Women of USU: Then and Now, Sarah Godwin Brown Goodwin and Jennifer Duncan

Since its earliest days, women at Utah State University have had a huge impact on the cultural, scientific, economic, and social fabric of the institution since its earliest days. The Year of the Woman shares these critical voices simply because their stories matter. 

Sarah Godwin Brown Goodwin (1840-1912)

Hired as the first librarian as well as being the entire Music faculty, Mrs. Sarah Godwin Brown Goodwin was one of two women on the first faculty of the Utah Agricultural College. She served as librarian from 1888-1892 and 1896-1904. In 1896, Mrs. Goodwin became the first woman to be appointed to an office after statehood as a member of the Board of Trustees at Utah Agricultural College. 

Born in England in 1840, she immigrated to the United States with her parents in 1848, and the family settled in Salt Lake City in 1852. In the following years, Sarah was a student and then a teacher at the St. Mark’s school in Salt Lake. In 1877, she came to Logan and was the principal of the St. John’s Mission School. A talented musician, she taught music lessons in piano, violin, guitar, and organ. Sarah married Charles Isaac (C. I.) Goodwin in 1882 and lived in the distinguished house at 193 West 100 North until 1906. 

Former Special Collections Librarian, A. J. “Jeff” Simmonds, writing about Goodwin in his “Looking Back” column of 1979 in the Logan Herald Journal, called her “one of Logan’s most remarkable women.” She began work in the summer of 1890, placing orders for the first collection of books. A budget of $1,500 purchased quite a few books in the day, and Goodwin recorded each in the accession ledger, the first being a history of philosophy, labeled “Book One.” 

The collection moved fairly frequently during the institution’s decades. Before 1930, the Library occupied any place that was available. It began on the first floor of the south wing of Old Main and then moved in 1893 to one of the curved-front rooms in the north wing. When all sections of Old Main were completed for the fall term in 1902, the Library relocated to the north side of the second floor directly over the President's Office. Not until 1930 was a space specifically designed for a modern library operation when Merrill Library was built on the east side of the Quad.

Jeff Simmonds noted that too often “we have been largely unaware of the many whose lives are not chronicled.” USU’s Year of the Woman seeks to uncover and reclaim these histories of influential Aggie women and to honor their legacy by showcasing those who inherited and benefited by their work. 

Jennifer Duncan (2019)

Today, the USU Libraries provide access to almost 2 million print books and journals, 7,600,000 e-books (including over 7 million in the HathiTrust Digital Library), 480,000 government publications, and over 60,000 electronic journals. The USU Special Collections & Archives contain rare book and manuscript collections, western and Mormon historical documents, the university archive of USU, and the Fife Folklore Archives, one of the largest repositories of American folklore in the United States. Many rare items have been digitized and are available online in the Libraries' Digital History Collections and Online Exhibits.

As head of Special Collections, Jennifer Duncan has worked to transform the relationship between the library and faculty and students. Faculty note that the rare book collection has become a vital and vibrant part of USU’s instructional mission. In lively lectures based on her own deep expertise, Jennifer introduces students to the study, handling, and examination of early printed books and manuscripts. Additionally, Jennifer supports students as they prepare exhibits that showcase USU’s holdings; in this way, she helps teach students valuable lessons about organizing and presenting academic material for a broad audience. For the celebration of the 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, Jennifer worked with students to arrange a pop-up display of the university’s fragment of the Second Folio and related books. In yet another example, she and her staff supported students as they arranged an exhibit showcasing the English Book of Common Prayer, Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, Catholic and Protestant prayer books from the fourteenth through the seventeenth century, and important controversial works of the English Reformation. For that event, Jennifer also organized a book “petting zoo,” where students brought some of the library’s treasures to sites across campus, to display and discuss with interested passers-by. Jennifer doesn’t believe in the library as a sanctum but as an important resource and the intellectual center of Utah State University.

For the celebration of important suffrage anniversaries, USU Libraries staff has assembled an interdisciplinary LibGuide available covering Women’s Suffrage in the United States: http://libguides.usu.edu/womensuffrage.
 
Jennifer Duncan is but one of an impressive staff of librarians who help students and faculty. They can be found throughout the state. In addition to the Merrill-Cazier Library, services are provided at the USU Eastern Price and USU Eastern Blanding campus libraries, the Anne Carroll Moore Library of the Edith Bowen Laboratory School (children’s books), the Young Education Technology Center (curriculum and teacher preparatory materials), the Intermountain Herbarium, the Quinney Natural Resources Library in the S.J. and Jessie E. Quinney College of Natural Resources.