January 15, 2004
- Special
report: A look at campus legends, lore and traditions
From Hey Day to Ivy Stones, campus buildings to urban legends, we look at the traditions, legends and history of Penn.
- Event Listings
- Editor's Pick: Japanimania
- How Penn lives the dream
- See what's new in youth theater
- People's Choice: Name that team
RECORDS/Those in search of Penn’s past find it carefully preserved on paper and online
Penn’s Archives: Primary source for historical research
BY SANDY SMITH
It’s 2029, and a young historian seeking to make his mark in the field has chosen to tackle the University of Pennsylvania during the Judith Rodin era. The first place he will turn is to the collections of the University Archives, where the whole record of the Rodin administration will be available to him in detail.
All of this will be possible then because of established policies that make it easy for administrators to organize documents for archival purposes. University guidelines also govern when researchers and the public may view these records.
The responsibility for collecting these records and making them available to researchers falls on Director Mark Frazier Lloyd and the Archives staff. Established in 1945 to serve as the official repository of Penn’s past, the Archives contains 14,000 cubic feet of manuscripts, papers and documents, more than 35,000 images and 150 cubic feet of decorative art objects and memorabilia.
The Archives is the most comprehensive collection of primary source materials on Penn and its history, and scholars and researchers from all over turn to it for both information and inspiration. “We get a wide range of requests, photo requests especially, from genealogical researchers, fact-checkers and documentary producers, among others,” said Public Services Archivist Amey Hutchins.
Among Archives users have been producers for the PBS documentary series “Nova,” who used materials from the Sadie T.M. Alexander collection for a program about pioneering black scientist Percy Julian.
Because there is so much useful material on the Archives web site (www.archives.upenn.edu), and because the Archives staff is skilled at handling requests via phone (215-898-7024) and e-mail (uarc@pobox.upenn.edu), most Archives users never set foot in its physical facility under the north stands of Franklin Field. According to Hutchins, about 20 to 30 people visit the Archives in a typical month, and about 100 e-mails seeking help arrive each month, with telephone requests falling in between those two figures.
The Archives staff devotes much effort to making it as easy as possible for researchers to find the materials they need. Of late, that has meant putting aids for finding material—and increasingly, the material itself—online. In fiscal year 2003, the Archives’ web site received 558,572 unique page requests; of those, 34 percent were for guides and other finding aids, 25 percent were for online exhibits of historical material and 20 percent were for actual archival documents and images.
“We are unusual in having over half of our finding aids online,” said Mary McConaghy, the Archives’ web coordinator.
Even more unusual is the Archives’ efforts to make the actual content available online. Visitors to the Archives web site can now search minutes of Trustees meetings dating back to 1969 as well as selected papers, articles and speeches going all the way back to Franklin’s 1749 “Proposals Relating to the Education of Youth in Pensilvania.”
“These are not just the history of Penn, these are the history of America,” Lloyd said. For example, a satirical 1851 Commencement speech posted on the site provides a window into the spirit of mid-19th century America, with its commentary on various scientific advances and the status of women.
“There are not that many places that are systematically getting primary sources online,” McConaghy said in reference to the ongoing posting of Trustee minutes and other documents.
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