By RORY MOORE
Tiger Media Network
Staff from Fort Hays State University’s Tebo Library helped celebrate American Archives Month on Wednesday by showcasing items from the campus’s history at its University Archive Pop Up. Archive and Special Collections Librarian Ron Martin-Dent presented items that represented turning points in FHSU’s development and educated students about their importance to the university.
“With the library currently under construction, I wanted to go into the vault and grab things to give students a chance to see some of the materials that are in the archive,” Martin-Dent said. “We have a couple of bits of realia, the original bell from the Catherine School and the hammer used for making Picken Hall. We have a few yearbooks from 1925, 1944 and 1969, a master’s thesis from one of the faculty members on campus who did her master’s degree. We also have some floppy disks, scrapbooks, lantern slides and a couple of souvenirs from the old mascot, a couple of pennants, some buttons and a paddle that was one of the sororities’ until it closed in 1985.”
Ron Martin-Dent lets student look through archived Fort Hays items at the University Archive Pop Up. 
A letter sent to the brother of Charles Sternberg. 
The original bell from the Catherine School, alongside the hammer used to cut the arch stone for Picken Hall. 
Buttons featuring old Fort Hays photos and certificates with the new Tebo Library logo. 
A photograph of onlookers watching the Art Annex Building on fire in 1967. 
Antiquated FHSU yearbooks. 
Brian Gribben sharing historical facts about Fort Hays with a student while Andy Tincknell and Martin-Dent man the table. 
Previous yearbooks and films of past Tiger sports games. 
Shannon Ruder amused by the things Martin-Dent shows her. 
Gribben helping students make buttons.
The new additions to the renovated library have helped maintain what he considers essential to Fort Hays State University’s history.
“One of the nice things about the renovation from turning Forsyth into Tebo is we now have a climate-controlled vault,” he said. “It will be a lot easier for us to care for this.”
One of those items was a photograph of onlookers watching the campus’s former Art Annex building burning down in a fire in 1967.
“They were not able to save the building, so it’s been rebuilt,” Martin-Dent said. “They did an investigation, they ruled out arson, but they never determined the actual cause of what started the fire.”
The decision to display items during the library’s renovations was a deliberate one, as Martin-Dent wanted students to see pieces of Fort Hays’ legacy.
“That was a very intentional focus I considered while making this display,” he said. “For things like yearbooks, we have multiple copies, so the ones that I pulled, I made sure that we had backups in case anything would happen. We do have handling guidelines, like asking students and faculty to wash their hands before handling the materials and putting plastic sleeves over them. Safety and handling considerations are [at the] forefront of our minds to keep their material safe and available for future generations.”