Hilda C. Landers Library & Archives

  • About
    • Hours
    • Directions and Maps
    • People
    • Policies & Guidelines
    • Student Employment
  • Research Help
    • Get Research Help
    • Research Tools
    • Research Guides
    • Get Endnote
    • Cite your Sources
    • Subject Librarians
  • Services
    • Print, Scan, Copy
    • Computers and Software
    • Study Rooms
    • Accessibility
    • St. Mary’s Project Resources
    • Services for Faculty
    • Borrow, Renew, Request
    • Notary Public Services
  • Archives

Haunted Susquehanna – Oct 25

October 20, 2017 by Amanda VerMeulen

Is Susquehanna a Cursed Estate?

WHEN: Wednesday, October 25, 2017, 7-8PM

WHERE: Commissioner’s Meeting Room – 41770 Baldridge Street, Leonardtown

Actual figure from the 1988 osteological study of the re-disinterred Rousby crypt.

Beginning with the Halloween murder of Christopher Rousby in 1684, St. Mary’s College of Maryland librarian Kent Randell will provide a detailed history of the adventures and misadventures of the occupants of the Susquehanna estate through the death of Henry James/Ignatius Carroll in 1884, 200 years after the Rousby murder. Recently uncovered genealogical clues regarding the Carroll and Rousby families of Southern Maryland, their connections to a second murdered Patuxent River Tax Collector, and the estate’s calamitous transfer to the Henry Ford Museum will also be discussed.

Filed Under: Archives, Events Tagged With: archives

An Art History Major’s Thoughts on Archival Processing

June 7, 2017 by Amanda VerMeulen

Thinking about images: an Art History major’s thoughts on archival processing

Guest post by Emily Smith, Spring 2017 Archival Assistant

My name is Emily Smith, I am a graduating senior with a double major in Art History and Religious Studies. I have been working in the Archives as an Archival Assistant over the past semester.

Alba Music Festival

Stage prepped before a performance in San Domenico Church, Alba in 2010. San Domenico Church was the unique location of many performances throughout the duration of the Alba Music Festival.

One project that I worked on this semester while a student archival assistant at the St. Mary’s college of Maryland archives was the sorting of digital photographs of the Alba Music Festival from 2005-2011. Working with images is part of my background as both an Art History major and the Supervisor of the Fine Art Collections at SMCM. However, this project was different than my experience working at the art gallery. The purpose of image analysis in Art History is often to identify its aesthetic and contextual qualities, and engage with the intent of the artist and the experience of the viewer in turn. This project required that I treat the photographs as documents and information, and think critically about its place within the Archives. The first question I was trained to ask was similar to what we think about in Art History, which was ‘what information is the photograph telling me?’ The second question was slightly different, and a new technique for me when thinking about images. It was ‘how is that information relevant to the college and the Archives?

The first step of the project was to look at each individual image, and decide which photographs should be added to the archive’s permanent digital collection and which ones to separate, or remove from the collection, because their content was redundant. In this digital age, sometimes people transfer an entire SD card from a digital camera without any editing process, and archives are left with dozens of images which, from an archival perspective, are superfluous. The field of Archival Science provides impartial guidelines for thinking archival appraisal and issues such as uniqueness, and compels us to always ask ourselves what the archive is trying to document with a collection. The images could be deleted due to redundancy, irrelevance, or poor image quality.

When faced with multiple images of a subject deemed relevant to the Archives, it was easy to utilize some of the skills I learned as an Art History student, such as visual literacy, or being able to understand visual symbols, cues, and motifs. At this point, I could have a little bit of fun and choose from the redundant images based on their visual clarity or level of visual interest they could offer to a future researcher. Following the initial sort of the images, I accessioned each remaining image and provided it with a title and a caption, and picked subject headings from both the Library of Congress Subject Heading authority, as well as the pre-determined terms from local vocabularies. This was done in order to help people navigate future research or other uses of this image collection. It was interesting to engage with these digital images and parse out their most important details while thinking about what information within the image would be useful to someone looking back through this image collection at a later time. I had to think both about what information stands out to me now, and then hypothesize what information would be relevant to researchers in the future. In total, the Alba image sort was a useful experience in thinking about photographs and digital images from different perspectives, and engaging with them in dynamic new ways.

Filed Under: Archives Tagged With: archives, featured

From the Archives: Letters Home

September 16, 2015 by Amanda VerMeulen

Uncertainty and Connection in the Archive’s Katherine Tenney letter collection

Guest Post by Rosie Hammack, Sullivan Scholar summer intern in the SMCM Archive. Among other tasks, she is describing the letter collection of St. Mary’s Female Seminary-Junior College alumna Katherine Tenney ‘37 (sister of national archery champion Jean Tenney ’34), who wrote home nearly every day during her time at St. Mary’s.

“Everything has so many ‘maybes,’” laments 18-year-old Katherine Tenney in a letter sent home on a mid-October afternoon in 1936 (one of 131 included in the collection). It’s true—the world for Katherine Tenney was riddled with maybes. Nearly every letter in the collection includes a battery of “ifs” and “thens.” In the 1930s, travel plans were rarely secure. Letters got lost in the mail. Mailing addresses went missing or became obsolete. Compared to our modern era of information, her’s was a world of inconvenience.

Transcribing the handwritten letter into the computer.

And yet, in the weeks that I have spent describing her letters, I have come to enjoy that inconvenience. Saved without return letters, the Katherine Tenney collection is a conversation cut in half; uncertainty is webbed into the experience of reading it. Through the effort it takes to put the puzzle back together (and to learn to accept the missing pieces), that uncertainty has helped me forge a bond with its maker.

To be clear: this was a slow and often frustrating process. Katherine’s letters are stream-of-consciousness. Many are jumbled and repetitive, often broken up by curt, stilted sentences and requests for money or apples or bowstrings. Yet through these letters Katherine sustained strong ties to her family and friends. And amidst the daily tedium, the affected courtesies and the petty drama, the poignancy of genuine human connection occasionally shines through.

On a Tuesday in November, 1936, Katherine sent this letter home:

Letter home from Katherine Tenney in SMCM Archives

Transcribed: “Mother dearest, Just rec’d your card. It all just doesn’t make sense to me, I feel like I’m just up in air all the time. I’ll be thinking about you all the time – I know what you’re going thru with. I hope Mrs. Henesy came. I was going to call you up tonite but suppose there isn’t much use. I’m enclosing $2 for flowers, if that isn’t enuf, please let me know. I’ve just these few seconds before class but just wanted you to hear from me. I so wish I were with you but I hope Mrs. Henesy is. How is Pop? Give him my love + sympathy. Did you engage Mr. Kauffman? All my love K.T.”

Cryptic as this card may be, it isn’t a challenge to imagine the 18-year-old girl who wrote it. Between the hurried lines of cursive we can see her bent over her desk, writing and scrapping and writing again, pen working feverishly to combat some unknown tragedy. And somehow, in this one-sided interaction between conscious reader and eternal writer, the unknowns bring this moment alive. The specifics are blurry, ill-defined, and, at the end of the day, unnecessary. I understand. Through uncertainty, I am allowed access to a tenuous but intimate bond. For a moment, “up in air,” I sit with her.

We live in an age of instantaneous information, with constant access to much of the corpus of human knowledge. We have done away with the inconvenience of unknowing. In that space, it seems we may be missing something profound.

In the incomplete correspondence of Katherine Tenney, connectedness thrives among “so many ‘maybes.’”

Filed Under: Archives Tagged With: archives, in the collection

Afro-Americana Imprints

March 18, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

The Past and the Future

It’s that time of year, folks. The library is trialing a variety of different online resources, including:

Afro-Americana Imprints (1535-1922)

This online collection spans nearly 400 years, from the early 16th to the early 20th century. Critically important subjects covered include the West’s discovery and exploitation of Africa; the rise of slavery in the New World along with the growth and success of abolitionist movements; the development of racial thought and racism; descriptions of African American life—slave and free—throughout the Americas; and slavery and race in fiction and drama. Also featured are printed works of African American individuals and organizations.

Give it a try and let us know what you think by leaving a comment below or emailing Celia Rabinowitz.

Filed Under: Database Trial Tagged With: AADS, african diaspora, archives

Russia, 100 years ago – in color

January 28, 2013 by Amanda VerMeulen

While we’re on the topic of history, I’d like to take a moment to tell you about one of my favorite historical image collections: the Prokudin-Gorskii exhibit at the Library of Congress.

Beginning in 1909, a Russian photographer named Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii was given, by Tsar Nicholas II, an “all-access” pass (in order to be permitted to enter otherwise restricted areas) and a railroad car outfitted with a darkroom so that he could travel throughout the Russian Empire and document it with color photos.  For most of the next six years, he traveled extensively throughout Russia – ending up with well over 3,000 negatives.  Some 2,600 of these negatives were purchased by the Library of Congress in 1948 from Prokudin-Gorskii’s heirs, and they are now available for viewing on the web.

These photos provide a striking glimpse into all aspects of life in Russia in the very early part of the 20th century.  From the decadent opulence of the royal palaces and the stunning architecture of Russia’s cathedrals and churches to panoramic views of towns and portraits of rural farmworkers, these vivid color photographs provide a fascinating insight to Russian life 100 years ago.

These photographs were taken  on the eve of World War I and very shortly before the Russian Revolution – they are images of a country that was about to be changed forever.  The juxtaposition of these tranquil images and the chaos that was to immediately follow adds to the mystique of this collection – they depict a way of life that is long gone from the Western world.

In addition to the photos themselves, the exhibit website provides biographical information about the photographer; details about the techniques and equipment used to take the photos and the processes used to restore and digitize them (Prokudin designed his own camera); and provides historical information and context for the images.  In addition, the images are organized by subject area (Architecture, People at Work, Ethnic Diversity, Transportation, etc).

I know that everyone has a lot of homework to do, but if you get a chance I highly recommend taking a few minutes to travel back in time and peruse this collection.  You won’t regret it.  If this exhibit piques your interest about Russia (or anything else!) then feel free to check out some of the Library’s databases or stop by and see us – we’re always glad to lend a hand to your research.

Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii, from the Library of Congress exhibit

Filed Under: Web Resources Tagged With: archives, library of congress, photo collections, russia

Recent Posts

  • Summer Hours at the Library May 5, 2025
  • Finals Week Library Hours April 22, 2025
  • Misinformation Escape Room Event April 7, 2025
  • ⚠️ Ask Us Service Interruption – March 17 March 21, 2025
  • We’re Hiring for the 25-26 Academic Year! March 20, 2025

Categories

  • Announcements (26)
  • Archives (12)
  • Database Trial (8)
  • Events (55)
  • Exhibits (6)
  • Faculty and Staff Profiles (4)
  • Library Building (44)
  • Library Collection (61)
  • Library Ethnography Project (2)
  • Library Hours (81)
  • Library People (31)
  • Musings (34)
  • Services (31)
  • Student Employees (24)
  • Summer Reading (284)
  • Teaching & Education (2)
  • Uncategorized (1)
  • Web Resources (11)

Archives

Contact Us:

(240) 895-4264

ask@smcm.libanswers.com

47645 College Drive
St. Mary's City, MD, 20686-3001

Follow Us

Follow Library News

  • Directions
  • Archives
  • Directory
Support the Library
White and Gold text reading 'The National Public Honors College' linking to the SMCM Homepage
St. Mary's College of Maryland
47645 College Drive
St. Mary's City, MD, 20686-3001

(240) 895-2000
Give Today

Next Steps

  • Request Information
  • Visit Campus
  • How to Apply
  • Explore SMCM

Just For You

  • Prospective Students
  • Current Students
  • New Students
  • Parents & Families
  • Faculty | Staff
  • Employment

Resources

  • InsideSMCM
  • Directory
  • Events | Newsroom
  • Hilda C. Landers Library
  • College Rankings
  • Brand Resources

St. Mary’s College of Maryland reserves the right to provide some or all of the course content through alternative methods of course delivery, including remote methods of delivery, and it reserves the right to change the method of delivery at any time before or during the academic term, in the event of a health or safety emergency or similar situation when it determines, in its sole discretion, that such change is necessary and in the best interests of the College and the campus community.

  • © St. Mary's College of Maryland
  • Consumer Information
  • Copyright
  • Privacy Policy
  • Title IX Compliance &Training
  • Report an Accessibility Issue
  • Non-discrimination Policy
  • Reporting Suspected Child Abuse and Neglect
  • OLA Fraud Hotline
  • Help Desk
  • Website Feedback
  • National Human Trafficking Hotline
  • 1-888-373-7888
  • BeFree Textline
  • Text HELP to 233733 (BEFREE)
  • More resources on human trafficking in Maryland