Posted November 1, 2024
Every year, Swem Library hosts its annual Two-Sentence Horror Story Competition to encourage students, faculty, and alumni to share their scariest short stories. The competition challenges community members to use their creativity to create these bone-chilling tales in the most concise way possible…
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The Special Collections Research Center, located on the first floor of Swem Library, is hosting an Open House this Saturday, October 24, from 9am-11am. We will showcase select items from University Archives as well as our general manuscript and rare book collections, highlighting both examples of philanthropy and firsts at William & Mary.
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Tomorrow, October 10th, is Electronic Records Day. This is the fourth annual Electronic Records Day, which the Council of State Archivists started.
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Have you ever found an old website with the Wayback Machine or played the 1990 version of Oregon Trail in your browser?
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This quote from the diary of Civil War chaplain William E. Wiatt documents an unusual aspect of the his duties. The chaplain carried a circulating library for the soldiers he was tending. Wiatt's diary has been published, but the original is still in private hands. (Alex L. Wiatt. Confederate Chaplain William Edward Wiatt: An Annotated Diary. Lynchburg, Va.: H. E. Howard, Inc., 1994.
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In 1997, William & Mary purchased property on Ironbound Road from a prominent African American couple, Charles E. (d. 2001) and Zelda DeBerry Gary (d. 2010). He, the owner of the West End Valet Shop and a notary public, and she, a nurse who once worked for the James City County school system, were long-time residents of Williamsburg.
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The Special Collections Research Center has partnered with William & Mary Libraries to create a Tumblr blog to show some of the treasures we have here in Special Collections along with events, news, exhibits, and behind-the-scenes looks at our work in the archives.
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Thanks to the generosity of Mrs. Laura K. Lawrence of Williamsburg, the commonplace book of Captain Walter Snow of Maryland, a prominent ship captain and lawyer during the nineteenth century, has found a permanent home in William & Mary's Special Collections Research Center, where it has been digitized and will be preserved for future generations of students and scholars to use and enjoy.
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Each year, Swem Library displays W&M faculty scholarship from a selected department in its Bright Gallery. Previous exhibits have included scholarship from Psychology, Art and Art History, Geology, and Religious Studies, among others.
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Libraries and archives may not be the first places that come to mind when creative writing students are thinking about composing their next assignment. Inspiration is often assumed to be all a writer needs, but there are actually several ways in which books, manuscripts and University Archives collections can be helpful.
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I recently arranged and described the papers of Cynthia Beverley Tucker Washington Coleman, a member of the prominent Tucker & Coleman families and co-founder of the Association for the Preservation of Virginia Antiquities (known today as Preservation Virginia).
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Jane Gay Robertson, the sister of Governor Wyndham Robertson, married John Hipkins Bernard. He had inherited from his grandfather a home named "Rose Hill: in Caroline County, Va. Bernard renamed it "Gay Mont," in honor of his wife.
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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.