Collegio Online

Issue date: 10/2/08 Section: Campus Life

Media Credit: Aaron Anders Randy Roberts, curator of special collections, archivist and university historian, sifts through bound collections of campus and local newspapers, some of which date to first edition printings of publications like The Collegio. All of special collections' print materials are kept in climate-controlled areas of Axe Library, in order to preserve their contents.

They keep Randy Roberts in the basement, far away from the sunlight and humid air that might ruin the aging objects he is charged to preserve.
Roberts, curator of special collections, archivist and university historian, shares his windowless Axe Library office with several large desks - one of the antique pigeonhole variety - computers, old-timey radios and recording devices, fake plants, African art as well as gloomy German etchings.
On Roberts' most cluttered desktop, an old Pittsburg Fire Department call book is opened to a series of handwritten entries from 1916. This same book holds first-hand accounts of the fire that destroyed Russ Hall in 1914.
And just beyond a wide steel laboratory sink sits a rocking chair, lovingly crafted, appearing almost new. Some say it held the body of high profile socialist publisher J.A. Wayland when he shot himself in his Girard bedroom in 1912.
This erudite, controlled environment might seem an odd sort of habitat for a man who once thought he was destined to become a farmer.
"I think everyone has moments where they wonder what life might have been like if they had done things differently," said Roberts, who grew up outside of small-town Greeley, Kan. "I do miss being outdoors. But with farming, even if you do everything perfectly, Mother Nature can disrupt everything without warning. It's an incredible amount of energy, both physically and emotionally, that's required for that kind of life."
Roberts, who worked the family farm with his father and brother, might have built his life around agriculture had he not developed a love for history in high school. He was encouraged to pursue that passion by faculty and staff while enrolled as a student at Pittsburg State University.

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