February Happenings in the Archives

February has been a busy month in the College Archives.  Class presentations to students in archeology, sociology, american studies, first year writing seminars, and exercise sport studies makes for opportunities to excite students about primary research.  Topics for student papers include: women explorers, scholarship offerings, racial tensions, queer identity, women writers, sports and physical culture at Smith, labor unrest, housing issues–to name a few.

I enjoyed the warmth of Palm Beach, FL for 32 hours when I gave a talk to the Smith Club of Palm Beaches about the history of women of color at Smith.  This past Monday, as part of our Rally Day kick-off events, I gave a talk on Smith Traditions to a standing room only crowd (120+) of students, along with Dan Horowitz who spoke about Betty (Goldstein) Friedan’s (Class of 1942) student experiences at Smith and subsequent life-long activist work.  Those presentations, plus a few House History talks on Friday afternoons are rounding out my days and nights.  Who says archivists are stuffy people hidden away in dark corners of buildings??!!

The Influenza Epidemic of 1918

While I was at home recuperating from an illness last week, my thoughts turned to how the College dealt with the influenze epidemic of 1918.   The influenza epidemic ascerted itself on Smith in 3 waves.  During the first wave of the crisis in October,  two students died from the pneumonia.  52 students left the College to convalesce at home.  Beds were filled completely at Sunnyside and in the Infirmary.  Because the Cooley-Dickinson Hospital was also filled to the maximum, another building at 57 Kensington Ave was opened to receive the ill.  Twenty-nine students volunteered to work as nurses aides at Cooley-Dickinson Hospital, as did a number of faculty members.  A quarantine of the remaining students took place.  Thanksgiving Recess was postponed.  During the 2nd wave of the epidemic, Baldwin House, 63 Belmont Ave, and 7 Paradise Road were used to house mild cases, and convalescing students.  Healthy students were sent to farms to work the fields in order to keep healthy.  The quarantine remained in effect until the end of January 1919.

 The College Archives has correspondence, photographs, and other materials created by undergraduate students as they endured the quarantine.  According to the Physician’s Annual Report and articles in the student newspaper, the Smith College Weekly the students made the Library their 2nd home. 

Can you image how this would take effect today? 

Views of Smith College

Postcards are a source of visual information about any landscape. Of course, as with any piece of material, you have to take a critical look at it. Does the image accurately reflect the building layouts? What role does perspective take, particularly within the context of the postcard? Birds-eye views of campuses were popular in the 1910s–but how accurate were they? The College Archives has a collection of postcards that represent the campus over a period of time.  Images from our collection can be found at:  http://clio.fivecolleges.edu/smith/postcards/.  Simply click on the name of a building or campus location on the drop-down screen to see selected images.

Do you believe these images accurately represent the campus?

Smith and International Education

Last week I had the opportunity to speak at a conference in Madrid, Spain on Smith’s role in Spanish women’s educational development between 1900-1936.  Smith College, along with other women’s colleges primarily in the North, supported the work of the International Institute for Girls in Spain now known as the International Institute http://www.iie.es/, beginning in the early 1890s.  Smith provided funds to the organization for salaries, scholarships, and operational costs.  Many faculty members went to teach there during their sabbatical year.  In some cases, they were instrumental in establishing laboratories for young Spanish women to recieve hands-on scientific training.  Alumnae often came to Madrid to work for the Institute. 

As part of my talk I mentioned that Smith has a long tradition of supporting international education.  Smith graduates have founded or supported a number of women’s colleges and schools throughout the world, including Kobe College in Japan; Ginling College in China; the American School in Constantinople, Turkey, and the Florentine School for Girls in Italy, in addition to the International Institute for Girls in Spain.  The College has carried out a global sense of mission for a long time by supporting these schools, the Junior Year Abroad program, and scholarships designed to bring foreign students to Smith to continue their education.  Current initiatives of the College such as the Women’s Education Worldwide, and the success of many Smith women to recieve Fulbright scholarships is a testament to the interest and success of Smith in the world.

For further information about international education at Smith within the records of the Smith College Archives see:

http://www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/archives/guides/internationaleducation.htm

Mountain Day

“When is it going to be Mountain Day?!” is a refrain/demand I’m hearing from students these days.  As the month of September wanes and turns into October; after the success of the Quad Riot, people are wondering!  The first time we read of Mountain Day is in a diary of student in the Class of 1881.  In the early days of the College Mountain Day is an official holiday announced in the published  calendar!  The current tradition of it being announced at the discretion of the President started in the early 1920s. 

 So, when will the 2007 Mountain be??  With the fickly New England weather this season–your guess is as good as mine!

Welcome Back!

This week I saw a large number of TVs, futons, plastic containers of clothes, bedding, books, and other assorted ’student stuff’ make their way into the houses on campus.  I thought it might be fun for you to see what the Northampton Railroad Station looked like in 1901 when Smith students and their belongings came off the trains.  All of these trunks are awaiting delivery to the campus.  Things haven’t changed very much have they? [click on the image to view it in larger format].

Summer in the Archives

People often inquire whether or not the Archives ’slows down’ or ‘closes’ during the summer.  Far from the case!  The College Archives enjoys a busy and productive time during the 3 months when the vast majority of undergraduate students and Smith faculty are not on campus.

Since July 1, (the beginning of our stats-collecting year), the College Archives staff has answered over 127 reference questions, with varying degrees of complexity, from off-site researchers; spent 85 hours staffing our on-site reference desk; accessioned 15 feet of material and taken in 10 photocopy or photoduplication orders.  We supervise 70 hours of student assistant assignments per week.  I have been conducting research for a paper I’m giving in October, as well as preparing for a presentation to First Year students this week.  My colleague Debbie has been working non-stop, accessioning new materials (and old), processing records, as well as creating lists of materials for our web-version database.  Summer is not a slow time in the Archives!

As we head into the school year, we’ll see students coming to the Archives using materials for class assignments.  We’ll be speaking to groups of students at Friday Teas, during student organization meetings; and welcoming back student assistants. 

 Summer is good in the Archives, and we look forward to the start of the academic year!

Buildings at Smith College

This spring the Princeton Architectural Press rolled out, “Smith College: The Campus Guide”  as part of its on-going campus guide series.  Author Margaret Vickery spent a lot of time working in the College Archives collecting information and stories about the buildings that remain on campus, some that no longer exisit, and still others that never had the chance of making it from conceptual design to ‘real life.’  This guide is an important work for people interested in learning more about the surroundings of the place we live in and come to work in everyday. 

At the Archives Vickery worked with many collections and sources that document the growth of campus.  The following three collections were a wealth of information for her book, and you too can come and conduct research in them:

Smith College Buildings Files, A-Z: http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/smitharchives/manosca104_main.html  Click on ‘view entire finding aid’ on the left-hand side bar for the complete listing. 

Smith College Grounds Collection, A-Z:  http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/smitharchives/manosca137_main.html  ‘Grounds’ at Smith include landscape design documents, Botanical Garden records, as well as photographs for sections of campus.

Office of the President Records, 1872-present:  http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/findaids/smitharchives/list  Every president dealt in some form or other with the expansion of campus, whether through acquisition of land, or purchase of pre-existing buildings.  For the tenure of most presidents, there are files specifically relating to the Buildings & Grounds department, that document these changes.  There may also be correspondence with donors, architects, constructions firms, as well as subject files for specific projects around campus.

These are but 3 of the collections that Vickery used in her research.  Biographical files, official publications, as well as photographic evidence all offer additional pieces to the story of Smith’s campus. 

If you are interested in learning more, please feel free to come to the Archives to review our sources, or contact us for more information.  Our website at www.smith.edu/libraries/libs/archives is a useful first step to learning about us.

Life-logging

My colleague Leslie Fields posted a message on her blog For The Record ( http://smithrecords.wordpress.com/)about the recent New Yorker article (May 28, 2007), describing Gordon Bell and his project for Microsoft called MyLifeBits.  Bell is recording “the daily minutuea of life” according to article author Alec Wilkinson.  Another recent article found in the February 2, 2007 edition of the Chronicle of Higher Education by Scott Carlson describes his experiences with a digital audio recorder hanging around his neck.  Both articles are fascinating reading whether you agree with the concept of not. 

As an archivist, I think about the meriad of ways that one would need to “access the 22,000 emails, 58,000 photographs,…every Web page he [Bell] has visited.”  Why collect the data if it is not accessible?  That begs the question, is it necessary to collect the daily minutiae of life, even healthy?  What about the self-sensoring that goes on in daily life?  Is someone ready to be confronted with the reality of a recording that shows them in a differing light from what they believe?  What about the purpose of memory and context within life?  Can a recording, even the most faithful, deliver the multiple points of emotional, visual, psychic, and tactil access points to a life experience? 

There’s plenty to chew on in these articles and I hope to see, read and hear more about life-logging on this blog and others. 

School for Social Work connections

This week incoming and returning students of the Smith College School for Social Work (SSW) hit campus for an intensive 2 term coursework experience.  Afterward, SSW students head out to the field for practical applications of their classroom work.  There are many records in the College Archives that document the School.  If you are interested in learning more about the history of the School please consult the Five College Archives & Manuscripts Database at: http://asteria.fivecolleges.edu/index.html, type in “Smith College School for Social Work” in the search box and scroll through the list that is generated.  You will find records in all sorts of places!  Also, feel free to contact the College Archives and ask for additional information.  Not all of the information about the collections is available in the database.