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In Brief

Sugaring Time Again; Former President Writes Autobiography; Alum Signs with Baseball Team; News from the Nursing and Business Administration Departments and more.

Making Their Mark

Learn about how our community members engage in writing, presentations and exhibitions.

Past as Prologue

Explore Haystack, a portal to the history of Colby-Sawyer College.

Colby-Sawyer Courier

Keep up with campus news from students' perspectives through the Colby-Sawyer Courier.

Solidus

This new literary magazine features creative writing in many genres by current students and alumni, faculty and staff, and a few friends and partners.

Q&Alumni

Find out what Colby-Sawyer alumni have been up to since graduation.

Currents: haystack brings history to life

Connecting Generations through History

-by Kelli Bogan, College Archivist

This spring, two students came into the Cleveland, Colby, Colgate Archives to interview me for a class assignment about Colby-Sawyer's history. Specifically, they were interested in the periods of time when the college was known as Colby Academy and as Colby Junior College for Women. As we began to talk, it became clear how little these students knew about their college's history and how eager they were to learn.

Our conversation raised more subjects and soon they were asking questions unrelated to their assignment. As I told them about different eras at the college, I began to pull out artifacts from the archives, including a Colby Junior College blazer and a Colby College of New Hampshire pilsner mug with the logo from Colby College (in Maine) etched on it — a manufacturing misprint — and photographs. Both students' faces lit up and one asked permission to photograph the artifacts while the other expressed an interest in seeing more images related to her topic. Both left filled with enthusiasm and plans to return. This impromptu conversation confirmed what I have always believed — seeing the actual “stuff” brings history to life.

With seven name changes and a varied institutional history as a secondary school, junior college and four-year college, Colby-Sawyer College has a unique and rich past that can be especially difficult to identify with and relate to without tangible objects and documents. The Cleveland, Colby, Colgate Archives makes these materials available in person and, now, online at Haystack, the college's new digital archives.

Visitors can flip through letters, photographs, student newspapers and yearbooks via the Internet, enjoying a similar experience to the one they would get by visiting us in New London, except now they can explore the college without leaving the comfort of their homes.

Haystack, located at haystack.colby-sawyer.edu, is a Web site that promotes interaction and participation, allowing users to share images with family and friends through e-mail or social networking sites like Facebook. They can also purchase archival copies of photographs for special events or personal mementos, and they can add comments about the images directly through the Haystack interface. The site forms a link between all generations of Colby-Sawyer graduates and shares the college's heritage with current, computer-savvy students in a recognizable format.

Haystack provides the opportunity to find connections between materials across distinct collections. Often when researchers come into the Archives, they want to look at a specific collection and conduct research using only these materials. Haystack allows visitors to approach materials thematically, suggesting items from a variety of collections and thus providing a broader outlook on the subject matter. This wealth of materials that can be found in Haystack is very exciting; hopefully, the examples that follow will pique your interest and encourage you to explore Haystack further.

A Bell Rings Out

Colby-Sawyer has had many traditions as part of its storied history, and Mountain Day is certainly one of the oldest. The date of the first Mountain Day remains a mystery, but it is believed to have started shortly after the founding of Colby Academy, probably in the 1850s. Looking through the student newspapers, we discover that the first reference to the event is in the June 1893 issue of the Colby Voice, which reported that “About 40 students made the trip to Kearsarge on Mountain Day, which has become a fixed holiday of the school.”

This statement confirms that Mountain Day existed before 1893. The date of the article also reveals that the event used to occur in the spring. The earliest Mountain Day photograph in the Colby-Sawyer Photograph Collection dates back to 1906 and shows a group of Colby Academy students posed at the top of Mt. Kearsarge for a photograph similar to the group shot we still take today.

Newspaper articles from the 1950s and 1960s reveal that Mountain Day used to be announced by a presidential decree at the end of chapel. A letter from the Student Government Association reveals that incidents of hazing in the 1990s nearly ended the tradition, but fortunately the responsibility of many won out over the acts of a few and Mountain Day continued.

A collection of signed banners, too large to put online, reveals the spirit of the day, and photographs ranging from the early 20th century to the early 21st century give a glimpse into more than 100 years of tradition. All of these materials, found in the Colby-Sawyer College Photograph Collection, the Colby-Sawyer Textiles Collection, the student newspapers, and the Student Government Association records, will tie Colby-Sawyer alumni together forever.

The Colbyan

One of the collections we are the most excited to present online is the Colbyan Yearbook collection. As college yearbooks are replaced by videos and social services like Facebook, the Cleveland, Colby, Colgate Archives is working to put its entire collection of yearbooks into Haystack. The Archives has yearbooks dating from 1911 until 2005, the last year that a yearbook was published at Colby-Sawyer. Each of these books provides a glimpse into the lives of a graduating class and a generation of students.

Browsing through old yearbooks connects the Academy and Colby Junior College of the past with the Colby-Sawyer College of today. They also connect current students to these traditions. When students come into the archives to do research on a specific time period, the first place I send them is to the yearbooks. This gives them a sense of what was going on at the time, the fashions, the groups student belonged to and what the curriculum was like.

From there, they often discover a field they want to explore further, such as the Med Tech program we once had or a group they want to investigate, like the Buzzin' Dozen, or they discover a tradition like May Day that has disappeared. Several students have expressed an interest in renewing events like Ski Day and Winter Carnival after looking through old yearbooks and learning that these traditions existed. Currently, the 1968 yearbook is available on Haystack in its entirety; several other yearbooks have been digitized and will be made available over the coming months.

Virtual Exhibits

Haystack lets users look at individual items and collections, but it also allows visitors to interact with the materials in another way — through virtual exhibits. Exhibits, which can be accessed from Haystack's homepage or upper navigation bar, are where the Archives staff connects several collections to each other, creating a higher level of context. It is also a place where specific materials are highlighted. At times, these virtual exhibits will have corresponding physical exhibits on display in the Cleveland Colby Colgate Archives.

There are two types of exhibits: permanent exhibits and ongoing exhibits. Examples of permanent exhibits in Haystack include an in-depth look at the construction of the Susan Colgate Cleveland Library/Learning Center, a walk on the campaign trail with former Congressman James Cleveland and presidential candidates who visited Colby-Sawyer, and a tour of the Cleveland Colby Colgate Archives storage area during its recent renovation. Each of these exhibits contains a narrative interspersed with images found in Haystack. Future exhibits to watch for include the Founding Family Tree, a look at Colby-Sawyer College during World War II, and an exploration of the New London cultural scene.

In addition to the permanent exhibits, there are two ongoing or “rotating” exhibits. The first, “A Day in the Life,” looks at founding family descendant Patience Cleveland, an actress who kept a diary from 1963 until 2003, a year before her death. This exhibit is updated daily with a new entry corresponding to the current date as part of a this-day-in-history type of exhibit. Currently, you can click on the Patience Cleveland exhibit to see what she was up to on today's date in 1964. The second exhibit, “A Needle in the Haystack,” is updated on the first of every month with a new photograph that is representative of the season, an event on campus, or a moment of historical significance.

Haystack will continue to grow and flourish with your help. You are invited to visit the Cleveland Colby Colgate Archives 24/7 via Haystack—log on, browse around, make comments, and share your reactions. Many of the materials in our collection, including people and events, remain unidentified. By contributing to Haystack, you will help us to provide a better service to you, your fellow alumni and future Colby-Sawyer students.