Posted January 13, 2025
The Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) of William & Mary Libraries is pleased to announce that it will award travel grants to faculty members, graduate students, and/or independent researchers to support research use of its collections. Writers, creative and performing artists, filmmakers,…
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Swem Library's Special Collections Research Center is excited to introduce TribeTrek, a new app that showcases the history of our campus. Photographs from the University Archives illustrate self-guided campus tours, allowing users to see how buildings and landmarks have changed through the years, while at the same time learning about the many traditions at William & Mary.
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More than ever, we are creating electronic traces of our lives and electronic records in our work. Whether you transfer your department's records to University Archives or you are donating personal papers to the Special Collections, we want your digital material!
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Making sure our collections are properly described, housed, and discoverable is an ongoing task in Special Collections. As time goes on, the boxes, folders, and other packing materials we use to store collections wear out or become acidic, and collections require new storage options for their continued preservation.
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After a full academic year working at the Special Collections Research Center, I came to reflect on why my experience as an Archives and Manuscript Collections apprentice has meant so much to me. It may sound trite but this assistantship has not only stimulated my professional interest in archives management, it also gave me the opportunity to learn so much about a variety of peoples and topics through the collections I processed.
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Like few other historical events, the Second World War exerts a deep fascination in our collective memory, as shown by the extent to which WW II stories abound in popular culture. Now fully processed, the papers of war nurse Mary Frances Switzer at the Special Collections Research Center offer an absorbing – though less commonly heard – point of view of war experiences on the ground.
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I recently processed the papers of Christopher Bram, a 1974 graduate of William & Mary and novelist. His papers are regularly used in library instruction sessions for creative writing students, and having a more complete description will provide faster and easier access for both our researchers and staff.
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In the 1960s, America's attention to space exploration began to thrive, and as a response, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) wanted to establish a research laboratory on the Virginia Peninsula. In 1962, the Virginia General Assembly authorized the University of Virginia, Virginia Polytechnic Institute, and William & Mary to form VARC, which would operate a NASA-built SREL, develop research projects, and establish resident graduate programs.
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In the summer of 2014, several descendants of Solomon Northup, whose story in slavery was depicted in the recent Oscar-winning movie, 12 Years A Slave, visited Swem Library to see the diary kept by Florence A. Barber, the daughter of Philip and Margaret Anne Stanton and granddaughter of Solomon Northup.
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Scherenschnitte, meaning "scissor cuts" in German, is the art of paper cutting. The designs are frequently symmetrical, and are often used to create silhouettes and valentines. This European tradition was developed in sixteenth century Switzerland and Germany, and immigrants brought the designs to Colonial America in the eighteenth century.
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The first Phi Beta Kappa Hall was erected in 1926 to mark the 150th anniversary of the founding of the Phi Beta Kappa Fraternity, the first Greek letter fraternity, and to honor the 50 founders. All but one were Virginians and with one exception were students the College. Elisha Parmele of Connecticut was conducting a school in Virginia after his graduation from Harvard in 1778.
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For the past few months, we have been working to translate the W&M Hip Hop Collection into an exhibit titled Re-Mixing the Old Dominion: 35 Years of Virginia Hip Hop History and Culture. In addition to selecting the "stuff" to showcase the collection and the history of Virginia hip-hop, a completely different set of skills are also needed to create a successful exhibit.
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The Lane Carlson Papers came to Swem Special Collections in 2012 in several large boxes, filled with what at first glance appeared to be just stacks and stacks of mundane letters from a small-town girl to her parents. This could not be further from the truth.
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On October 19, 2014 at Dinwiddie Court House, a Virginia historical marker was dedicated to Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (also spelled Keckly). Elizabeth, or 'Lizzy' Keckley was born near Petersburg and was a slave on the Burwell Plantation.
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"Like Dorry, I have decided to keep a journal. It seems to me a very pleasant thing to write down the occurrences of one's life so that one can read them later." So writes twenty-year-old Rosanna May Munger in 1886 (January 1 1886, Diary #1). Rose, as she preferred to be called, would go on recording the rhythms of her daily routine until 1945, providing the modern reader with a unique window into the religious, social, and cultural life of an unmarried woman over several decades.
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Through the work of our student assistants, volunteers, and staff, Special Collections has recently reprocessed, digitized, and made the Powell Family Papers, Hepburn Addition available online.
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Each week during the semester, Special Collections hosts multiple class sessions to allow students hands-on access to primary source materials relevant to their course's subject matter. This week, Professor Xin Wu brought her ARTH 397 students into Special Collections to view facsimile artwork as part of her Chinese Painting class, which is being offered for the first time this fall.
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Devoted to the history of Virginia's hip-hop culture, the William & Mary Hip-Hop Collection has documented shared cultural origins with the Bronx and greater New York City. As early as 1979, many of Virginia's hip-hop pioneers were listening to the earliest commercial rap releases from New York City on Virginia radio stations, most prominently WRAP-AM broadcasting from Norfolk.
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The College Farm of William & Mary was active in the 1920s-1940s. According to a 1935 Alumni Gazette article the farm was first organized in 1923 by President J.A.C. Chandler. The 65 acre farm supplied vegetables and fruit for the college dining hall.
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One of the best sources for tracking LGBT presence at William & Mary is the archives' collection of the student yearbook, Colonial Echo, which is available online. Insider tip: the digitized versions are searchable by keyword! This is how I started my research filling in the gaps of what we know about LGBT groups at the College.
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On Friday, the 25th of September, 1942, Hilda Haworth, her husband Walter, and many others left the English Channel island Guernsey for Germany. The diary details life in the camp for a little over a year, and was immensely fascinating to read through.