W&M Libraries Blog

Often when I tell people that I’m working on making a database of all the scrapbooks in the Special Collections Research Center, I get a reaction something like, “Oh, that’s nice,” a reaction with subtext that seems to say “oh-that’s-nice-but-not-something-actually-significant-like-Thomas-Jefferson’s-letters.” And while the correspondence of our illustrious college alumnus certainly holds the utmost import

Where might one find the Civil War telegrams of General Joseph E. Johnston? Or a weekly magazine that documents the history of rock and roll, blues, and country music? Or the William & Mary report card of your Great Aunt Sally? Very likely, the answer can be found in archives like the Special Collections Research Center in Swem Library!

I'm a junior at the College of William and Mary, and I started cataloging blueprints in the Special Collections Research Center in the Fall of 2009.

I am not an archivist. Old and fragile documents have scared me for as long as I can remember. Not in a masked murderer kind of way, of course, but in the sense that at any moment while handling archival material, one can accidentally drop a priceless artifact or tear a centuries-old newspaper. That’s pressure I’d normally like to avoid when possible. On top of that unnerving, but not necessarily crippling fear, there are the allergies.