Latest Post
Reading Tea Leaves at Special Collections
Posted June 26, 2024
Written by Dan Du, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina - Charlotte (Special Collections Research Center travel grant recipient, 2023-2024)
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Strollin’, a new exhibit on view in the Marshall Gallery (1st floor rotunda in Swem Library), brings together belongings from members of Black Greek-letter organizations (BLGOs) at William & Mary.
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I was late, to begin with. I hadn’t written about my time at the Swem Library’s Special Collections Research Center, within The Chapin-Horowitz Dog Book Collection. I kept promising myself—and others—that I would do it. The work was imminent. Forthcoming, shortly. About to arrive.
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The poem “A Visit from St. Nicholas” was first published in 1823 and attributed to Clement Clarke Moore as author in 1837.
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Belonging is an ongoing goal for our archives, and our aim is to have collections that support and reflect the research and interests of students, faculty, staff, and the world.
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I am old enough that several of the places that I have lived over the years have been torn down, including the house on South Boundary Street that I lived in for two years as a W&M student. To all those who wander up and down DoG Street: think about the street's very different appearance before Colonial Williamsburg.
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April 13th, 2021 marks the entry of the first TikTok into William & Mary's Special Collections web archives. The TikTok features a performance by VIMS alum David Niebuhr, putting a spin on a TikTok trend where creators use a popular sea shanty, "The Wellerman," in the creation of their video content.
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On one level a virtual reality headset works the same way as the old View Master toy.
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Recently, I began a process to show my appreciation to William & Mary, in a modest way, for my education and to give something back to the College as I approached the 50th anniversary of my graduation in 1970.
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Over the winter and spring of early 1941, a towering landmark rose on the rural landscape less than two miles from downtown Williamsburg. The structure housed the screen for the Stockade Theatre Auto-Torium at Casey's Corner, where Richmond and Ironbound Roads intersect.
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My favorite kinds of materials in archives are the ones we might describe colloquially as "well-loved," where you can tell that someone—or perhaps more than one someone—spent hours writing, reading, and thinking about a topic.
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Sometime between 1795 and 1826, Lady Jean Skipwith made an account of the flora on her property. A pocket-sized notebook, now in the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), contains her handwritten list of plants.
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Written by graduate student assistant, Erna Anderson. This exhibit is on view in the Swem Library lobby through April 1, 2021. Content warning: This post discusses blackface and gender impersonation.
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In the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd, protestors in Bristol toppled the statue of Edward Colston (1636-1721) in an act representative of an accelerated global reckoning with the legacies of enslavement and colonialism.
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Beatific. Sympathetic. Spiritually illuminated. An ecological, fresh-planet consciousness. So Beat writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac described their work, their art, their lives.
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A common and complex practice within Tibetan Buddhism is the millenia-old, slow and careful creation of sand mandalas.
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This summer, the Research Department at William & Mary Libraries reprised a workshop series for undergraduate researchers that we'd first held in Summer 2020 as a response to the pandemic. We built on the success of last year's series to offer greater variety, expanded topics, and more flexibility for students.
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With the turning of the seasons we at Special Collections look back on our histories of outdoor activities, and the community that can be found therein.
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Tracy Melton '85, member of the William & Mary Libraries Board of Directors, reflects on the university's previous experience with pandemic. Melton is generously donating the journal that he is keeping during the global health crisis; the journal will be open to research in 2022.
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Bill Cole ('70) shares the stories behind the names in Catherine Sheild's 20th-century Yorktown guest book.
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As we reflect on the past thirty years of the Americans with Disabilities Act at W&M—and the even longer history of activism preceding it—now we ask: What might the next thirty years look like?