Susan Edwards
LIBR 256-10 – Archives and Manuscripts
February 18, 2011
Assignment 1 – Tour of an archives facility
Special Collections at the [name withheld] Library
The [name withheld] Library is part of the [name withheld] Foundation, a private, non-profit
educational institution and museum in [location withheld]. The archives within the special
collections department of the library include 160 collections (more than 50,000 manuscript
pages). The archives collection is comprised of documents from the seventeenth to the early
nineteenth centuries on aspects of local regional culture, as well as early institutional archives of
the foundation. DM [name withheld], head of special collections, gave me a tour of the archives.
DM wears several hats—he is also associate librarian and general manager for the larger library,
as well as head of technical services. The larger library only has two full-time and two part-time
staff. The special collections portion of the library employs three people: the director, DM; a
manager of the reading room; and a visual resources librarian who handles digitization and
reproduction requests from staff, the various retail operations of the foundation, and outside
commercial and scholarly requests. DM explained that the visual resources librarian is very
busy!
The archives, as well as the library itself, exist for use by the staff of the foundation, and are also
open to the public. The foundation’s focus is an historical reconstruction of a colonial-era town,
founded by [name withheld]. It includes buildings and streets, as well as a staff of actors who
dress in colonial attire and re-enact the lives of real individuals who lived in the colonial town.
The foundation employs architectural historians, archaeologists, historians, curators, and
interpreters, who use the archives for historical research about the era in general, and about this
colonial town in particular. This research supports the restoration of structures, an ongoing
archaeology program, scholarly publishing, and interpretation programs for visitors. Many of
the staff persons who develop public programs and interact with visitors are scholars in their own
right. They use the archives regularly to learn about daily life in the colonial era, individuals,
political developments, etc., in order to develop characters for re-enactment, and programs. Items
in the collection from the colonial period, which range from private letters, memoirs and diaries,
to accounting books from local merchants, cooking recipes, indenture documents, etc., all allow
staff to read writings by personalities from the era first-hand. The foundation also offers two
fellowships each year to scholars studying the era, who use the archives extensively, and scholars
from around the world are regular visitors. Another group of staff members who work closely
with the archives is the digital history department at the foundation. This department is currently
creating digital interactives and online explorations of these archival documents.
In addition to the colonial-era archives, an important group of documents within the archives at
the Library are from the history of the foundation itself. One set of documents are from the 1920s
and 30s and document the original archaeological work done in the town, and the early years of
the foundation, during which lots were purchased and many of the buildings were reconstructed.
A second set of institutional records includes correspondence from the 1930s through the 1960s
between the staff and scholars and the public, organized by colonial-era buildings and
individuals. These documents are of value as both institutional records for the foundation and its
staff, and as historical records of the development of the town. Historically, they are of interest to
scholars studying a broad range of topics, including architectural history and archaeology, as
well as the history of tourism and taste in the U.S., American historiography, gardening and
landscaping, the family who founded the foundation, and more. These institutional archives are
open fully to the public.
Collecting at the Library archives is focused on paper manuscripts, as well as visual materials
from the colonial era, such as broadsides, games, maps, and architectural drawings. The
collection is almost totally donated. They have two endowments for collecting that were
established to purchase materials at auction. Additional gifts of cash and manuscripts come in
from individuals a few times a year. DM indicated that, occasionally, the library locates a key
archive it would like to acquire that is out of the usual budget range, and a potential “angel”
donor is approached for one-time donation for this purpose. The archives is also part of an NEH
grant to document the history of African Americans up to the 1820s. It has been using this
money to acquire documents about the early years of slavery and the anti-slavery movement in
the region. Since most materials and funds for acquisition do come from individual donors, a
large part of DM’s job is donor cultivation. The archives publishes annual reports for all donors
about the acquisitions showing uses of the materials by scholars and staff. For some special
donors, they produce personalized reports about the donation, explaining exactly how the
donation was used by the archive, and by scholars, including any publications that may have
resulted from the materials as source. A very small amount of money from licensing images of
the collection is also used towards acquisitions.
Because there is only one paper conservator for the entire foundation, DM endeavors to collect
only manuscripts that are in very good condition. The archives doesn’t have facility to care for
damaged materials. Materials in the archives generally receive treatment only when going on
exhibition. DM explained that the paper quality for documents from the 1700s is very high—
much more stable than the paper produced since the early 1900s—so this is not a huge problem
for him.
Physically, the special collection is housed within the Library building, which is thirteen years
old. The special collections area includes a modest reading room with four large tables, and a
room holding the institutional archives about the foundation in the 1920s and 30s, both
accessible to the public without an appointment. The institutional archives room houses the early
archives of the foundation themselves—thus visitors can help themselves to the materials
directly. A wall of shelves houses the three-ring binders with original field notes produced by the
archaeologists who performed excavations for the foundation in the 1920s and 30s. These are
organized by building name and then chronologically. Several flat-file drawers house the original
architectural plans and drawings created by the architects of the reconstructed buildings in the
1930s, also organized by building. The small storage room with moveable collapsed stacks
where the older 18th- and early 19th-century archival materials are housed is not open to the
public. There is a very small exhibitions space below in the entrance hall of the library, below
the stairwell. This space includes three climate-controlled cases for documents to be displayed.
The foundation also has three museums and the archival materials from this collection are often
included in exhibitions at those locations.