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.
W&M Libraries Blog
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March 29, 2021Posted in: Special Collections -
March 25, 2021Posted in: Special CollectionsSometime between 1795 and 1826, Lady Jean Skipwith made an account of the flora on her property. [i] A pocket-sized notebook, now in the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC), contains her handwritten list of plants. -
March 23, 2021Posted in: Special CollectionsWritten 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.]] -
March 9, 2021Posted in: WM LibrariesIn this series, we are spotlighting researchers who have contributed to W&M ScholarWorks, our institutional repository. We asked each researcher to identify a scholarly work and share the “human story” behind it. Who are the people behind the data and theory, and how were they affected by the scholarship? -
March 8, 2021Posted in: Special CollectionsBeatific. Sympathetic. Spiritually illuminated. An ecological, fresh-planet consciousness. So Beat writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac described their work, their art, their lives. -
February 8, 2021Posted in: Special CollectionsIn 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. -
January 15, 2021Posted in: WM LibrariesOn January 18, 2021 our nation marks the birthday of Martin Luther King Jr. On this day we honor his life and legacy as a civil rights leader. W&M Libraries provides access to a host of resources chronicling the life and legacy of Dr. King. -
December 2, 2020Posted in: Special CollectionsA common and complex practice within Tibetan Buddhism is the millenia-old, slow and careful creation of sand mandalas. -
November 11, 2020Posted in: Special CollectionsWhen I arrived at the Special Collections Research Center this past July 29th for my first day of research into William & Mary’s collection of Maury Family Papers, I felt in my bones that I was in store for a fascinating week of discovery. My hunch proved true. -
October 28, 2020Posted in: Special CollectionsOn August 23, 1812, Robert Stevens wrote to his parents in Rhode Island from New Orleans in the aftermath of a hurricane, “a Scene of horror & devastation.”