Note: To anyone who submitted materials at a Young Authors Conference years ago, we regret to inform you that we no longer have any of these items.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Eunice Schmidt, an instructor in the School of Education, hosted the annual Young Authors Conference on the SPU campus. Elementary and middle school students spent several days here and exhibited their work, including art, stories, poetry, and more. Eunice told these students that their projects would be housed in the SPU Library.
Initially submitted items were placed in file cabinets in Weter Library. As you might imagine, this collection grew quickly with each year's addition (several cartons each year) until the Library no longer had space for more submissions. For a while, older items were stored in the Library annex, with boxes marked by year. From time to time, an education graduate student with research interests related to the submissions would go through the boxes, pulling out materials.
By the mid-1980s, Eunice Schmidt had retired from the University and brought the entire collection to her home so that she could sort it out. Each time "young authors" asked after their projects at the Library, we referred them to Eunice via telephone, per her request.
When Eunice became ill, she moved to Colorado to be closer to her family. Before moving, she gave samples to various elementary and middle schools in the Seattle area, but she did not keep records of what went where. Eunice, in fact, was not even certain that the teachers who received materials kept them in their classrooms.
Since Eunice's death, the Library no longer has any way of helping young authors track down their submissions.