Electronic Records Day is October 10

Sponsored by the Council of State Archivists, Electronic Records Day is October 10, 2015. You’re probably creating all manner of electronic records in your everyday worklife, such as Word docs, pdfs, Excel spreadsheets, and webpages. But you’re also creating them in your personal life. Your texts, your email, all those selfies you’re taking? They’re electronic … Read more

New finding aids completed in SC&A

As part of my internship at SC&A I created finding aids for three collections. The most notable among these is the finding aid for a collection that I processed during my internship dealing with Wesleyan President James L. McConaughy, his wife Elizabeth, and son James Jr. The collection entitled, McConaughy Family Papers, details important aspects … Read more

Pick of the week, Aug. 30: Digitizing Pictures of Middletown and Wesleyan

The following was written by archives intern Owen Thompson: As part of my ongoing internship in SC&A, I recently digitized and made available in WesScholar an unusual book for Wesleyan’s Adopt a Book program. The volume, Pictures of Middletown and Wesleyan, was adopted by library staff and friends in honor of former Assistant University Archivist … Read more

Pick of the week, March 1: Charles Church’s class album, 1864

A reader was interested in class albums, including this one that belonged to Charles Washburn Church, Class of 1864. In the 19th century, before there were college yearbooks, Wesleyan students assembled albums and selected the photographs they wished to include. At first, the albums consisted of portraits, but in the 1870s and 1880s, photographs of … Read more

“First experiment in coeducation”

With continuing interest in the “first experiment in coeducation” at Wesleyan, it seems timely to point out some of the resources available.  Wait, didn’t you know Wesleyan was coed for forty years between 1872 and 1912? You may want to look into this yourself. Special Collections & Archives, and Olin Library at large, have some … Read more

What Gives You Pause? Privacy, Sensitivity and Family Papers.

Archivists review the historic materials to put them into a level of order and to describe the content so others may use them.  Occasionally, we’ll see something that gives one pause. I have been working on family papers that include nineteenth and twentieth century correspondence. Various family members made contributions to their fields such as … Read more

Sheila Tobias’s Collection of Women’s Studies Ephemera

For the past semester I have been slowly working my way through Special Collections and Archives’s collection of Sheila Tobias’s papers. The collection of Women’s Studies ephemera – newspaper articles, women’s conference programs, academic papers, and magazines, all filed and organized by author or theme by Tobias – fills twelve boxes. They operate as a … Read more