Archive

The Caley Family Papers in Swem Library's Special Collections consist of letters and diaries spanning almost seventy years and three generations of Caley female descendants. From the 1940s through the 1960s , all three generations of women lived, with no male presence, under one roof or within close distance of one another in Sierra Madre, California.

A popular means of documenting personal interests and life events, the practice of scrapbooking dates back centuries. In contrast to the modern practice of pasting family photographs and vacation mementos onto brightly colored paper, early scrapbooks were often compilations of newspaper clippings, artwork, hand-copied quotes, and letters. In addition to being aesthetically interesting, old scrapbooks provide unique insight on the lives of their creators.

The Special Collections Research Center was pleased to host a meeting of the Colonel Joshua Fry Chapter of the National Society Daughters of the American Colonists (NSDAC) on September 16, 2013.

Thanks to the generosity of Bruce and Suzie Kovner, Swem Library has received a copy of the Pennyroyal Caxton Bible. This version of the King James Bible was created by Barry Moser, the noted printmaker and book illustrator, who spent three years designing and setting the type and carving the engravings.

Like many special collections at universities across the country, the Special Collections Research Center at Swem Library is dedicated to supporting the research mission of the College, but just as important is its role in enhancing the College's commitment to excellence in undergraduate teaching.

In the world of archives, the topic of backlogs always comes up: Do you have one? How big is it? What are your plans to attack it?

Before starting work at the Special Collections Research Center, I assumed archives were repositories of serious things relating to very serious matters.  There are most certainly serious documents which serve very important purposes, but there are just so many more things housed in the archives here. 

Another semester is coming to an end at Swem Library's Special Collections and student employees are getting ready for the hustle of the last few weeks of classes. It is my last semester working at Special Collections, and the year I have spent as a graduate apprentice here has gone by in the blink of an eye.

I have been researching, writing, and planning an exhibit on the Civil War Centennial to be displayed outside the Special Collections Research Center in the Nancy Marshall Gallery. Given that the years 1961 through 1965 were of great historical importance in their own right, one can forget that they also represented the one-hundredth anniversary of the greatest conflict of American history.

It might be an exaggeration to say that it's been a dream of mine to work at a library, but I was pretty darn excited when I found out that I would be serving my graduate assistantship in Swem Library's Special Collections Research Center.

The generosity of Eloísa Cartonera and the relationship of Professor of Hispanic Studies Regina Root with this publishing cooperative has brought the book Nuevos Borders Argentinos : Antología Cartonera to the Rare Book Collection in Swem Library's Special Collections Research Center.

While there are many things in an archive like Swem Library's Special Collections that the archivists and staff know we know, there are also the known unknowns. There are some things we may never know, and a person can accept that, but sometimes there is something that you think must be known by someone and it is just a matter of finding the person who knows it – or a person who is persistent enough to do the research to find the answer.

One of the cornerstones of the Swem Library's Special Collections Research Center is its rare book collection. Contained in this collection of some 50,000 volumes are books representative of human thought and culture, both popular and learned, that range in subject matter from science and medicine to history, literature, travel, and exploration.

If you have ever seen the PBS series Antiques Roadshow, then you can understand what I do here. I started working at Swem Library's Special Collections Research Center in August and was tasked by Jennie Davy, the Burger Archives Specialist, with identifying artifacts that had yet to be cataloged (meaning the artifacts were patiently waiting for an identification number and description so they could be accessible to the public).

In addition to an impressive archive of rare books, periodicals, photographs, and other physical documents, Swem Library's Special Collections manages the W&M Digital Archive that includes both digitized versions of some parts of the physical archive.

Currently, in Swem Library's Special Collections Research Center (Swem SCRC), I have been working on uploading a number of small collections to the From Fights to Rights Transcription Project. Some of the most interesting discussions I come across in these letters are about the various illnesses that permeated 19th century life.

As a graduate assistant in the Special Collections Research Center in Swem Library (Swem SCRC), I have had the opportunity to do a number of exciting things, from exhibit installation to assisting during special events.  One of the main things I have done this year, however, is processing collections. 

In my current project at Swem Library's Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), I have been working on checking the transcriptions that have been uploaded by our transcription volunteers.  Although I am not currently working on a particular collection, checking transcriptions of letters written during the Civil War is an incredibly rewarding experience. 

A few weeks ago, I started my first large-scale imaging project here at Swem Library's Special Collections Research Center.We recently acquired a large selection of photographs and scrapbooks from the Robb family, which I photographed with our digital camera so that we may upload them to our archival database in the future.

The Special Collections Research Center at Swem Library is currently working on a transcription initiative as part of the "From Fights to Rights: The Long Road to a More Perfect Union" project. The transcription work is a massive effort by volunteers to transcribe selected documents such as diaries and letters and make them available online for current and future researchers.