Showing posts with label American Archives Month. Show all posts
Showing posts with label American Archives Month. Show all posts

Monday, October 22, 2018

October is American Archives Month!

In recognition of American Archives Month, here are just a couple of the interesting items in the Dick Smith Library's archives.

The two pages pictured below (click on the images to make them larger) are from the Flora Clarke scrapbook, 1924-1926.  It was created by Flora Marguerite Clarke Kinney (1907-1987) when she attended John Tarleton Agricultural College from 1924 to 1926. The book contains photographs of Clarke, her friends, and her family that show her activities while at Tarleton. Notes from Clarke’s friends are written directly on many pages. Other notes, especially from male admirers, are glued to the pages. Memorabilia include a yell book, programs for events, newspaper clippings, souvenirs from parties and banquets, greeting cards from friends and family, calling cards from friends, and lyrics of songs, and a poem Clarke wrote about the college.
















Although we have both the front and back covers, most of the pages of the scrapbook were torn from the binding string, so archival staff untied the scrapbook. The covers and the pages are stored in original order. Small preservation measures were taken to secure items coming loose from pages.  Note that some of the items in the scrapbook, like the umbrella and pumpkin, are three-dimensional.  Loose items from the front and the back of the scrapbook were gathered into two folders and are stored in an archival box with the scrapbook.

Pictured below are two pages from the Leonard De Bennett scrapbook, 1923-1925 (click on the image to make it larger).  This collection is the personal scrapbook of Leonard Bennett (1903-1967) showing his time as a student at John Tarleton Agricultural College from 1923 to 1925.  The collection consists of ten unbound scrapbook leaves of various sizes containing photographs and newspaper clippings, twelve loose photographs, one loose clipping from the Southwestern Sportsman magazine, and an April 8, 1925 J-TAC. The photographs are of basketball teams, football games, cadets on the drill field, students, and campus scenes.



The Flora Clarke and Leonard Bennett scrapbooks reflect the experiences of male and female college students in the 1923-1926 era at John Tarleton Agricultural College, then a small, rural two-year Texas school.  Both scrapbooks were donated to the archives by relatives of these former students.  Both scrapbooks are quite fragile, so we hope to obtain a grant to have them digitized and made more easily accessible.


























Above: Flora Clarke (left) and Leonard Bennett (right) from the 1926 and 1924 Grassburrs respectively.

Thursday, October 15, 2015

It's #ArchivesMonth

October is #ArchivesMonth. What does that mean? #ArchivesMonth is a chance for archivists to educate the public on what an archive is, what archives are, and what archivists do. We will be sending out tweets all month highlighting the Tarleton Archives. Please view the video below to see a brief overview of some items the Library's Special Collections & Archives have and services we offer.


If you're not certain what an archive is or what archives are, check out this article titled "What is an Archives?". Feel free to contact any of the Special Collections & Archives staff if you have any questions.

Amanda Pape, Coordinator for Archives and Special Services, pape@tarleton.edu, (254)968-9251
Gary Spurr, Collections Archivist, spurr@tarleton.edu, (254)968-1808
Crystal Stanley, Archives & Reference Assistant, cstanley@tarleton.edu, (254)968-9496

On October 27th from 12:10pm-12:50pm in the Library's Multipurpose Room, the Library will be hosting a Brown Bag presentation on "How to preserve your family records" by Gary Spurr. Please feel free to bring your lunch! We hope to see you there. 


Don't forget to follow us on Twitter @tarletonlib to see all of the wonderful tweets about #ArchivesMonth. 


Friday, September 28, 2012

October is American Archives Month

Next month is American Archives month and the theme this year is "I found it in the archives". Since I have been an archivist for more than a few years I have been reflecting on what I have helped others find in the archives and stories from other archivists about how their patrons have used their materials to discover things about themselves and their history. It is always rewarding to learn that all the time you spent refoldering, rehousing, arranging, describing, and writing a finding aid for a collection made it possible for a patron to find that one thing they were looking for in their research.

But there are more personal stories, such as the time I was describing the contents of a labor collection to a patron over the phone. One of the items was a handbill from the 1930s to raise funds for an appeal for a union member who had been convicted of murder, possibly unjustly, who was in prison. I mentioned that the handbill had a photograph of the union member and another photograph of his wife with their four children. I then learned that the person I was speaking to was one of the children and that they had been searching for that photograph for a number of years. I had always known that the collections I worked with were not just pieces of paper and photographs, but the record of people's lives. This conversation brought that idea home to me. Another time I had given one of the many presentations the staff did to history classes that had to write an original paper doing original research with primary resources. We basically described the collections held in special collections, how to use them and what the rules are for their use. A few months later I saw one of the students and they told me that they had changed the topic of their paper after hearing my presentation. They had changed their paper to one on the controversy over changing the university mascot form Rebels to Mavericks. I thought, wow, I just briefly mentioned that collection. These are just a couple of stories that I thought I would share.

Today more archives are making their collections available digitally so patrons no longer may have to travel to use collections. It also means that by having items in a digital format patrons can use them ways that were not possible before. I recently attended a Digital Frontiers conference and one of the presentations was from a university in East Texas. Honors students had been using the oral histories and photographs in the archives. One student wondered where were the African American students in the archives. His research lead him on a personal journey of learning about Northeast Texas history and integration at Texas A&M Commerce. His research produced this video and an ongoing project. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptCdNZQoQ5I

So see what you can find in the archives.

Wednesday, September 28, 2011

October is American Archives Month

Did you know that October is American Archives month? American Archives Month is a collaborative effort by professional organizations and repositories around the nation to highlight the importance of records of enduring value.

Whether or not you realize it, you probably have an archive in your home. This is your personal archives: a collection of material that records important events from your family’s history. This collection can include letters, photos, scrapbooks, important documents.

At Tarleton, the archives are located in the Dick Smith Library. Collections in the archive include the Charles W. Stenholm Congressional papers, C. Richard King papers, Richard Thompson papers, Randall Popken papers, and the state Senatorial papers of Mike Moncrief, to name a few. The University Archives are also housed in the Dick Smith Library. Collections in the University Archives include the papers of presidents and university committees, photographs, the J-Tac, Grassburrs, and the Cross Timbers Historic Images Project.

The W. K. Gordon Center for Industrial History of Texas, in Thurber also houses archival and manuscript collections. Collections at the Center the records of the Texas Pacific Coal and Oil Company, which includes reports on the mines and maps of the mines. Other collections at the Center relate to the town of Thurber and its citizens. These collections contain personal papers and photographs.

For more information about the archives contact the Collections Archivist, Gary Spurr at spurr@tarleton.edu of 254-968-1808.