In the fall of 2008, during the first semester of my freshman year here at Haverford,  I started working in Special Collections with Digital Collections Librarian David Conners to finish the Cope Evans project.  Started in 2002, the project was to digitize the Cope Evans Family Papers collection in order to make each item available on the web.  This involved reading, scanning, and transcribing almost 3,000 items dating from the 18th to the 20th century.  I had very little knowledge of the Society of Friends before coming to Haverford, and working with this collection of papers was a great way for me to really understand the essence of Quakerism.

At the culmination of the project in the spring of 2009, an event was organized to unveil the work that all of the students, interns, fellows, and librarians had been doing for the project.  Members of the Cope and Evans families were invited, as well as other members of the community, and anyone who had worked on the project in the past.  I spoke on the student panel at the event, and wrote a couple of pieces about some themes that arose from the letters, which were the compiled into a booklet about the collection.

Currently, I am working with Manuscripts Librarian and College Archivist Diana Franzusoff Peterson as the student archivist. I plan to major in Anthropology with a minor in Spanish. I also study Arabic, and plan to spend my junior year abroad in Egypt.

Charlotte Brooks, Marlis Gildemeister, Laurence Wylie, and an unidentified woman learn auto mechanics as part of the Relief and Reconstruction master’s degree program during World War II.

The College Archives maintains a collection of historic photos organized by subject for patrons to view. This photo and many others are available online through Triptych, the Tri-College Digital Library.

The Haverford News was the College’s weekly student newspaper from 1914 to 1968.  From the March 30, 1915 issue, we learn that the library has had a feline visitor.

LIBRARY BECOMES SARCOPHAGUS FOR UNFORTUNATE FELINE

Last week the library set aside traditions and became a “sarcophagus for cats,” besides being a “cemetery for books.” An unfortunate feline took up its residence in one of the walls and was forced to remain in spite of all efforts towards its dislodgement.

At twenty minutes past eight last Wednesday evening, the inmates of the library were awakened, some from thought, others from sleep, by a howl. A cessation, then two more howls, echoing and re-echoing through the lofty rafters. Another interval and then the storm broke, to vibrate unceasingly for an hour and a half in human ears, and dear knows how long in the ears of the wall through the long night. The whine was quickly located as coming from the topmost corner of the wall of the magazine section, and various sceptics hinted at its identity. Harding, looking round a book-case, said it was a rat, but this theory was dispelled when biologist Dunn declared it a kitten. It seemed as though all the horrors of Poe were to be staged in real life, but the source of the noise was far above investigation and it was with great regret that Dunn locked the creature in its grave at ten o’clock.

When Miss Sharpless and Miss Ingalls entered the library the next morning they were greeted with “a cry, at first muffled and broken, like the sobbing of a child, then quickly swelling into one, long, continuous, screaming, utterly inhuman howl.” Mr. Collins and his crew answered the calls for assistance and brought ladders which were placed on the outside of the building. Sharpless, star tumbler of the Gym team, offered his services and after ascending without tumbling reported the chimney bricked solid. Mr. Collins, on interview, said that “puss” had crawled up an old flue and did not possess “animal instinct” enough to crawl out again. Whereupon “puss” was left to his or her fate.

Friday: After a long search the noisy animal was located in a portion of the cellar between the old library and the new stock room, and thereupon released.

Cast of characters:

Harding: William Hover Harding (1892-1964), class of 1918, left in 1917. Went on to work for the Chicago, Milwaukee, and St. Paul Railway in Chicago, Illinois.

Haverford College Library, ca. 1915, Gift of Helen Sharpless, 1951.

Dunn: Emmett Reid Dunn (1894-1956), class of 1915. Went on to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University and became Professor of Zoology at Smith College. Later joined the faculty of Haverford where he was Professor of Biology from 1929 to 1956.

Miss Sharpless: Miss Helen Sharpless (1878-1969), daughter of Haverford President Isaac Sharpless.  An 1896 graduate of Bryn Mawr College, Helen received her library degree from Drexel College in 1901.  She served as Assistant Librarian at Haverford College from 1896 to 1902 and Acting Librarian from 1914 to 1920.

Miss Ingalls: Florence L. Ingalls, a 1912 graduate of Mount Holyoke College and a 1914 graduate of New York State Library School.  She served as Assistant Librarian from 1914 to 1917.  She married Fred Vosburgh in 1917.

Mr. Collins: William Henry Collins (1859-1939), class of 1881.  Superintendent of Buildings and Grounds from 1897 to 1920.

Sharpless: Francis Parvin Sharpless (b. 1894), class of 1916, captain of the Gymnasium team.  Went on to serve in the Reconstruction Unit in France for 18 months, and became a salesman for Woodward & Company, Grain Brokers, and later Resident Manager of the Columbia Milling Company, in Columbia, Pennsylvania.

Puss: No one knows what became of Puss.

Today we’re delivering 172 audio tapes to Safe Sound Archive in Philadelphia where they will be put in cold storage to ensure their longevity. The tapes come from both the Quaker Collection and College Archives and include such content as the 1941 acceptance speech of Haverford honorary degree recipient Herbert Hoover and Howard Brinton’s 1960s lectures on Quakerism as well as a series of oral histories conducted from the 1990s through early 2000s on the history of Haverford College. The recordings, comprised of reel-to-reels and cassettes, have all been digitized and are gradually being uploaded to our DSpace repository. The digitized recordings will help to make the content more easily accessible, while the storage of the originals at one of the country’s premiere commercial audio archives will ensure that the master recordings remain viable should we ever need to transfer them again.  Special Collections maintains hundreds more audio and video recordings and as time and funding allow we will continue to digitize and upload more content.

The accompanying photograph from the College Archives depicts members of the Haverford Emergency Unit, ca. 1917, standing in front of Morris Infirmary holding litters, with the Carvill Arch to their right. In that year, Haverford College professor, Rufus M. Jones, organized the Unit on campus, which drew from Haverford’s undergraduates. Their training included physical and manual exercises, auto mechanics, and first aid to prepare them for non-combatant participation in World War I while remaining in college.  Nonetheless, by May 1917, 19 Unit members left college to volunteer for hospital work and 11 for Army training.  The Unit ceased at the end of May, replaced in June by students and faculty training for the work of relief and reconstruction in France in conjunction with the newly formed American Friends Service Committee.

Special Collections puts many of its digitized objects into Triptych: the tri-college digital library.  Materials documenting the history of the College can now be found in one collection, "The History of Haverford College."  The collection combines over 500 historic photographs, documents from the College Archives, and published histories of the College.