History Commons^™

Exploring Rockingham County’S Past: Recapturing Local History And Promoting Accessibility, Kayla Heslin

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

In 2018 Exploring Rockingham’s Past (ERP) launched. ERP is an online repository created to house local records from the Rockingham County, Virginia circuit court. Just a little over a year before its launch, Clerk of the Court, Chaz Haywood entreated facility and graduate students within the history department of James Madison University to help develop community access to the records housed within his institution. Sadly, over the decades the records of the courthouse had fallen into disarray, rendering them useless. Seeing this as a significant loss of culture and heritage, Haywood and James Madison University began developing a platform that …

On The Reactionary Treatment Of American Radicals By J. Edgar Hoover's Fbi, Sonia Potter

Student Projects from the Archives

African Americans, who had been systematically oppressed from the very beginning of their time in the United States, were calling more and more loudly for freedom and equality in the mid-twentieth century. Compounded with the fear and hatred of communism was also a fear of black Americans ascending to the same societal plane as white Americans, especially among individuals and groups of people who held racist views and had reservations about equality between blacks and whites.

One of the groups of people who seemed to have reservations about such a concept was the United States’ own Federal Bureau of Investigation …

Tuberculosis Patient Number 296 In The Daniel Harris Papers, Margaret Stehura, Cristopher Shell, Zachary Piette

Student Projects from the Archives

This essay examines Susan Sontag's _Illness as Metaphor_ alongside Daniel Harris's studies of those admitted for tuberculosis care at the Saranac Lake Sanitarium. While both Sontag’s perceptions and Patient 296’s tubercular reality may not be 100% aligned with one another (i.e., lived experience of someone with tuberculosis versus historical perceptions of the disease itself), by combining both aspects we are able to develop a fairly crystalline image of what it was like to actually have tuberculosis at this point in time. In doing so, it becomes clear that while some perceptions of tuberculosis may have been fairly misguided, it was …

“Failure Of Will”?: Tb Patient Narratives And Susan Sontag’S Illness As Metaphor, Bryon Dickon, Ashley Gonzalez

Student Projects from the Archives

Susan Sontag outlines in Illness as Metaphor the romantic narratives of what she called a “tubercular personality.” Sontag writes the following in doing so, describing one key aspect of romantic tuberculosis: “TB was understood, like insanity, to a kind of one-sidedness; a failure of will or an overintensity…the tubercular was considered to be someone quintessentially vulnerable, and full of self-destructive whims” (63-64). “A failure of will” and “quintessential vulnerability” form a set of characteristics through which a narrative of the “tubercular personality” is constructed. The tubercular narrative Sontag describes is based on a wide variety of stereotypes. This creates a …

“Ships, Vol. 2” Beyond Transport, Combat And Tourism: A Study Into Ships On Postcards, Janos Jalics

Student Projects from the Archives

Over several millennia, ships have been displayed in all sorts of media ranging from commercials to diaries and newspapers. When the postcard was invented in 1869, various ships began appearing on them. Postcards with ships became far more than a way to message. They became advertisements, showcases of paintings, and repositories of information. Postcards gave ships a new purpose and unique audiences in the name of advertisement, art, and knowledge, as this essay will show by examining “Ships, Vol. 2”of the David P. Campbell Postcard Collection at The University of Akron.

Replicating Nontraditional Postcards From The Archive, Cristopher Shell

Student Projects from the Archives

The purpose of this project is to digitize and replicate nontraditional postcards from the David P. Campbell Postcard Collection from Drs. Nicholas and Dorothy Cummings Center for the History of Psychology.I set out to find the easiest way to replicate a few postcards that are nontraditional in one way or another. The method I came to involves using a Cricut Printer and the Cricut Design Space to scan and upload the complex shapes. The result was that I could very easily replicate any of the three chosen postcards with little to no trouble. I concluded that, even though Cricut Printers …

Postcards And Psychograms: The Science Of Handwriting Analysis, Aubrey Baldwin

Student Projects from the Archives

One psychogram, or means of testing personality, is handwriting analysis or graphology. Handwriting analysis can be used to look at personality traits or it can be used to determine emotions that a person is feeling when they are writing things like a postcard or a letter. This essay will look at the history of handwriting analysis and then will analyze four postcards from the 1920’s using Paul D. Hugon's handwriting analysis test.

Thanks to the Drs. Nicholas and Dorothy Cumming Center for the History of Psychology, Hugon's Psychograms test has been saved and it will be used to do the …

“Here Is Where Al Capone And A Few Others Are Spending Their Vacations?” : Tracing How Alcatraz Was Portrayed In Postcards, 1924-1971, Franchesica Kidd

Student Projects from the Archives

Between the 1920s and the 1970s and as Alcatraz was decommissioned as a federal prison and bloomed into a booming tourist industry, the Rock saw a change in the way that the postcard industry portrayed it via photos on the back of postcards. As time went on, Alcatraz was depicted more as a tourist hotspot than a warning place to stay out of. Photo postcards of Alcatraz shifted from black and white photos and printed photos toward lively colored photos that had the message “Wish You Were Here!” printed on them, suggesting a cultural shift in attitude toward this notorious …

Grand Valley Magazine, Vol. 19, No. 2, Fall 2019, Grand Valley State University

Grand Valley Magazine

Grand Valley Magazine is a quarterly publication about Grand Valley State University produced by University Communications since 2001.

Friends Of Musselman Library Newsletter Fall 2019, Musselman Library

Friends of Musselman Library Newsletter

From the Dean (Robin Wagner)

Library News

• Cite and Bite Workshops
• Open Access Week (Janelle Wertzberger, Alecea Standlee, Hana Huskic)
• Notes at Noon
• Friends Sponsor Guild Participation (Mary Wootton)
• Stop the Bleed
• The Wall Must Go
• Story Time
• Table to Farm
• Pop-up Library
• Take the Reading Challenge
• 1,000,000
• Grant to Digitize Asian Art

Vietnam Oral Histories (Ron Bailey '67, Sue Hill '67, Michael Birkner, Devin McKinney)

Alexander von Humboldt's Secretary (William Bowman)

Focus on Philanthropy: Walter Miller Trust

A Gift in 3 Dimensions (Richard C. Ryder '70)

Remembering Richard Ryder '70 (Michael Birkner)

New Externship - Careers in Library and …

Ic 005 Guide To Postgraduate Medical Assembly Of South Texas Records, 1932-1970, Postgraduate Medical Assembly Of South Texas

Institutional Finding Aids

Postgraduate Medical Assembly of South Texas records consists of about 27 boxes and contains correspondence, financial records, issues of Medical Records and Annals, printed material, meeting minutes, memberships, Medical Assembly of South Texas, ink stamps, and registration logs that document the history of the Postgraduate Medical Assembly of South Texas. See more at IC 005.

Curating Care: Creativity, Women’S Work, And The Carers Uk Archive, Alice Hall, Hannah Tweed

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

This article analyses the previously unexplored archives of the British charity, Carers UK, and its predecessor organizations, from its formation in 1965 to the present day. We argue that the archive is a valuable resource for social, political, and economic histories of care in the home, women’s work, feminist campaigns, and charitable organizations in the UK and beyond. It gives voice to traditionally silenced populations of carers through a strikingly diverse range of letters, edited collections of fiction, minutes of meetings, video diaries, newsletters, and anthologies of creative writing. As a case study, the Carers UK archive provides an important …

Lessons From The 1800s: Creating The Miss Porter's School Digital Archive, Deborah Smith

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

College preparatory (“prep”) schools have their roots in the New England region of the United States; many predate the nation's most illustrious colleges and universities. The archives at these schools contain items of importance to American history in the 1800s. However, few schools have trained archivists managing their physical collections and even fewer have created digital archives to increase access. Founded in 1848, Miss Porter's School in Farmington, Connecticut was one of the first independent schools devoted to the education of young women. This article reviews the creation of the Porter's digital archive in 2018 and examines issues specific to …

From The Trenches: Cross-Campus Digital History Collaboration, Amy E. Lucadamo, Ian A. Isherwood, R.C. Miessler, Jenna Fleming, Meghan E. O'Donnell

R.C. Miessler

In September 2015, our team launched The First World War Letters of H.J.C. Peirs (www.jackpeirs.org), a digital history initiative built on collaboration between faculty, students, and library staff. The project is founded on amazing primary source material, but with limited financial support and little dedicated staff time. We leveraged the creativity and hard work of our team members to build a website that is maintained by students and enhanced whenever possible with features and commentary from faculty and staff. Members of #TeamPeirs discussed the evolution of the project, the nature of our collaboration, and the intersection of audiences …

Grand Valley Magazine, Vol. 19, No. 1, Summer 2019, Grand Valley State University

Grand Valley Magazine

Grand Valley Magazine is a quarterly publication about Grand Valley State University produced by University Communications since 2001.

Time Traveling With Timelines: Web Apps For Storytelling In Libraries, Sharon Bradley, Rachel S. Evans

Articles, Chapters and Online Publications

From online embeds to interactive displays, timelines can serve many purposes and tell powerful stories. At the University of Georgia’s Law Library we have teamed up with faculty and staff to bring history to life, engage students, and preserve scholarly and institutional milestones. Through trial and error we have found a variety of tools for creating timelines digitally. In this article we share our four favorite web-based applications for creating timelines including Tiki-Toki, TimeToast, Prezi and Piktochart.

Book Review: Palaces For The People: How Social Infrastructure Can Help Fight Inequality, Polarization, And The Decline Of Civic Life, Eric Klinenberg, Georgia Westbrook

School of Information Student Research Journal

No abstract provided.

Humanizing The Enslaved Of Fort Monroe’S Arc Of Freedom, William R. Kelly Jr.

Journal of Contemporary Archival Studies

Fort Monroe, located in Hampton, Virginia, was a United States Army post until its deactivation in 2011. President Barack Obama proclaimed Fort Monroe a national monument due to its complex history, including its ties to slavery and emancipation. This paper outlines an ongoing research project designed to identify and humanize both the enslaved who helped build the fort and those who were declared as contraband there during the American Civil War. Housed in the National Archives and Records Administration in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the United States Army Engineer Records from 1819 to 1866 is the main area of focus for this …

Embedded Instruction Collaboration: The Case Of The Ball State Digital History Portal, Douglas Seefeldt, Randi Beem, James Bradley

Digital Initiatives Symposium

This interdisciplinary panel will discuss a long-term project, “The Ball State Digital History Portal,” as a case study in digital initiatives in instruction and undergraduate research that features a collaboration between disciplinary faculty, an archivist, and a digital librarian. In this course, “History in the Digital Age,” undergraduate and graduate students from a variety of majors research, create, and build digital thematic research collection projects on topics in university history that aim to answer scholarly inquiries by conducting primary source research, selecting and digitizing archival materials, and creating metadata to accompany their curated items. An important part of the collaboration …

Grand Valley Forum, Volume 043, Number 16, April 22, 2019, Grand Valley State University

2018-2019, Volume 43

Grand Valley Forum is Grand Valley State's faculty and staff newsletter, published from 1976 to the present.

Hope College And The Vietnam War Era: "We Only Started To Care When It Affected Us.", Halla Maas, Olivia Brickley

18th Annual Celebration of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (2019)

This project focuses on Hope College during the Vietnam War era. During this time, the draft created moral dilemmas for both students and faculty. When it started affecting themselves and people they knew, students felt that they needed to be educated about the war. The draft also meant that students sought deferments through such means as studying ministry, pre med, and other sciences. Hope students noticed that young men who were able to avoid the draft were usually privileged and not a part of the minority class. This led many Hope students to protest the draft and the war. These …

The Forgotten Expedition Of The Michigan Polar Bears, Laura Anthon, Jamie Breyfogle, Timothy Embertson, Natalie Weg

18th Annual Celebration of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity (2019)

The Michigan Polar Bear expedition saw Allied forces leading a controversial excursion into Northern Russia during the concluding years of World War I. Despite thousands of soldiers being sent to interfere with the Russian Civil War, the Polar Bear Expedition has been lost from collective memory. We publicly inquired about the expedition, then combined this research with a found scholarly consensus about the lack of cognizance relating to the events. This revealed a disconnect, which led us to inquire as to the nature and origin of its historical omission. Our primary sources of research focused on the oral histories of …

A Map Based On The "Hold-To-Light" Binder, Amanda Leach

Student Projects from the Archives

The Hold-to-Light cards in the David P. Campbell Postcard Collection have a wide dispersion over the United States and Europe, and even one from Argentina. The Copper Window cards, however, are predominately travel postcards, which show a popular tourist attraction. These cards are indeed clustered in the New England Area. This tells us that these coastal states were popular travel destinations in the early 1900s. To explore this interactive map, please follow the link below:

https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1Wkjl4QLAxLYX7ukvp84fgIcV4TsNTB0G&ll=35.41926243680842%2C-97.16311076875001&z=4

Capturing Hold-To-Light Postcard Images: A Video, Richard Marko

Student Projects from the Archives

One of the major challenges we faced in working with our binder from the David P Campbell Postcard Collection was getting digital images of the postcards with their Hold-to-Light effects. After a few attempts with the scanner it was decided that photography was the best way to capture these images. In order to best capture the Hold-to-Light a special card holder was constructed. The holder helped make photographing the cards less time consuming and produced the best quality images in showing the effects of the cards. The construction process and instructions for this card holder can be found in this …

Hold-To-Light And Other Specialty Postcards, Zoe Orcutt

Student Projects from the Archives

The "Hold-to-Light" binder in the David P. Campbell Postcard Collection deals primarily with cards that contain some type of visual effect when viewed. The majority of the cards’ visual effects can be viewed when held up a light. For this, they are usually called HTL (hold-to-light) cards, or transparency cards. There were three specific processes used in printing these HTL Cards: Die-cutting, Transparency, and Slide-Transparency.

M. Storey-Bates Cards, Stacy Young, Emma Grosjean

Student Projects from the Archives

The M. Storey-Bates postcard binder in the David P. Campbell Postcard Collection includes 132 postcards that date from 1904-1918 and that feature a multitude of images. These images consist of photographs of Edwardian actors and actresses, cartoon illustrations, illustrations created from Dickens, paintings, and much more. All of the postcards that are included in the binder have been mailed to addresses in the United Kingdom, most certainly from other addresses in the UK. The majority of these postcards were mailed to Minnie Storey-Bates (1887-1959) from Ralph Duckworth (1885-1960). Their personal relationship included correspondence that consisted of mundane daily activities, check-ins, …

A Map Based On The Institutions, Asylums, Etc. Binder, Justin Veda

Student Projects from the Archives

This project creates a map that displays the real life locations of the institutions pictured in our Institutions, Asylums, Etc. binder’s postcards and creates a website that displays the information of the map and some of the information from Veronica Bagley’s project.

The David P. Campbell Postcard Collection, searchable at postcard.uakron.edu, is a key collection of the CCHP’s Institute for Human Science and Culture. The collection provides the raw material for this project.

Overview To The Institutions, Asylums, Etc. Binder Catalogue, Veronica Bagley

Student Projects from the Archives

This project involves compiling different tables, graphs, and indexes that cover the Institutions, Asylums, Etc. binder. I also made a glossary that covers some of the names of the institutions for which definitions may not be obvious. The intention was that these can be added to the binder for future researchers.

The David P. Campbell Postcard Collection, searchable at postcard.uakron.edu, is a key collection of the CCHP’s Institute for Human Science and Culture.

“None But The Brave Deserve The Fair?” An Analysis Of Lovers Postcards From The First World War, Randall Slonaker

Student Projects from the Archives

Over ten percent of postcards in the Lovers Portraits Vol. 1 binder feature couples where the man is wearing a military uniform, with twenty-two of these cards depicting men in World War I era, United States military garb. The images and captions featured on these cards evoke familiar ideas of romance, courtship, and marital fidelity. Therefore, I have chosen to write a short synopsis that groups all of the World War One themed cards in this binder in one of three categories: courtship and pursuit, domesticity and marriage, and marital commitment and fidelity. I have positioned the images and captions …

The Medium And The Message In Early Twentieth Century Postcards Picturing Courtship And Romance, Rosemary Herbert

Student Projects from the Archives

This examination of representative postcards from the Lovers Portrait Vol. 1 volume in the David P. Campbell Postcard Collection will use the postcards dating from the early twentieth century and the messages on them to illuminate facts about postcard production, postal history, family relationships, daily life, fashion strictures, and much more. With each card inspiring a piece of detective work that brings to light a nugget of information about a time gone by, this work also generally represents the kind of curiosities that the collection as a whole brings to light. It is hoped that it will serve as a …