A new exhibit outside the Special Collections & Archives Research Center on the fifth floor of the Valley Library invites visitors to poke around OSU’s first 150 years via a unique tool: a digital touch table with stories floating by as “bubbles” that users can drag and open.
Stories include text, photos and videos exploring various milestones in the university’s history, such as the first broadcast by what is now OPB in 1923, the invention of the computer mouse in the 1960s and the establishment of student-led cultural centers on campus starting in the 1970s.
The touch table — essentially a 60-inch flatscreen TV laid out horizontally — was first developed for OSU’s 150th anniversary celebration and hosted at the Oregon Historical Society Museum for several months in 2018.
It took more than a year of planning, coding and fact-checking to create the table and all its interactive content, said Shelly Signs, senior event marketing strategist with University Relations and Marketing, who was the executive director for anniversary planning.
Signs started by collecting 150 things most people did not know about OSU, grouped into themes that aligned with values and goals including celebrating diversity, feeding the world, creating a sustainable future and encouraging entrepreneurs. She partnered with Portland design agency Sticky Co. to code and build the table, using data and content from many OSU departments, including many historical documents and photos from SCARC.
Reviving the table now and placing it across from SCARC as a temporary exhibit aligns neatly with the center’s current display, which explores how archival materials are displayed and interpreted through the lens of SCARC’s past 10 years of exhibit topics, said Julie Judkins, SCARC department head.
“We thought it was an excellent place for the touch table because it’s adjacent to SCARC’s exhibits, which also focus on university history,” Judkins said. “The touch table was created before I arrived at OSU, but it draws on research in SCARC’s collections and has ties to SCARC's collecting areas — university history, of course, but also multicultural and brewing history.”
The fifth floor is also an in-demand study space, so SCARC sees a lot of engagement with its exhibits, Judkins added. SCARC holds open houses displaying archival materials from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. every Wednesday, but the touch table is available at all hours the library is open.
“If you are looking to learn more about one of the themes or OSU history, it’s an easily digestible way to get a taste of the facts,” Signs said.
For a preview of the stories within the touch table, check out the 150th anniversary display flipbook.
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