Special Collections Research Center

Petrina Jackson, Director of SCRC This fall semester, we planned on launching an exhibition honoring the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990. However, the pandemic abruptly interrupted those plans. Transitioning to working at home left us with no access to our collections, so researching, selecting, and writing about our materials were temporarily ...

Danny Sarmiento, Director of Administration & SCRC Curatorial Intern for the Plastics Collection It’s possibly the most retold story about a haircut. One Connecticut newspaper headline read simply, ‘IRENE CASTLE CUTS HER HAIR.’” In 1914, as an internationally-recognized ballroom dancer, silent film star, and one of the first celebrities with an eponymous fashion line, Irene Castle ...

By Natasha Bishop, Reference Assistant This summer, I have been working for the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) from my dining room table. While working remotely comes with its challenges, it has also presented the SCRC team with opportunities to embark on meaningful digital projects. For example, as part of an ongoing effort to increase the ...

By Grace Wagner, Reading Room Access Services Supervisor This June, we are celebrating the accomplishments of several SCRC staff members. First, congratulations to Brett Barrie, Assistant Catalog Librarian, Acquisitions and Cataloging and Nicole Westerdahl, Reference and Access Services Librarian, who were promoted from Assistant Librarian to Senior Assistant Librarian status. And a hearty thank you to ...

By Sebastian Modrow, Curator of Rare Books and Manuscripts From 2016 to 2017, Syracuse University’s Special Collections Research Center engaged in a massive preservation project. The task was to rehouse and increase the intellectual control over approximately 17,000 plates used as textbook illustrations by the American Book Company, one of the leading American schoolbook publishers of ...

By David Stokoe, Associate Librarian, Conservator of Rare Books and Paper In 2008, SCRC acquired a manuscript cookbook written in French and containing no named author or title. The contents were immediately identifiable as a mixture of diary entries and recipes probably written in the early 1880’s.  The book came to be known as the “French Chef’s ...

By Grace Wagner, Reading Room Access Services Supervisor “Dr. Mary Walker may be eccentric, but she is no fool. On election day, she offered her vote in Oswego; and it was refused on account of her sex. A bystander remarked that, if Mary was allowed to vote, ‘they might as well dress up all their women-folks ...

By Nora Ramsey, Reference Assistant Miklós Rózsa (1907-1995), whose papers are held at SCRC, was a Hungarian-American composer known for his dramatic film scores. His career in Hollywood gained him tremendous fame: Rózsa received 17 Oscar nominations and won the award three times for his music for the films Spellbound (1945), A Double Life (1947) and ...

By Grace Wagner, Reading Room Access Services Supervisor May marks the one-year anniversary of SCRC’s first blog post, which went live just over a year ago, on May 7, 2019. We’ve been posting weekly ever since! Take a look back at our first post below: https://library-blog.syr.edu/scrc/2019/05/07/hello-world-2-2/ All month long, we’ve been celebrating National Photography Month through our ...

By Isabel McCullough, Reference Assistant In my work as a Reference Assistant at SCRC, I answer a lot of reference questions about University history. This was especially true last year as everyone was preparing for SU’s sesquicentennial this spring. One of my favorite projects from sesquicentennial preparations was researching the Inn Complete and the history of ...