From our homepage, you can access the events calendar, featured resources, collection guides, blog posts about SCARC activities and collections, and more.  You can also use this site to search our collection guides (also called finding aids) for content relevant to your research.  You can find more information about searching our portals on the "Tips and Tricks" tab.  If you have any more questions not covered here, SCARC Public services staff are available to assist you in navigating and searching these sites!

If you're looking for already-digitized content relating to Oregon and its history, a wide variety of additional sites are available to search from the comfort - and safety - of your own home, including:

• Historic Oregon Newspapers (University of Oregon): Digitized Oregon newspapers from around the state from 1946 to the present. Nearly 1,300,000 pages are currently available, and more are being digitized every day.
• Digital History Projects (Oregon Historical Society): A suite of comprehensive online resources pertaining to Oregon history, including the Oregon History Project, the Oregon Encyclopedia, and the Oregon History Wayfinder.
• Southern Oregon Digital Archives (SODA; Southern Oregon University): A variety of digital collections pertaining to the history, culture, ecology and natural history of southern Oregon.
• State Archives of Oregon Web Exhibits and Projects: A broad range of web exhibits and online projects drawn from the State Archives of Oregon.
• State Library of Oregon Digital Collections: Current and historical state and local government publications and maps; federal publications focusing on Oregon and the Pacific Northwest; topical digital exhibits incorporating content from the State Library’s collections.
• Portland State University Digital Exhibits: A broad range of digital exhibits featuring content from PSU’s collections, with a focus on Portland area history.

There are two places you can begin your research journey through our collections: our website, and Oregon Digital (the site where we host content digitized from our archival collections). 

From our website, you can use the search box in the upper right corner to search our entire collection database - no registration or affiliation required! One thing to keep in mind as you dig into the guides to our collections: not all our collections are described with the same level of granularity. Some collections - generally those that are smaller, or contain only a single type of record (e.g. correspondence) - are described at the collection level; their guides will include a general overview of the collection’s contents, and perhaps point out some “items of note” within the collection. Some of our collections are described at the box-and-folder level, meaning that each folder in each box is described, often using the titles or descriptions supplied by the creator of the collection. Describing collections at the item level (i.e. where each item or document in each folder of a box is described individually) is fairly rare; this level of description is often reserved for photographic collections. Finally, some of our collections have been preliminarily described in what we call “preliminary container lists.” Some preliminary container lists are at the box-and-folder level, while others are at the item level. If a collection has a preliminary container list, you’ll find it by clicking on “Other Reference Guides” in the upper left hand side of the collection’s guide, and then clicking on the hyperlinked PDF file.

Here are some useful "pro tips" for navigating Oregon Digital, should you wish to do some future digging on your own as well:

1. Be creative! If you're looking for John W. Smith, and don't find him by searching for "John W. Smith," try "Smith, John W." or even "Jon Smith." Spelling errors do happen, and you may find additional results by trying different word orders.

2. Be sure to use quotation marks around words you want to appear together in your results. If you're interested in materials that reference or relate to the Korean War, for example, enter "Korean War" in the search box. Otherwise, your results will include all materials that reference Korean and War (e.g. Korean food, Korean peoples, Civil War, World War, etc.).

3. Once you've run a search, you can limit your results using the drop-downs that run vertically along the left side of your results page. I find "Institution," "Type," and "Decade" to be the most useful filters, as they allow one to sort out just the materials from OSU, to sort between images and textual documents, and sort results by date, respectively.

4. Once you click on a document from your results list, you should see an orange "pin" (or pins!) along the bottom of the document; clicking that pin will take you to where the word or phrase you searched for appears in the document.

5. After clicking on a document or image from your results list, you can zoom in and out by hovering your cursor over the image and using the scroll wheel on your mouse.

6. You can download anything you like from Oregon Digital by first clicking on the image or document in your results list, and then clicking on the "Download" link in the upper right corner of that item's page.

Looking for physical artifacts or wanting to learn more about life in Corvallis more broadly?  SCARC has a wide breadth of documentation of the practice of home economics on the Oregon State campus.  However, the Benton County Historical Society and its museums house a variety of collections that expand on our materials.  For example, their collection includes over 120,000 artifacts: including photographs, textiles, quilts, clothing, domestic arts, and personal possessions.  You can learn more (and search their collections!) on their website!  

• ArchiveGrid: A great resource for discovering archival materials germane to your research, both domestically and internationally. ArchiveGrid includes over 7 million records describing archival materials, bringing together information about historical documents, personal papers, family histories, and more. With over 1,400 archival institutions represented, ArchiveGrid helps researchers looking for primary source materials held in archives, libraries, museums and historical societies. You can use the search box at the top of the landing page to search across those collections, or use the map to zoom in and out and find archival repositories close to you.
• Archives West: Archives West provides access to descriptions of primary sources in the western United States, including correspondence, diaries or photographs. Digital reproductions of the materials are available in some cases.
• Hathi Trust: Founded in 2008, the Hathi Trust Digital Library is a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries preserving 17+ million digitized items. HathiTrust offers reading access to the fullest extent allowable by U.S. copyright law, computational access to the entire corpus for scholarly research, and other emerging services based on the combined collection. HathiTrust members steward the collection — the largest set of digitized books managed by academic and research libraries — under the aims of scholarly, not corporate, interests.
• WorldCat: WorldCat lets you search the collections of libraries in your community and thousands more around the world.  For example, start with a "History of Home Economics" search.