The Special Collections Research Center in Swem Library is in search of issues of William & Mary newspapers and magazines to complete our collection. Can you help us? We may not be precisely desperate, but the title of a Monroe Project submitted to the W&M Digital Archive yesterday has movies of the 1980s on the brain.
We are regularly offered newspapers, magazines, broadsides, and other publications published by students, campus groups, and others related to the university that were obviously treasured by their owners. These items are found tucked away in trunks, drawers, attics, basements, garages, and other storage spaces. While we have complete runs of many student publications, including the Flat Hat and Colonial Echo, there are others we know our run of issues is incomplete and so we are sharing the list of student publications we have with the world in hopes of your help.
You will notice in the list that we are providing the dates we have instead of what we want in part because some of the publications were published for a short time and it is unknown for certain when they ceased publication, so we may not actually know if there are issues we may need. If you have issues of any of the student publications from our list that would fill in the gaps or have other student publications not listed (!!) to donate, please contact us at acschi@wm.edu or 757-221-3094.
It is our goal to have at least one copy of William & Mary publications issued by student or employee groups, individuals, or offices for the University Archives. We have an extensive collection of 20th and 21st century material as well as a number of publications from the 19th century. For instance, the historically important college catalogs run from 1829 to the present (with gaps) and the earliest commencement program is dated 1831. Newsletters from departments and campus offices are usually part of the unit's record group in the University Archives and we have been able to digitize or receive the digital files for a small number of these to date including Biology, Classical Studies, Environmental Science and Policy, and Women's Studies with the expectation that these numbers will be growing. We are also building our digital archive of student publications, which include some we have in paper format as well as some we're adding to the collection to preserve and make available to the public for the first time in electronic format only.
To learn more about the Special Collections Research Center and our collections, you can always learn more at our website or by contacting us.