W&M Libraries Blog

  • Admission sign at Stockade Theatre
    April 28, 2021
    Posted in: Special Collections
    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.
  • Recipes and household tips taken from newspapers and pasted into the back of The Virginia House-wife.
    March 29, 2021
    Posted in: Special Collections
    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.
  • First page of Lady Jean Skipwith's ledger
    March 25, 2021
    Posted in: Special Collections
    Sometime 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.
  • E. R. Rose cabinet card, verso
    March 23, 2021
    Posted in: Special Collections
    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.]]  
  • Candice, a woman with short brown hair,  teaching in front of a classroom.
    March 9, 2021
    Posted in: WM Libraries
    In 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?   
  • Allen Ginsberg at W&M, 1971 Colonial Echo, vol. 1, p. 95 (Photo by Bruce Nyland)
    March 8, 2021
    Posted in: Special Collections
    Beatific. Sympathetic. Spiritually illuminated. An ecological, fresh-planet consciousness. So Beat writers Allen Ginsberg and Jack Kerouac described their work, their art, their lives.
  • Stamped book cover
    February 8, 2021
    Posted in: Special Collections
    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.
  • Martin Luther King
    January 15, 2021
    Posted in: WM Libraries
    On 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. 
  • RodanPoster
    December 2, 2020
    Posted in: Special Collections
    A common and complex practice within Tibetan Buddhism is the millenia-old, slow and careful creation of sand mandalas. 
  • "Memorandum," from Maury Family Papers
    November 11, 2020
    Posted in: Special Collections
    When 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.