Welcome to the Hood College Archives and Special Collections! This guide will acquaint you with:
Hood Students and Guests at Camp Raudy, in the Catoctin Foothills, c. 1955
Almost all colleges and universities have archives and special collections departments and these departments are usually located inside the schools' libraries.
Special collections are print collections of books, maps, or artifacts that are not easily replaceable. They cover topics meaningful to the institution and its departments, often including local historical topics. Higher education special collections also contain items of special interest that are donated to the institution, but the materials have no direct connection to or meaning for the school. This is also true for archival collections.
If you are researching a topic and need primary sources, you may find them in unanticipated places! For example, the College of William and Mary located in Colonial Williamsburg, holds a collection about Virginia's hip hop past and culture. Rice University (TX) holds the CERCL Hip Hop Archival Collection in partnership with University of Houston. Likewise, Cornell University holds the Adler Hip Hop Archive that holds related materials from across the United States.
Institutional records and publications form the backbones of college and university archival collections. Records, images, publications, and artifacts are kept for their permanent value to a school, to record and preserve its history. Additional collections usually have ties to the college, such as collections donated by alumni, but sometimes there are no obvious connections. Hood research librarians and the archivist can assist you with finding appropriate collections within our archives and those of other institutions.
Archives also exist for federal, state, and local government bodies. Many museums, historic associations, and other cultural institutions hold archives and special collections. Even for-profit corporations have established archives, particularly those with long histories. For instance, Coca Cola has an archive with 2.4 miles of compact shelving and additional storage the size of 2 football fields! (Daily Mail, 5 Dec. 2017). Private corporate archives are generally restricted, but government archives and those of history institutions are accessible.
