It began innocently enough, with a genuine plea for assistance publishing The Virginia Tech, the student newspaper of the university then known as Virginia Polytechnic Institute.
Before long, the request turned a bit passive-aggressive, containing thinly veiled references to an unappreciative student body and threats to shut down the newspaper.
If you’ve been to the Special Collections website recently, you already know – it looks brand new! If you haven’t seen it, please visit it at https://spec.lib.vt.edu/.
Here are screenshots comparing the old (left) and new (right) Special Collections website designs:
We’ve been discussing a redesign of the website for a while now, but with the rebranding of the Virginia Tech website, the University Libraries have been working all year on putting its pages into the new VT design theme. And now, Special Collections is part of this new design!
The new website aims to make finding materials easier by including a search box on the main page for digital content, such as digitized letters and photographs from our collections, and for finding aids, which describe our manuscript and archival collections. Menus at the top and sidebars on each page organize the content of the website into specific areas and minimize the number of pages you have to click thru to find the information you need.
We’re still planning on some minor additions, such as changing images in the banner on the main page and adding smaller images on some of the other pages. If you have any recommendations, please contact us with ideas!
New ImageBase website
On a related note, our ImageBase website has also been redesigned to fit into the new theme.If you haven’t seen it, please visit it at https://imagebase.lib.vt.edu/.
Here are screenshots comparing the old (left) and new (right) ImageBase website designs:
The organization and content of ImageBase remain the same, but the design fits in with the Virginia Tech and University Libraries’ new design. The old logo has been retired, and we are currently working on a new banner for the main page, similar to that on the new Special Collections website. If you have any recommendations, please contact us with ideas!
Just a quick announcement: Special Collections (along with the rest of the University Libraries) will be closed on Monday, May 14, 2018! Special Collections will reopen at our normal time (8am) on Tuesday, May 15, 2018, and we’ll resume our normal hours (M-F from 8am-5pm).
Women’s History Month is only a few days away and again this year, Special Collections and the University Libraries, in conjunction with some friends around campus, have some plans a-foot!
“Coeds: The History of Women Students at Virginia Tech”(sponsored by University Libraries and Virginia Tech Alumni Association).Virginia Tech first admitted women as students in 1921, but it was a long road to acceptance. Women had to create their own yearbook and unofficial sports teams in the beginning, and it took decades to achieve important student leadership positions in student organizations. Additional barriers prevented women students of color from reaching the same status as white women students for years and sometimes decades, as with the first Black women who didnt matriculate until 1966, a full 45 years after the first white women and 13 years after the first Black man. This exhibit highlights the many women who overcame these obstacles in order to obtain a quality education and to open doors for others to join the Hokie Nation.Wednesday, February 14th through Friday, March 30th, Monday-Friday from 8am-5pm at the Alumni Museum in Holtzman Alumni Center.
“Courage, Resistance, and Leadership: Women in American History” (sponsored by Special Collections and University Libraries). Special Collections and Newman Library will be collaborating on two exhibits in two spaces on the first floor of Newman Library. Special Collections will have items from our collections on display in the Reading Room, along with a digital slideshow of additional materials, trivia, and fun facts. In a nearby location on the first floor of the library, there will be a display of posters highlighting women represented in Special Collections holdings, as well as from the Womens History Month website, which contextualize their roles in American history.Open Thursday, March 1 through Monday, April 2, during Newman Library Hours. Posters will be on display on the first floor of Newman Library in the hallway across from classroom 120; the Special Collections reading room is on the first floor near the cafe.
“Together | We: Troubling the Field in 20th Century Architecture” (sponsored by Special Collections and University Libraries). The Special Collections Department at Newman Library will have an interactive digital exhibition on display focused on materials from the International Archive of Women in Architecture (IAWA). The exhibit will highlight a number of women working primarily in the 20th century who were practitioners and often pioneers in the field. In addition to their architectural work they often had to overcome significant barriers to entry into the field, including access to the resources and networks of professional organizations. Several of these women became avid organizers and advocates, highlighting the contributions of other women to the profession and working to rectify the disparities in representation across daily practice and professional associations.Open Thursday, March 1 through Monday, April 2, during Newman Library Hours. Display will be on the first floor of Newman Library in the hallway across from classroom 120.
For the sixth year running, our Whats Cookin @Special Collections?! blog will continue its Womens History Month series, highlighting the contributions of women to the culinary and agricultural fields! (You can view the posts to date online.) New posts should also show up under this category as they are published. So far, we’re planning to look at Martha Lee Anderson (pamphlet author for Church & Dwight, aka Arm & Hammer), the legend of Betty Crocker, and a manuscript cookbook from an alumnae of Randolph Macon College from the 1920s. And you may see some women’s history-themed posts on our “Special Collections at Virginia Tech“ blog, as well as on oursocial media channels (@VT_SCUA on Twitter and through our contributions the University Libraries’ Instagram account, @vtlibraries).
We are also involved in a set of individual events in March:
There will be about 45 events going on during March all over campus to celebrate women’s history month and we encourage you to check out the calendar (which will be posted online this week) and get involved where you can!
In 1925, Sherwood Anderson, the father of the modernist style of American literature, visited Troutdale, Virginia not far from the town of Marion, to escape New Orleans oppressive summer heat. By that time, Andersons writings, such as Winesburg, Ohio (1919), The Triumph of the Egg (1921), and Dark Laughter (1925), had brought him critical acclaim and some commercial success. He was so taken by southwest Virginia that he purchased property in Grayson County and built a cabin which he named Ripshin. Anderson once again re-invented himselfhe bought two weekly newspapers in nearby Marion, became active in local politics, and accompanied his fourth wife and Marion-native Eleanor Copenhaver on tours of southern factory towns to rally for workers rights and unions. He traveled the region, commenting on life in Wytheville, Pulaski, Roanoke, and Christiansburg. From the mid-1920s until his unexpected death in 1941 (peritonitis due to swallowing a toothpick from a martini) Anderson became a southwestern Virginian through and through.
The published works on Anderson and his writings are immense. The largest collection of his original papers and manuscripts were placed at the Newberry Library in Chicago. In Virginia, several libraries and archives acquired collections related to Anderson and his associates. Because of his connection to southwest Virginia, faculty and students at Virginia Tech have maintained a strong research interest in Anderson. The high-water mark of interest occurred during the 1980s when Dr. Charles Modlin and Dr. Hilbert Campbell in Virginia Techs English Department authored countless books, articles, and presentations on Andersons legacy. To support that research interest, Special Collections at Virginia Tech built a large printed collection of his published works and acquired a small number of original items related to Andersons family.
Scarcity and the passage of time are the greatest challenges of finding new materials for an archives program, especially for a topic with an extensive bibliography. My first efforts to locate available Sherwood Anderson material for Special Collections, nearly ten years ago, resulted in a few sparks but no fire. Then, and quite unexpectedly, in the spring of 2015 I was surrounded with a largely undiscovered cache of original Sherwood Anderson material.
The first collection came in March 2015 when a book and manuscript dealer listed a set of eight original Sherwood Anderson letters from 1916-1924. The letters were from Anderson to Llewellyn Jones, the literary editor for The Chicago Evening Post. The correspondence discusses reviews of Andersons recent books, his new writing projects, and a 1918 letter mentions his having this damned Spanish Influenza. Following acquisition of the small collection, it was processed, scanned, and placed online with full transcripts.
As is often the case, the discovery of one collection leads to another. I could not contain my excitement about the new acquisition and shared that information with another book and manuscript dealer. At that time he had largely been securing collections related to Virginia Tech history, such as original scrapbooks and personal papers from past graduates. To my surprise, he mentioned that one of his good friends was Dr. Welford D. Taylor, an emeritus English professor at the University of Richmond who had spent much of his academic career studying Sherwood Anderson.
In the weeks that followed, the dealer arranged for me to meet Dr. Taylor at his Richmond home. Dr. Taylor was a delightful host and an incredible resource on American literature, art, and Virginia history. From these discussions I learned that Dr. Taylor had a large collection of original Sherwood Anderson material that he had amassed over his academic career. Further, he was looking to place the collection in an archives program in Virginia where scholars would benefit. I made multiple trips to Richmond to talk with Dr. Taylor and by June we agreed to the terms of the agreement. His collection included several hundred letters, selected ephemera, and dozens of rare publications related to Sherwood Anderson. In addition, Dr. Taylor donated scarce publications, letters, ephemera, woodcuts, and other related pieces.
The Welford D. Taylor Collection on Sherwood Anderson, 1927-1992 (MS2015-045), represents a significant collection of material on Andersons years in southwest Virginia. The collection documents Andersons life in a small mountain community, newspaper publishing, finding inspiration for new writing, labor organizing, the publishing industry, and reactions to literary criticism. A highlight of the collection is over fifty letters written between Sherwood Anderson and J.J. Lankes, a significant illustrator and woodcut artist who worked with Anderson and other literary luminaries. The letters begin in 1927 continuing until the early 1940s. There are dozens of documents from other members of Andersons family including correspondence from Eleanor Copenhaver Anderson and his son Robert Anderson. Dr. Taylor is also represented in the collection, as he corresponded with Andersons family and associates for many years.
Other gems include The Complete Works of Sherwood Anderson, edited by Kichinosuke Ohashi (1982), a rare, out-of-print, set of Andersons work published in Japan still in original custom-made boxes.
The Welford D. Taylor Collection on Sherwood Anderson represents one of the most significant acquisitions for Special Collections at Virginia Tech in recent memory. It will be a deep resource for scholars studying both Sherwood Anderson and the history of the southwest Virginia. The complexity of the collection has made processing much slower than expected, but once fully arranged and described there will be further updates and the release of a detailed finding aid. Those goals symbolize the end of this acquisitions story, but serve only as one chapter in the lengthy and ongoing odyssey to find and acquire new Sherwood Anderson materials for Special Collections at Virginia Tech.
Although still being processed, the collection is available for research use in the reading room. If you want more information about this and other Sherwood Anderson related collections held by Special Collections at Virginia Tech please send an email to specref@vt.edu
Recently, our graduate student Rebecca asked about our twitter account – the question being why aren’t we on twitter yet?! Thanks to her prompting, we now are – check us out at @VT_SCUA!
Our first post you will notice is about the exhibit currently on display in our reading room windows about the history of African American female students and student groups at Virginia Tech. And guess what….one of our student volunteers, Alexis, came up with the idea and put it together!
With millions of users on Twitter, it’s a great way to stay current with different Virginia Tech departments and other libraries. Also, we hope the website will encourage our users to engage with us by asking questions, sharing their ideas, or notifying us of relevant stories and news. Because of its nature – being only 140 characters per tweet, we’ll be able (we hope) to share with our followers and others a bit more frequently than we are able to just via our blogs. Some tweets to look for from us include photos of neat items from our collections; announcements of new finding aids, new exhibits, or digital exhibits; upcoming events; and new blog posts on either this blog or our food and drink blog, What’s Cookin’ @ Special Collections?!
We hope that you will enjoy this new way to interact with us at @VT_SCUA!
Want an opportunity to win $2500 and take a road trip to Virginia Tech Special Collections? (Airlines, cruise ships, or a brief walk across the Drillfield are other forms of acceptable transportation.)
Well, you are in luck because proposals are now being accepted for the annualMilka Bliznakov Research Prize sponsored by the International Archive of Women in Architecture Center, Virginia Tech.
The Board of Advisors of the International Archive of Women in Architecture Center (IAWA) presents this Annual Prize of $2500 (with an additional $500 available for travel) in honor of IAWA founder Milka Bliznakov.
The Prize is open to architects, scholars, professionals, students, and independent researchers with research projects that would benefit from access to the IAWAs collections.
More details and submission guidelines can be found here. The proposal must be submitted by May 1st, 2014. The winner will be announced by June 15th, 2014.
March is Womens History Month and in honor of this commemorative month Special Collections is hosting an interactive exhibit-celebrating women. Stop by the exhibit cases located on the first floor of Newman Library to see some representative materials from our collections featuring women in literature, the domestic arts, and science and technology. If you have a few extra minutes (or hours, seriously this is great stuff) then come on in and we will let you loose on a cart full of collections created by women. Our archivists have pulled womens travel diaries from 1840-2000s, speculative fiction magazines, literary first editions, architecture collections, items from Virginia Techs history, and much more.
If you are visiting with us through the magic of the Internet dont despair for each Tuesday in March we will be spotlighting a collection here on this very blog.
Mark your calendars for next Tuesday’s profile on the short-lived, co-ed yearbook, The Tin Horn, published by the first female students at Virginia Tech.
Want an opportunity to win $2500 and take a road trip to Virginia Tech Special Collections? (Airlines, cruise ships, or a brief walk across the Drillfield are other forms of acceptable transportation.)
Well, you are in luck because proposals are now being accepted for the 13th Annual Milka Bliznakov Research Prize sponsored by the International Archive of Women in Architecture Center, Virginia Tech.
The Board of Advisors of the International Archive of Women in Architecture Center (IAWA) presents this Annual Prize of $2500 (with an additional $500 available for travel) in honor of IAWA founder Milka Bliznakov.
The Prize is open to architects, scholars, professionals, students, and independent researchers with research projects that would benefit from access to the IAWAs collections.
More details and submission guidelines can be found here. The proposal must be submitted by May 1st, 2013. The winner will be announced by June 15th, 2013.