baseball team made its first trip to the College World Series in more than 50 years (since 1952). The 2006 team’s run to the National Championship provided new energy for the project. The project staff knew that OSU baseball, as the reigning National Champions, would receive significant attention from fans and the media in 2007.
The Archives’ baseball-related photographs are scattered in many different collections and had been poorly described or un-identified. This project brings the images together in one “virtual” collection and provides enhanced descriptions. OSU Sports Information has provided more recent images (especially of the 2005 and 2006 teams) and other images that are not part of the Archives collections.
In the course of the project, more than 1500 baseball images were identified in the Archives’ collections, almost double the number we expected.
This project includes several features not previously used in OSU Libraries digital projects:
- Narrative content is provided through a blog allowing users to add comments.
- Streaming video of several films of OSU baseball is available from within both the media and narrative components of the site.
- Extensive descriptions are provided for many of the images on the site.
Many OSU Libraries staff contributed to this project: Linda Kathman, Sue Kunda, and Terry Reese in the Digital Production Unit; Larry Landis and Elizabeth Nielsen in the University Archives; Reid Parham in Library Technology, who designed the site; and many student assistants who scanned photographs and other items.
Kip Carlson in OSU Sports Information provided images and text for the site and supported the project from its inception as a way to honor the rich history of OSU baseball.
The OSU Libraries and OSU Sports Information especially acknowledge the yeoman service of Paul Andresen as a volunteer on this project. Paul’s extensive knowledge of and enthusiasm for OSU baseball history and his tenacity in tracking down all manner of details about players, teams, and games are reflected in the detailed descriptions he prepared to accompany many of the images and the essays about various aspects of OSU baseball history which he wrote for the site.