Special Collections Research Center

By Grace Wagner, Reading Room Access Services Supervisor As August draws to a close and we look to the start of a very unusual fall semester, it’s a good time to look back on some of the projects of this past spring and summer. Digital Projects Counter Working remotely has given SCRC staff, students, and Bird Library employees ...

By Grace Wagner, Reading Room Access Services Supervisor Today marks the 100th anniversary of the ratification of the 19th Amendment, granting women in the United States the right to vote. Although the amendment was passed by Congress on June 4, 1919, it could not be added to the U.S. Constitution until 36 states approved the amendment. ...

By Dane Flansburgh, Assistant Archivist From August 2016 to January 2018, I processed the records of the Crusade for Opportunity (CFO), an anti-poverty organization based in Syracuse, NY, that existed during the 1960s. In the two and a half years since I finished processing the CFO records, the increasing widespread swell of support for the Black ...

By Breeann Austin, Curatorial Instruction Assistant This summer, I worked and interned remotely with the Marcel Breuer Digital Archive for SCRC. The Breuer Archive is the digital repository of archival materials relating to the twentieth-century architect, Marcel Breuer, composed of materials from numerous institutions, SCRC among them. Over the summer, I worked with many other library ...

By Grace Wagner, Reading Room Access Services Supervisor SCRC in the News July 1, 2020. Petrina Jackson, the Director of SCRC, became the chair of the Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries, a division of ALA. 19 June 2020. Article about Arna Bontemps mentions SCRC as the current repository of Bontemps ...

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 ...