Latest Post
Celebrate Pride Month at the library!
Posted June 9, 2025
In recognition of Pride Month, we've put together a list of collections that celebrate the lives and contributions of LGBTQ+ people.
W&M Libraries Blog
Scrapbook project
Posted
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
Colonial Echo Digital Archive Launched
Posted
The Earl Gregg Swem Library is pleased to announce the launch of the Colonial Echo digital archive. All volumes from 1899-1995 have been digitized in full color from cover to cover and are now available to the public. The Colonial Echo has been the student yearbook of William & Mary since 1899.
October is American Archives Month
Posted
Identifying authorship of anything is always a long and arduous process, but it is made increasingly difficult when the author is not a famous member of the community. Norfolk, Virginia, was a bustling town at the start of the twentieth century and had an African American population thirsty for rights and acceptance. One such person was the author of the 1902 diary.
Desperately Seeking W&M Publications
Posted
The Special Collections Research Center in Swem Library is in search of issues of William & Mary newspapers and magazines to complete our collection. Can you help us? We may not be precisely desperate, but the title of a Monroe Project submitted to the W&M Digital Archive yesterday has movies of the 1980s on the brain.
Cataloging Blueprints
Posted
What is "cataloging" you ask? It's more fun than it sounds. It starts with boxes of rolled, often worn and tattered blueprints from the somewhat mysterious archives. One-by-one, I unroll and unfurl the pages and start to assess the situation. I will walk you through the steps of cataloging a single document as an example of the questions I ask myself and the methods I use:
You never know what you may find
Posted
I came to the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) in the Fall, excited yet a little nervous about beginning my Graduate Assistantship. I had heard wonderful things from other graduate students about their time as Graduate Assistants in the SCRC, and so I was enthused about beginning my assistantship here.
I am not an archivist
Posted
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.
Fall 2009 Semester in Review
Posted
Greetings from Swem Library at William & Mary! My name is Michael Lusby and I am currently an intern in the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC). My internship began in the fall of 2009, which was also my first semester in the Master's program for American History at William & Mary.
Diary of a Graduate Student Apprentice
Posted
Hello, world. My name is Kaitlyn Gardy and I am the SCRC's Apprentice in Computing Humanities for 2009-2010. Although I've only worked at the SCRC since the beginning of the fall semester, I have completed two really exciting projects that highlight exhibits and items available in Special Collections. Here's an update on what I've done so far.