Elon University is one of four institutions in North Carolina awarded funding this summer from the North Carolina Preservation Consortium to help preserve library materials, manuscripts and other special collections – which, for the university, includes dozens of scrapbooks compiled by students and other campus organizations over the past century.
NCPC received 17 grant applications, the highest number ever received. Elon’s grant for $536 allows Belk Library administrators to move forward with preserving scrapbooks gifted to the university that shed light on campus life in bygone eras.
“Most of them are in bad shape and need to be properly enclosed,” said Katie Nash, Elon University’s archivist and special collections librarian. “Our grant application also included information regarding how we would create an inventory list and descriptions about each scrapbook, as we were re-housing them for long-term preservation and access.”
Nash said it is her hope that once scrapbooks are re-housed and available to access, that the community will learn more about the university through the eyes of former students. Faculty will be able to include scrapbooks in class projects and research, and some of the information and photographs included in the scrapbooks have great potential to be used for publicity materials.
“If others know that we preserve and make available our collection of scrapbooks, perhaps they will consider donating Elon related scrapbooks to our collection for future use,” Nash said.
Ingrid Ruffin, Belk Library’s former ACE Scholar (Academic and Cultural Enrichment) with the UNCG Library and Information Studies Department, worked with Nash and Bonnie Bruno, director of sponsored programs, to compose the grant application.