Special Collections Research Center

By Nora Ramsey, Reference Assistant Working among the collections for most of my time at Syracuse University as a graduate student has given me many unique and interesting perspectives on libraries, archives, and the materials held within them. However, my time here has also made me aware of a gap in collecting focus.  While applying for a ...

By Tiffany Miller, Reference Assistant Otherwise known as the “Mother of American Ceramics,” Maija Grotell was a prolific and influential ceramist and educator. She was a revolutionary figure in the ceramics world. Born in Helsinki, Finland in 1899, Grotell became a naturalized American citizen in 1934 after moving to the States to pursue her career in ...

By Jana Rosinski, Curatorial Assistant of the Plastics Collection I know when I’m looking through collection materials that what I sit with are only pieces. There’s no such thing as a complete story, especially one that can (re)tell itself; the pieces make the act of storytelling possible. When looking at objects from the plastics collection, an ...

By Jim Meade, Audio Preservation Engineer “What is your favorite recording in the collections?” I am asked this question regularly by visitors to the Belfer Audio Archive. It’s impossible to answer; there are so many outstanding recordings and sound-related artifacts in Special Collections. But in celebrating International Women’s Day, I am thrilled to offer up this ...

By Jonah Carter, Plastics Artifacts Processing Intern During the Fall semester of 2020, I was a processing intern for the Plastics Artifacts Collection. This processing internship not only provided me with the practical knowledge of how processing, organization, and arrangement work in archival and special collections, I also learned more about the process of archival research. ...

By Krystal Cannon, SCRC Curatorial Instruction Assistant The history of roads and highways may not immediately seem contentious, but Syracuse’s Interstate 81 has played a major role in the racial, social, and economic landscape of the city. With social justice coming to the forefront of popular discourse throughout this past year, it’s important to understand how ...

By Paul Barfoot, Library Technician 2021 marks the 75th anniversary of the publication of the first edition of Benjamin Spock’s Common Sense Book of Baby and Child Care, published by Duell, Sloan and Pearce. Selling for 25 cents, the book’s 500 or so pages were arranged by topic and age so that it could be used ...

By Shauna Modrow, Breuer Processing Intern Sometimes after reading a long, captivating book, I feel the need to take a moment to let the story and its conclusion settle in my soul before I can move on to reading something new. The same was true for reading and transcribing letters from the Marcel Breuer Digital Archive. ...

By Aisha Pierre, Reference Assistant I think those of us at Syracuse University can agree that the fall semester has been the strangest experience. We have become experts at Zoom meetings, we have become accustomed to our new 2020 accessory, the face mask, and we know how many times to shake the COVID test tubes (it ...

As we reach the end of a decidedly unprecedented and unusual year, let’s look back on some of the topics we researched, discussed, and discovered in SCRC’s collections this year. A big thank you to all of the staff members (Courtney Asztalos, Brett Barrie, Mike Dermody, Dane Flansburgh, Petrina Jackson, Jim Meade, Meg Mason, Sebastian ...