Digital collections

Santas of Davidson Past

December 24, 2014 By cachristianlamb Leave a Comment

Classes are out for the semester, and E.H. Little Library is closed until January 2nd, but not being in the building won’t stop us from sharing some historic Davidson holiday cheer! Since today is Christmas Eve, here’s a post of my favorite Santa-related images from our collections:

The Davidson College Wildcat mascot as Santa, 1986.

A Santa and a skeleton from an unknown play, 1967.

The Admissions Department Christmas card, taken outside Chambers Building, 1987.

The Admission and Financial Aid Department Christmas card, taken outside Chambers Building, 1987.

A message to Santa, written on a door inside of Alumni Gymnasium (built 1916, remodeled into the Ovens Student Union in 1952, and demolished in 1972 to make space for E.H. Little Library).

Part of our mystery photo parcel, this scary Santa dates from winter 1960-1961.

Cover of the Winter 1950 edition of Scripts 'N Pranks, depicting a freshman student (Class of 1954) wearing the traditional beanie, telling Santa what he would like to get this year.

Cover of the Winter 1950 edition of Scripts ‘N Pranks, depicting a student (Class of 1954) wearing the traditional freshman beanie, telling Santa what he would like to get this year.

Two unknown students wear Santa hats and holidays pins while in the College Union, 1991.

E.H. Little Library staff's annual holiday gathering - this picture, which includes current library staff (Susan Kerr, ) dates from the mid to late 1990s and was taken in front of Beaver Dam.

E.H. Little Library staff’s annual holiday gathering – this picture, which includes current library staff (Susan Kerr, Michael Forney, Denise Sherrill, Trish Johnson, Joe Gutekanst, Alice Sloop, Denise Torrence, Mittie Wally, Kim Sanderson, and Around the D’s own Jan Blodgett and Sharon Byrd), dates from the late 1990s and was taken in front of Beaver Dam. The man in the Santa hat is Frank Molinek, a library employee from 1992 until 2006.

We hope you enjoyed our Santas of Davidson Past! Have a great winter break, and happy holidays!

Filed Under: Campus traditions, Digital collections

A (Brief) History of THATCamp Piedmont

October 15, 2014 By cachristianlamb Leave a Comment

This Saturday, October 18th, Davidson will play host to the third THATCamp Piedmont. THATCamp, short for The Humanities And Technology Camp, “is an open, inexpensive meeting where humanists and technologists of all skill levels learn and build together in sessions proposed on the spot,” according to the official website. The first THATCamp was held at the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University in 2008. THATCamps are often organized either around a theme or geographic location, and provide a space for learning, sharing, and collaboration across a range of disciplines and specialties.

THATCamp Piedmont was first held in 2012, at Davidson College, and again in 2013 at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. You can read reactions and reflections related to the events by Roger Whitson, Donna Lanclos, Barry Peddycord, and Davidson’s own Mark Sample.

This year’s THATCamp sessions will be split between E.H. Little Library and the Knobloch Campus Center, with the day’s activities starting at 8:00 AM with breakfast and registration, and wrapping up at 4:30 PM with post-THATCamp drinks and conversation at the campus coffee house, Summit.

Register online for this Saturday’s free unconference, and please contact Mark Sample (masample@davidson.edu) with any questions. We hope to see you there!

Filed Under: Digital collections, Faculty, Staff

A Summer of Scanning, Editing, Uploading, and Researching

September 10, 2014 By Guest Author Leave a Comment

This week’s post is written by Vera Shulman ’15, a student assistant at Davidson College’s E.H. Little Library. She wrote this entry on August 22, 2014.

This summer I worked as a library information desk assistant. My days were split between staffing the desk, shifting the Library of Congress stacks in the basement, and completing various tasks in the Archives & Special Collections. My archives duties ranged from perusing local newspapers for filing (in which I was immersed in the excitement and ultimate disappointment of 2008’s college basketball championship) to transcribing oral interviews. I re-housed and filed massive decades-old maps (with help from student coworker Ellyson) and skimmed through Davidson’s 1914-1919 yearbooks and weekly newspapers for references to WWI.

Senior student profiles in the 1915 Quips and Cranks.

The latter task interested me thoroughly due to the very polite and dry humor. By modern standards, though, a slim but noticeable portion of that writing was insensitive to concerns with race and gender. During that time, Davidson College became preoccupied with supporting the national war effort with Liberty Loans and stamps and by training students in the freshly formed Student Army Training Corps (which following the war, turned into our current ROTC).

Page from the 1918 Quips and Cranks.

My favorite tasks, though, were the ones that played to my strengths in visual media. I had a whole set of these responsibilities that all boil down to scanning, editing, and uploading an image for use on the archives website. I processed Davidson’s 2010, 2011, and 2012 yearbooks (called Quips and Cranks); dozens of recent school newspapers (named The Davidsonian), and old editions of July-born author’s works.

Covers of the 2010, 2011, and 2012 editions of Quips and Cranks, available in the Davidson College Digital Repository.

Because the yearbooks are recent, working with Quips and Cranks allowed me to reminisce about friends and events (and grimace in the case of ex-boyfriends) and better associate formerly unknown peers’ faces with their names. The editing required for the yearbook scanning is very similar to the photo editing I do for leisure, so I actively enjoyed cropping and re-angling those pages. I didn’t form a solid connection with The Davidsonian because I used a closed scanner which didn’t allow me to browse as I scanned.

Trail of a bookworm.

The old editions of July-born author’s works are beautiful. The pages were thick and a few grazed on by literal book worms. Some of the covers were marbled in a way that seemed similar to a technique I’d used in primary school for my own book covers. Some illustrations were cartoon, in some the strokes were sparse, and others were both intricate and realistic.

Filed Under: Behind the Scenes, Digital collections, Guest Blogger, Student Publications

From Student Letters to College Letters

July 22, 2014 By Jan Blodgett Leave a Comment

A small group of student letters became one of the earliest digital collections on our website. The first letters were selected because we had transcripts available (a result of Mary Beaty’s work in researching and writing her history of the college).

The latest letters were selected because they did NOT have transcripts. They became part of a class assignment to transcribe, annotate and create online access to previously “hidden” correspondence. With 2 classes working on the project, we expanded beyond student letters to include letters written by faculty, faculty wives, and young women who were tutored by Davidson faculty and renamed the collection College Letters.

The students in Professor Shireen Campbell’s writing classes contributed 24 new letters to the site. In a tip of our archival hats to Dr. Beaty, some of the selected letters came from the research done by Cornelia Shaw for her history of Davidson College. She contacted former students and faculty asking for their memories of college life and events.

Last page of Professor William Carson’s letter written to Cornelia Shaw

Her correspondents include mathematics professor William Carson, Anne Sampson, whose husband John taught French and Latin in the 1870s and 1880s; Mary Scofield Clifford, daughter of a local boarding house owner and aspiring student, Lucy Russell, daughter of Professor Charles Phillips, and alumni Colin Munroe (1872) and William Smith (1865).

Carson’s memories include interactions with local African-Americans in his role of supervisor of the college grounds, while Sampson provides some history for Davidson College Presbyterian Church’s change from a college church to a town church. Clifford reports on her dismissal by Lucy Russell’s father:

I went to Dr. Phillips and asked him to take me as a private pupil in math, but he questioned me as to what work I had done in math, and after I gave him a statement he said I had done fully enough for a woman. I have always felt that it was hard for a woman to be cut out of a chance for a college course of study that stood for something. In my day the schools for girls were not at all thorough.

Portion of Clifford letter

Lucy Russell, Colin Munroe and William Smith offer details of daily life but also moments of excitement including a cattle stampede, student trials and the arrival of Colt pistols on campus.

Another set of letters from two brothers, Charles and Walter Leverett, were recent additions to the archives from a Davidson professor (and their relative) Greta Munger.

The writing students did amazing work, deciphering some times difficult 19th century handwriting, learning about Davidson history and college education in general as well as Civil War generals, Yale philosophers, and train travel.

Additional letters transcribed and annotated by the class:
William Johnson (1842) – describing college curriculum
Robert Hall Morrison (1860) – family news, including a report on his father, Davidson College’s first president
Calvin McKeown (1874) – describing faculty and classes
James McLees (1876) – commencement plans
Oni Davis McNeely (1840) -homesick and asking for winter clothes
Professor E. F. Rockwell asking advice from Benjamin Silliman
Neill A. Smith (1840) b- dispelling rumors of student dismissals
John J. Stringfellow (1860) – memories of pranks
Rev. Samuel B. Wilson – turning down presidency of Davidson College

Filed Under: Digital collections, Faculty, Student Life

The Twelve Days of Davidson

December 25, 2013 By cachristianlamb Leave a Comment

For this Christmas Day edition of Around the D, we offer a play on “The Twelve Days of Christmas” – The Twelve Days of Davidson, collapsed into a single post:

On the first day of Christmas

Davidson College Archives & Special Collections sent to me

12 Original Houses on Patterson Court

Patterson Court, circa 1960s.

11 Seniors Graduating at the First Commencement Exercises (1840)

A young E. Constantine Davidson, one of the those eleven graduates in 1840, and the diploma of Oni Davis McNeely (Class of 1840), currently on display in the Library’s Davidsoniana Room.

10 Wins in the Undefeated 2000 Season for the Football Team

Excited Wildcat fans tear down the goalposts after the last game of the undefeated season; a few fans hang off the posts (from Quips and Cranks 2001).

Those goalposts ended up in the senior apartments, as seen in this photo from Quips and Cranks 2001 – shown here with Chris Thawley, Jeff Larrimore, Rob Neuman, and William Childs (all Class of 2004).

9 Decades of Wildcat Logos

The mascot logos for Davidson throughout the years: Top row, left to right: 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s. Middle row: 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Bottom row: 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

Top row, left to right: 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s.
Middle row: 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s.
Bottom row: 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s.

8 Teams Left in the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball Championship when Davidson Reaches the “Elite Eight” in 2008

Davidson Men’s Basketball Team (from Quips and Cranks 2008).

Poster advertising a celebration of the 2008 basketball team, after March Madness.

7 Cemeteries Under Lake Norman (that we know of!)

Original site of Baker Cemetery.

Current site of Baker Cemetery, at Centre Presbyterian Church in Mooresville, NC.

6 Deep South Field Hockey Championships in a Row (1990 – 1995)

Team photograph of the 1990 field hockey team, the first in the run of 6 championships (from Quips and Cranks 1991).

1995 field hockey team, the last in the conference title run (Davidson's field hockey team currently plays in the NorPac conference, not Deep South)

1995 field hockey team, the last in the conference title run (from Quips and Cranks 1996; Davidson’s field hockey team currently plays in the NorPac conference, not Deep South)

5 Years of “Ghosts in the Library”

Posters from the first three years of Ghosts in the Library (2009 – 2011)

Posters from Ghosts in the Library, 2012 and 2013.

4 College Library Directors

Cornelia Rebekah Shaw, 1907 - 1936; Chalmers Gaston Davidson (Class of 1928), 1936 - 1975; Leland M. Park (Class of 1963), 1975 - 2006; and Gillian Gremmels, 2007 - present.

From top, left to right: Cornelia Rebekah Shaw, 1907 – 1936; Chalmers Gaston Davidson (Class of 1928), 1936 – 1975; Leland M. Park (Class of 1963), 1975 – 2006; and Gillian Gremmels, 2007 – present.

3 Students Taking One of the Earliest X-Rays (1896)

Eben Hardin, Pender Porter, and Osmond L. Barringer snuck into Dr. Henry Louis Smith’s lab to X-Ray: a cadaver finger wearing a ring and stuck with two pins; magnifying glass; a pill box containing two 22 cartridges, one pin, two rings, and six Strychnine pills; and an empty egg with a button inside.

2 Chambers Buildings

Original Chambers Building (1860 – 1921), before the fire of November 28, 1921.

New Chambers Building, completed in 1929.

and the First Woman President at Davidson College

Dr. Quillen receives the College mace (photograph from the Davidsonian).

Happy Holidays (and a merry winter break) from Davidson College’s Archives & Special Collections!

Filed Under: Alumni, Athletics, Campus traditions, College buildings, Digital collections, Staff

Physical to Digital and Back to Physical Again: 3D Scanning and Printing

November 13, 2013 By cachristianlamb Leave a Comment

Davidson recently unveiled a new makerspace, Studio M, which will provide a wealth of opportunities for students and the college community to experiment with new technologies. After attending the open house two weeks ago, we began to think about archival collaborations with the makerspace – how can we leverage these new resources with those already existing in the library?

The cuneiform collection has already been scanned and added to the Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI), but what if the college’s oldest objects were 3D scanned and printed in a more durable, lend-able form? The Archives & Special Collections team rolled up our sleeves and began to brainstorm about items from the college’s collections that could use a good scanning, for either preservation or use (or both). The Smithsonian Institution’s 3D digitization work provides inspiration what the affordances of this kind of digital inquiry could be:
One of the first collections we thought of was that of Gordon Clift Horton (class of 1942) – Horton was the engine behind the first Annual Student Exhibition, and he went on to study interior design at Parsons School of Design (now Parsons the New School for Design). When his mother, Florence Clift Horton, passed away in 1975, she willed her estate to Davidson College, and several of Gordon Horton’s collections can still be found on campus. Horton’s collection of jade figurines could be an interesting scanning project…

A jade Budai from the Horton collection

Student medals and badges also provide a unique 3D digitization opportunity – these medals were created for the Eumenean and Philanthropic Literary Societies, and each comes imbued with stories of previous generations of Davidson students. A literary society badge could be scanned, and the resulting 3D model could be altered to reflect the name of a current student organization, providing a physical manifestation of the past of Davidson’s student groups for those in the present.

A tray of Eu and Phi medals from the 19th century

A Eumenean Society badge, which belonged to Joel Mable (class of 1864)

While these are just ideas at the present, we’ll have more news to share in a few months. Watch this space to see which of these visions becomes a reality!

Filed Under: Behind the Scenes, Digital collections, Staff

We’re on the Map

November 5, 2013 By Jan Blodgett Leave a Comment

The Digital Public Library of America (DPLA) map that is. A new online project, the DPLA’s goal to provide access to archival materials from across the country. You won’t have to know the address for Davidson’s archives or the state portal for Georgia or a small public library in Wisconsin to find wonderful images, letters, newspapers and more. The DPLA site also has creative tools to allow users to make photo montages, use timelines and develop new approaches to research.

Photograph of Frank Baker from the Archibald McKeithen scrapbook the Davidson College Archives

This image can be found by anyone searching for violins – they don’t have to know that Davidson College has an 1916 photo with a student carrying a violin case. It’s one of several hundred of our images and texts that are now part of the DPLA. The best part of this –for the Around the D folks– is that we didn’t have to do any extra work. Since we were already a part of DigitalNC and they are now a DPLA hub, our materials were there and ready to go from a state-wide portal to a national one.

We will be working on more items to add to DigitalNC and the DPLA as well as to the Davidson Archives and Special Collections website. For example, we recently discovered 12 issues of a Charlotte newspaper – Beasley’s Weekly. We have those issues because the paper published parts of William Ardrey’s diary but they also contain local news and stories about World War II events.

These issues of Beasley’s Weekly will be microfilmed as part of a statewide newspaper project

Although we recently acquired some gently used digitization equipment for converting slides, videos and even LPs, newspapers are beyond our scope. We’ll take these to DigitalNC so they can add them to their newspaper project and then we can add them back to our website.

New (to us) digitization equipment

Davidson (college and town) has a rich history. The Archives and Special Collections staff are grateful to all the individuals and offices that have sent their records our way. And we’re grateful for technologies that allow us to share this history with current student through class projects and with people around the world.

Filed Under: Digital collections

Wish You Were Here

July 23, 2013 By Jan Blodgett

Postcards offering the sentiment “wish you were here” have been a staple of summer travel. They have also served to carry back memories, replacing or adding to photographs taken.

Most of the postcards in the Archives are images of the college and town. We’ve put them online to supplement our photograph collection. But there are other postcards hidden in manuscript collections, particularly student scrapbooks.

While these scrapbooks usually have a few postcards of college scenes, they often will have a set of pages in the back with memento postcards – cards that the students did not receive from friends or intend to mail but rather to mark trips taken.

A scenic view of North Carolina mountains, look closely for the hikers.

Daniel Gibson Wilson, class of 1926 came to Davidson from Atlanta. His postcard set included two different groups. The images were either of patriotic scenes (signing of the Declaration of Independence) and Washington, DC or they were from the mountains of North Carolina and beaches and towns of South Carolina.

gate postcard captioned, "SIMONTON GATE, LEGARE ST., CHARLESTON, S.C."

Daniel Wilson kept this postcard from Charleston, SC.

A tunnel in the Blue Ridge

A scene from Washington, DC

Aubrey Neblett Brown, class of 1929, traveled farther afield with a dozen or so postcards of New Orleans and Tennessee. He also had one postcard from his hometown of Mineral Wells, TX.

New Orleans street scene collected by Aubrey Brown

A Tulane postcard to go along with the Davidson postcards of the era

A scene from Brown’s home town of Mineral Wells

Filed Under: Digital collections, Student Life

Photo Identification Project

January 16, 2013 By cachristianlamb Leave a Comment

We have posted several blogs over the last several months about our new Community Space digital crowdsourcing projects. One of the new and interesting projects we have launched is our Photo ID Project. The Davidson College Archives Photograph Identification Project utilizes “crowdsourcing”–where archives and special collections create opportunities for community members to share their skills and knowledge–to help identify certain photographs in our collection for which we have limited information.

Through this project, we rely on interested members from the Davidson community and the general public to share their knowledge with us online in an attempt to gather details on these bits of Davidson’s past.Every few weeks, we post 10 new pictures from our unidentified photo files and invite you to look at them and, if you can, help identify the people, places, and events they depict. If you would like to help with the photograph identification project, follow this link and you will be directed to a form in which you can share whatever information you have or just peruse these often unusual photos. A few photos from our most recently posted batch are included here to pique your interest.

Filed Under: Digital collections

Under Lake Norman

November 20, 2012 By cachristianlamb Leave a Comment

The Davidson College Library and Archives has launched Under Lake Norman, an interactive mapping project that falls under the rubric of our Community Space website. This initiative is part of the world of crowdsourcing–where archives and special collections create opportunities for community members to share their skills and knowledge.

For this project, we are looking for images and information about structures or locations that went underwater when the waters of the man-made Lake Norman rose in 1963. The website features an interactive map that includes sites we have identified to date either through historical research or public submissions.

Help us fill in the map by sending in digital copies of photographs or writing up accounts of places that are now under the lake. As we build the site, we are including pictures and extended essays describing the sites and their historical significance.

If you know of any locations that should be added to the Under Lake Norman project, please visit the site and submit them. If you know of classes at your institution, have patrons who would be interested in contributing, or know of local historical societies who might like to help, please share the link: http://davidsonarchivesandspecialcollections.org/archives/community/under-lkn/

Filed Under: Digital collections, Lake Norman, Town history

Santas of Davidson Past

A (Brief) History of THATCamp Piedmont

A Summer of Scanning, Editing, Uploading, and Researching

From Student Letters to College Letters

The Twelve Days of Davidson

Physical to Digital and Back to Physical Again: 3D Scanning and Printing

We’re on the Map

Wish You Were Here

Photo Identification Project

Under Lake Norman

Around the D

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