During the month of October you voted for your favorite items from Special Collections’ rare and unique holdings. Here are our winners:
In week 1 your favorite historical item was the David Brown ’78 flight suit. Our randomly selected winners were William Ozbun ’13 and Rachel Brooks ’14. For week 2 the most surprising item was the locket of Queen Mary II’s hair. Our week 2 winners were Zachary Perconti ’15 and Denise Ferro. The final week’s competition for favorite William & Mary item was won by the 1850s daguerreotype of the Wren Building, and our winners were Greg Bartholomew ’79 and David Pratt, American Studies PhD candidate. The grand prize student winner selected from all student entrants during Archives Month was Thomas Johnson ’13.
Congratulations to all of the winners of Swem Library’s first annual Archives Month Top 10 Contest! Images of all of the items along with comments from entrants who voted on paper ballots in Swem Library are available from Special Collections on Facebook.
Voting was open to all members of the William & Mary community as well as the general public, and was conducted both on-site and online (at Facebook, Flickr, or Pinterest). Winners received Swem Library gift packages, including flash-drives, sticky notes, pencils, notecards, and other “Swemorabilia.” The grand prize student winner received a personal behind the scenes tour of Special Collections for up to 5 friends including refreshments on the Special Collections balcony as well as a “Swemorabilia” package.
American Archives Month is a collaborative effort by professional organizations and repositories around the nation to highlight the importance of records of enduring value. Archivists are professionals who assess, collect, organize, preserve, maintain control of, and provide access to information that has lasting value, and they help people find and understand the information they need in those records.
