When the pandemic prevented students from entering the digitization photography studio, the Digital Programs department decided to pivot to Instagram. Campbell Hannan ‘21 and Emma Candland ’23 took over what was then “@amherstdigcoll” and transformed the small, relatively new inconsistent account into @frostfinds, a vibrant account that posts daily and frequently engages with the Amherst…Continue Reading Retelling Amherst Stories in the Digital Age
Posters line the mezzanine in Frost Library, featuring a handful of portraits of members of the Amherst College community from the two hundred year history of the institution. While the library is still restricted to current students, faculty, and staff, we wanted to create a virtual exhibit of the portraits featured on campus for all…Continue Reading Amherst Stories on Display
Guest post by Campbell Hannan, ’21 “This show could never have been made if there wasn’t this digital archive.” When I posted a side-by-side comparison of George Gould (Class of 1850) and Samuel Farnsworth, the actor who plays him on the Apple TV+ show Dickinson, as the weekly installation of my Fridays with Emily feature…Continue Reading Interview with Alena Smith
I worked on the digital projects of the colleges archives for all but my first year as a student at Amherst College, and over time the photographs, publications, and physical objects from the last two centuries that I encountered contributed to the way I thought about the college’s history and my own role in it….Continue Reading Avery Farmer, Amherst Class of 2020
In May, we completed and ingested our largest group of material yet: series 1 of the Amherst College Student & Alumni Publications Collection. This sub-section of the collection contains many of the publications created by Amherst students during their time here at Amherst. Still to come from this collection are the majority of the student…Continue Reading Delving into Student Publications
Guest post by Avery Farmer ’20 For the past eighteen months, I have been working to digitize the Amherst College Photographer Negative Collection 1965-2005. For three hours at a time on a few afternoons each week, I shut myself into a windowless room in the basement of the library, its lights turned off to guarantee…Continue Reading Commencement Here at Amherst
In 2018 I worked closely with the Henry J. Van Lennep Collection, one of the collections that the Digital Programs department and Archives and Special Collections have selected for digitization for the upcoming Amherst College bicentennial. This chance to work with the Van Lennep collection was interesting and appealing to me for several…Continue Reading Adventures with the Henry J. Van Lennep Collection
This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of Amherst College’s Moratoria in the spring of 1969. As the library digitizes materials from our college archives, we are adding images that capture scenes from this momentous time at Amherst. These are part of the massive Amherst College Photographer Records series in the Amherst College Digital Collections. Photographs of…Continue Reading Moratorium Photographs
Guest post by Campbell Hannan ’21 In September of 1939, then-President of Amherst, Stanley King opened his convocation address in Johnston Chapel with a somewhat ominous proclamation. “This year we open with Europe at war,” he said. “What effect that war will have on America no man can tell. But that it will affect America…Continue Reading The Introduction of World War II to Amherst College
One of the things we often say about the archival materials we are digitizing and adding to ACDC is that we never know what researchers will do with our materials once we release them into the world wide web. The Papers of Edward and Orra White Hitchcock and Orra White Hitchcock’s Classroom Drawings were among…Continue Reading Charting the Divine Plan: Orra White Hitchcock in the World