Kenneth Spencer Research Library

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 5,000 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Today’s image has been selected in honor of National Go Fishing Day (observed annually on June 18th). Fishing has a long history at Potter Lake. For example, in his KU History article “A Lake’s Progress,” Douglas Harvey writes that during the early 1990s “KU student John Trager, a Kansas City, Kansas, native and an avid fisherman, had good luck at the lake on a number of occasions. Fishing for bass one day, he reportedly landed 22 of them, on another occasion he caught a stringer of crappie – 17 in all. But Trager’s claim to KU fame came in September of 1992 when he landed a 25-pound, 41-inch flathead catfish at Potter Lake.”

Fishing at Potter Lake, 1970. Note Joseph R. Pearson Hall and Potter Bridge
faintly in the background. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Potter Lake 1970 Prints:
Campus: Areas and Objects (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 5,000 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Strong Hall construction, 1917. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/22/87 1917 Prints: Campus: Buildings: Strong Hall (Photos).
Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Strong Hall construction, 1918. Note that the photograph
was taken almost exactly ninety-seven years ago.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 0/22/87 1918 Negatives:
Campus: Buildings: Strong Hall (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Strong Hall construction, 1918. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/22/87 1918 Prints: Campus: Buildings: Strong Hall (Photos).
Click on image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 5,000 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Three women sitting under Potter Bridge, 1920s. University Archives Photos.
Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Potter Bridge 1920s Prints:
Campus: Areas and Objects (Photos). Click image to enlarge.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 5,000 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Students walking in the rain along Jayhawk Boulevard in front of Wescoe Hall, 1975-1976.
University Archives Photos. Call Number: RG 0/24/1 Rain 1975/1976 Prints:
Campus: Areas and Objects (Photos). Click image to enlarge (redirect to Spencer’s digital collections).

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants

Each week we’ll be posting a photograph from University Archives that shows a scene from KU’s past. We’ve also scanned more than 5,000 images from KU’s University Archives and made them available online; be sure to check them out!

Monday is Memorial Day, so this week we’re sharing selected pages from the 1919 Jayhawker yearbook. The volume, the first published after the end of World War I, was called The Peace Edition and dedicated to “the memory of the Men of the University of Kansas who willingly served their government in its great crisis, even to the supreme sacrifice of life itself.” The yearbook included tributes to twenty-seven of the approximately 130 KU students and alumni who died in World War I. (This number included two female students, Lucy McLinden and Fay Friedberg, who died from influenza.) KU’s stadium and student union memorialize these men and women.

Selected pages from the 1919 Jayhawker yearbook.
William T. Fitzsimons was also the first United States Army officer killed in World War I.
More information about him is also available at the KU History website.
University Archives. Call Number: LD 2697 .J3 1919. Click images to enlarge.

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Melissa Kleinschmidt, Megan Sims, and Abbey Ulrich
Public Services Student Assistants