On the first floor of the Samuel C. Williams Library, sitting on two vintage chairs at the back of the Mary Stuart Stevens Baird room, two staff members looked at each other with excitement as they told stories about Stevens’ history.
“We just met with this alumnus who had the most interesting stories,” said the female staff member, letting out a slight giggle. “I want to be exactly like him.”
“You know, I found a series of documents that were very fascinating,” said the male staff member, before beginning an impassioned monologue about a member of the Stevens family. His red, curly hair bounced out of his purple beanie as he regaled the room with his story.
They continued to diverge from one story to the next. When asked about artifacts in the room, it sparked a new conversation, a new story, that revealed more about the university, its people, and its culture. Describing the items in the room couldn’t be done simply. These artifacts, scattered around the room in the Library, were indispensable to the story of Stevens, so their stories couldn’t be condensed.
Some of the room’s items seem like they might not matter, but don’t be mistaken. Ornamental peacocks.
Finding the meaning
Understanding the stories of all of these artifacts wasn’t always as easy as it is now. It wasn’t until six years ago that a dedicated job was formed to sift through the chaos of archives, find some clarity, and provide order and access to the historic artifacts of Stevens. This job is often called an “archivist,” a person tasked with assessing, processing, preserving, and maintaining control of records and archives that have long-term value.
Before the archivist position was formed, most artifacts were largely left uncatalogued, undocumented. If a researcher or student came into the library and requested access to Stevens’ old artifacts, a staff member handled these inquiries and assisted people as best as they could. Libraries, including Stevens’, didn’t always have a professional staff member
But now, the practice of library science has become so advanced that specialized training is needed for people who hope to work with and preserve archives. This form of specialized training requires a master’s degree in library science and often includes a concentration in archives and records management. This advancement in academia, and this new focus and appreciation of archives and records at Stevens, has led to the creation of a permanent archivist position and establishment of the Archives and Special Collections department within the Library.
Leah Loscutoff, six years ago, was chosen to serve as the first Head of Archives and Special Collections. “When I first interviewed here, I was intrigued with the variety of collections and the challenges I would face to bring it all together and gain intellectual control of the department,” she said. She thought the university’s history was fascinating, as most of it had yet to be fully processed or understood. “The archival collections had been more hidden since most had needed to still be processed, which involves arranging and describing the materials to provide access.”
Her first task as head archivist was to create a catalog system, a project to identify and document every item in the archives of Stevens — a project that had been mostly neglected for years since no person had the training to commit to such a task. It required careful evaluation of each item and tedious labor. When presented with a new object or set of papers, she had to ask, what is this object? When was it acquired? Who created it? How does it fit into the story of Stevens? Or at least, how does it relate to science, technology, or New Jersey? And the big question: Why does this object even matter? It is the job of an archivist to process the raw materials of archives and determine their importance. “That’s what we do on a daily basis,” she said. “We’re not making this stuff up as we go along. It requires training and experience. We’ve gotten better at collecting and understanding our history.”
What are “Archives” and “Special Collections”?
As the name of her department suggests, Loscutoff oversees two unique aspects of historic materials — one being archives, and the other, special collections. “The two shouldn’t be confused,” she emphasized. Archives refers mainly to archives of the university. This includes the obvious stuff, like every issue of The Stute since 1904, yearbooks, and pictures documenting life at Stevens. It also includes oral histories, university publications, audiovisual materials, faculty papers, even recordings of commencements.
“We just got records from James McClellan,” Loscutoff added. McClellan is a retired history professor who worked in the College of Arts and Letters. “He was here for forty years. These records provide an amazing snapshot of history at CAL.”
The scope of archives does extend beyond Stevens, though. History of science and technology in the New Jersey area is preserved, as is artifacts from the Stevens family. “We have a good relationship with them.”
Special collections
Rooms dedicated to da Vinci and Taylor are toured regularly by first-year students, researchers, and people fascinated by the works of these men. “We also have a group from Australia that visits us pretty frequently, almost every summer,” Loscutoff said.
“We also do school tours of our collections,” she added. A recent school group came to the Library to learn about Alexander Calder, a world-renown artist, and Stevens alum. “The kids sat in the Great Hall and drew the mobile in the library.”
Cabinets and cabinets and cabinets of artifacts
Tucked away in a room on the north end of the second floor of the Library is the location of many of the archives. Stacked in rows of cabinets are boxes of different artifacts — pictures of the Holland Tunnel construction, a box with “Khoda” sharpied on the side, handwritten letters sent by President Alexander Humphreys. “There’s still plenty of work to be done in here,” Loscutoff said. “This is where we come in our free time.”
When a new artifact is acquired by Stevens, it’s coded with a unique identifier, called an “accession number.” Along with this identifier is other information like the name of the person who gave the artifact, when the artifact was acquired, and a description of what it is. This information takes away the guesswork for people who want to explore the archives in the future. “You can’t automate a lot of this stuff,” she said. “We ask ourselves, how can we prepare for the future? Because we’re also looking centuries ahead.”
When flipping through a set of letters, Loscutoff added that certain materials require extra care. “All of these documents are highly acidic, so we use acid-free folders to mitigate the delay of destruction.” Once acquisitions are cataloged and documented, they are nearly always kept in the same order in which they were received.
“Order matters,” Loscutoff stressed. Take, for example, a folder of meeting minutes for the Student Government Association (SGA). If the SGA donated a folder of minutes, the order in which the papers are organized might make complete sense to the creator; these papers might have been sorted chronologically. But if Loscutoff receives this new acquisition of meeting minutes, she might not know that these are chronologically sorted. Better to preserve the order of an acquisition than disturb it.
One floor up, in a large wing with several open shelves of books, is the reading room. In it are copies of every Stute, books published by faculty, and other Stevens media. On one shelf is a collection of senior reports published in the early 1900s. Each report is several hundred pages thick, bounded, and well-preserved. One book, however, is clearly more weathered than others. “This is Alexander Calder’s senior report.”
“He wrote about ‘Stationary Steam Turbines,’ and on one of the front pages of the report, you’ll notice that he ‘pledged his honor as a gentleman.’”
Voices from Castle Point
All these documents protected by locked doors and temperature-controlled rooms don’t tell the complete story of Stevens history, though, no matter how ideal that would be. Think about media nowadays. It can tell only a select few stories per day or week, and the other stories go undocumented and tend to be forgotten. “We already know we have a lot of gaps,” said Loscutoff. “We do not have a complete collection.” Most historians and archivists acknowledge this issue and seek ways to address and correct it. “That’s why we started recording oral histories.”
Oral histories require archivists — and more specifically, Loscutoff — to meet with individuals who attended or worked at Stevens. She asks alumni and former faculty to tell stories that wouldn’t have otherwise been told in print. These stories reveal more about the attitudes and emotions felt by individuals in certain time periods. It also allows people whose stories were precluded from the archives to share more about their experiences here at Stevens.
“We want to hear those perspectives of Stevens that don’t get told,” Loscutoff reminded. “In particular, we don’t have a lot of documentation of women at Stevens.” The oral history project, called “Voices from Castle Point,” was originally created to tell the stories of Stevens women that had been neglected. Linda Vollkommer-Lynch, the first tenured female faculty and first female athletics coach (who stills works at Stevens), recorded an oral history, part of which is available online. In it, she amused listeners with memories of growing up in Hoboken, participating in a faculty strike, and meeting Frank Sinatra. Malena Higuera, the university’s first Latin American woman to graduate, spoke for nearly half an hour on immigrating from Cuba to be admitted in Stevens’ first class of women. Alum Martha Connolly shared her memories of an infamous campus prank. The oral history project has since expanded to include both men and women, allowing any interested alumni to share their stories.
Disseminating history
Along with efforts to fill in gaps of missing history and efforts to document and understand more of the artifacts, a challenge remains to share this history with the Stevens community. “We want to disseminate this history,” said Loscutoff. “The instagram serves that purpose on a more superficial level.”
In mid-April of last year, an Instagram account @stevensarchives was created to feature interesting finds from the archives. “We try to schedule most of the posts,” said Ted Houghtaling, archivist and Digital Projects Librarian. “Sometimes, though, the posts are spontaneous. If I’m looking through pictures and notice something interesting, I’ll pull out my phone right there and make a post.”
Each week, new photos of former students from the 19th and 20th centuries or of records from the archives appear on the account’s page and are met with dozens, sometimes hundreds, of virtual “likes” from people who follow the account. “Don’t forget to #vote today,” reads one caption posted on 2018 Election Day, underneath a comic picture of Atilla the Duck holding a “Vote!” sign, drawn by Jim Liberatore in the February 18, 1972 issue of The Stute. “#TBT We’re excited to see the recent renovations to Alexander House! Here’s a shot of what it looked like around the 1910s,” reads another caption, underneath a picture of the Alexander House.
“The response to the page has been good, I think,” said Houghtaling.
For those who don’t have social media, pop-up exhibits have spawned around the library to engage with students. The current pop-up, located next to the Mary Stuart Stevens Baird room in the Grand Hall, is dedicated to the embroidery industry in North Jersey. The
“Soon we’re creating a ‘Game of Thrones’ pop-up exhibit,” Loscutoff said with a smile, explaining that they have a collection of swords that they can connect to the popular HBO TV series.
The outreach of the archives, and the continued processing of archiving materials, has brought plenty of attention to the department. “In the past week alone, we’ve had six separate appointments,” said Beninghove, stressing that the level of engagement between the Library and its users continues to rise and that the Library is thankful for more people utilizing their services. Most people who enjoy the access of archives and arrange these appointments are researchers seeking out information for their projects. But Houghtaling still emphasized that anyone can access the archives, not just people who are working on doctoral-length theses. “Our first priority is to help people, to help with research, to make sure people can access our archives,” he said. “The biggest misconception is that archives are closed, that you need a reason to access them. But that’s not how we work. We want to be open.”
“I feel like there is a lot of untapped historical research in our collections and books waiting to be written,” Loscutoff said. “That to me is exciting. I also love the challenges of establishing new professional standards in the Archives and Special Collections department. It feels rewarding to see the progress and have more folks interested in the history here. That’s part of the reason I love this job so much. I see myself here for a long time.”
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