Message from the Director

Libraries are not made; they grow.
~Augustine Birrell (1850-1933)

It has been a busy summer for the Library, and we are happy to see the larger HWS community return. We have had some growing pangs, and the library looks a little different.

You will notice some expanded study spaces and some surprisingly empty shelves on the second level. This summer we shifted over 8000 linear feet of books (1.5 miles!) and we are not done yet – soon all of that space will disappear as it gets redistributed into our growing collection. The Barron Multimedia Lab has had a makeover, creating a comfortable and inviting twenty-four hour space.

The Library staff also continues to grow and change and you will find some new faces: Katie Lamontagne joins us this year as the new College Archivist and Special Collections Librarian; Emily Hart has joined us as a Research and Instruction Librarian, and Martha Clark who has previously only worked weekends joins us full-time during the week.

Welcome back.

(Image: “NewLife”, a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike image from The Cookiemonster’s photostream)

Early Geneva History--Searchable newspaper index available

If you are interested in the history of Geneva, NY , you may might want to take a look at the Geneva Newspaper Index covering the years between 1806 and 1839. This index was edited by Gary B. Thompson and published in the 1980s. It is now available in a searchable/browsable index through on our Archives website.

Just want to try it out? I suggest trying searches on topics like slave, canal, rail. Headlines may give you a feel for how different life was in the early 19th century. A search on accident is also interesting and will yield headings like:

• boatman killed in wrestling accident.
• elephant falls through bridge
• man dies from treatment by quack
• man killed by waterwheel

Enjoy!

What's the story on the cannon?

Did you know there used to be a cannon on campus in front of World War I Memorial Bench? Our best guess is that it was melted down for scrape in World War II, but we haven't found any documentation. Do you know any more? If you have information please let us know.

--Linda

Linda Clark Benedict

Archivist

lbenedict@hws.edu

Hobart Class of 1881 speaks to the future.

At their 40th reunion, the Hobart Class of 1881 packed a box to be opened by the Class of 1981. The centerpiece of the box was a photograph album with pictures of faculty and class at graduation, augmented with small photos of the graduates in 1921. Also included were a fund raising challenge, a few letters, and a 1921 Hobart Herald. The contents are on display on the lower level of the Library in the window of the Rare Book Room, across the hall from the Archives and Special Collections office.

William Smith biography digitized

This short biography of William Smith was written circa 1924 by Anna Botsford Comstock. Enjoy!

J. G. Vail Portraits Online

J. G. Vail was a photographer in Geneva in the second half of the 19th century. The Colleges' Archives has a collection of portraits of local citizens in a format called cartes-de-visite. Through our participation in the Rochester Regional Library Council's Finger Lakes/Genesee River Valley Heritage project, we are able to make them available online using a digital collection solution called CONTENTdm. Each of Vail's cartes-de-visites has been scanned both front and back. In addition, the collection includes a selection of stereographs Vail took of Geneva and Hobart College. The Vail collection of images may be viewed at: http://cdm15109.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/p277601coll11

Archives open for Reunion Weekend

The Archives will be open on Friday June 5th from 10am-3pm for Reunion. Stop by and take a look.