As we near the end of American Archives Month, we have some exciting news and announcements related to archival activities and primary source research at Texas State University. Library archives are extremely valuable to researchers across the globe. They are a vital resource for historians, genealogists, authors, and filmmakers who use them to interpret and understand the stories of the past so that they can share them accurately.
University Libraries has two teams devoted to collecting and providing access to materials that document the history of Texas State University, San Marcos, and the greater Hays County region. Our Special Collections and Archives team has been hard at work re-envisioning how to collect and make physical materials more easily accessible to students and campus researchers. They have worked closely with our Digitization and Preservation unit to identify collections for digitization so that they can be accessible to researchers globally.
Newly Published Digital Collections
Our digitization team recently completed the migration of two key collections to the university’s Digital Collections platform. These include the University Photograph and Negative Collection and the San Marcos Daily Record Collection. Please note that these collections are no longer available on Flickr. The Digital Collections platform includes a variety of materials that have been digitized ranging from oral histories to student newspapers and yearbooks dating back to 1904, to the original university constituting documents. We previously reported on their efforts to preserve decades of academic scholarship.
The University Photograph and Negative Collection contains images of events and people from the University that were captured by the University News Service between 1970 and 2019. There are a lot of images from athletics and other official campus activities.
The San Marcos Daily Record Collection contains digitized negatives from the San Marcos Daily record between 1930 and 2002. There are over 9,000 items in this collection of images that document the history of the area during that time.
More Accessible Physical Collections
The Special Collections and Archives (SC&A) team is composed of a Special Collections Librarian, Hidden Collections Curator, and an Oral History and Archives Specialist who have been hard at work adding new spaces to the Alkek Library that bring the physical collections to the researchers. We are excited to announce that our new SC&A Reading Room in the Alkek Library will have its grand opening in the spring. This space is located in room 204 (behind Starbucks, across from the water fountain). Patrons will be able to use the reading room to view materials from our collections upon request. Request a consultation or assistance with collection items through the Special Collections & Archives Request form. Some of the items that are included in these collections are currently on display on the second floor as part of our TXST 125th Anniversary Exhibition. Stop by and check them out. We anticipate that we will rotate items from the collection in this permanent exhibition space. We’ve also added a processing space in Alkek for managing collection items and ingesting new collections. Learn more about our SC&A from our website.
As October comes to a close, we are pleased to celebrate the efforts of our wonderful teams who preserve historical documents that are essential to helping us understand the past and shape our future.
This article was contributed by Marketing and Communications Coordinator Debbie Pitts.