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The College Archivist as CollegeHistorian: Baruch College Celebrates ItsHistorical RootsSandra Roff aa Baruch College , City University of New York , New York, New York,USAPublished online: 26 Feb 2011.

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Journal of Archival Organization, 8:251–259, 2010Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLCISSN: 1533-2748 print / 1533-2756 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15332748.2010.550789

The College Archivist as College Historian:Baruch College Celebrates Its Historical Roots

SANDRA ROFFBaruch College, City University of New York, New York, New York, USA

College and universities were slow to start collecting records relat-ing to the history of their institutions. In the nineteenth and into thetwentieth century it was usually a dedicated librarian, administra-tor, or professor who decided to rescue the history of their school.Educating archivists to assume this role has become a top prior-ity for archival and library professional programs, and today thecollege or university archivist is anxious to preserve campus his-tory. Using Baruch College of the City University of New York as amodel, many tools emerge as viable to help the archivist preserveand promote the history of their institutions.

KEYWORDS historians, archivists, memorabilia, preservation,digitization, institutional memory, Baruch College, exhibits

“An archivist is an historian in a very special sense. The reason for his ex-istence is not the advancement of human knowledge, but the performanceof a useful service for the institution which employs him.”1 In 1947, whenHarvard University Archivist Clifford K. Shipton expressed this view, thearchival profession was still in its formative years. The Society of Ameri-can Archivists, the first professional organization for archivists in the UnitedStates, was founded in 1936 and in 1938 it began publishing The AmericanArchivist to disseminate information about the profession to its members.However, it would take many years before the principles expounded bythe society would make their way to colleges and universities around thecountry. Collegiate institutions would first need to learn the importance ofestablishing archives and how they could help fulfill the mission of theircollege or university.

Address correspondence to Sandra Roff, Baruch College, CUNY 151 East 25th St., NewYork, NY 10010. E-mail: Sandra.Roff@baruch.cuny.edu

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The idea of collecting records for future generations was a concept thateven the earliest settlers to the new nation brought with them. Saving ge-nealogical information was important to new settlers and family history wasoften recorded in bibles, while birth, marriage, baptismal, and death recordswere kept by early churches. As the nation grew, local historical societieswere formed with the purpose of preserving the history of their communityand its peoples. However, colleges and universities were slow to take onthe challenge of collecting records relating to their own history, and eventhose that did make the effort did not do a very good job. In the late 1920s,Harvard University reviewed their archival collection in preparation for theirupcoming tercentenary and realized that its collections and their organiza-tion did not follow any archival principles, and on further examination theycould not identify any American or European university that had what couldactually be called a university archive.2 Following Harvard’s lead, in the laterpart of the nineteenth century, collegiate institutions including Dartmouth,Columbia, Amherst, William and Mary, Smith, and a handful of others haddedicated librarians, administrators, or professors take it upon themselvesto rescue the history of their school for posterity. Often it was an upcom-ing anniversary that prompted reflection on what materials in their archivecould help tell their story. It was at this time that they discovered the gapsin what had been collected, and found that the physical condition of thecollections was poor and many of the records were dispersed in assortedlocations.3

The archival profession has come a long way since 1949, when JohnMelville Jennings assessed the state of archival activity in higher education.The education of archivists is a top priority of archival associations andlibrary and professional programs across the country. College or universityarchivists are today trained not only to collect the textual records of theirinstitution but also to preserve campus memorabilia, media, and audiovisualmaterials. “The challenge today,” argued education historian John R. Thelin,“is to persuade presidents and provosts that it makes good sense to assurethat each of our campus archives, whether our respective institutions are oldor young, continue to receive the resources and space to serve well and toinclude the material culture remnants and artifacts of campus life as a trulysignificant dimension of the institutional memory.”4

This can be a difficult agenda for archivists to sell to administrators,but they should emphasize that alumni as well as the academic communitycrave a strong connection to the history of the institution, and providingaccess to these historical materials can serve as a public relations tool. In arecent article that appeared in Technical Services Quarterly, Elizabeth Konzakand Dwain P. Teague emphasized the important role of alumni on archivalcollection development: “Building strong relationships with alumni is vitalfor the success of both the archives and development office. The sense ofuniversity pride an alum feels when they provide materials to the archives is

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a powerful emotion. They know that, due to their contribution of materials,the history of their university is being preserved forever.”5

The memorabilia that alumni often keep and treasure in their drawersand closets, reminders of their days as students, can include ephemeral ma-terials such as tickets to college events, advertisements, pictures, pamphlets,music, and programs. These fugitive reminders of the past, important to theindividuals who have rescued them from obscurity, can provide insight intocollege life that would otherwise be lost to researchers. “We need to remem-ber these minor collections,” as Clarence Brigham, a major force for morethan fifty years at the American Antiquarian Society called them, and “propelthem into the hands of students and faculty, for these transitory documentsshed a great deal of light on history and culture.”6 Imagine seeing for thefirst time a brochure entitled the “Burial of the New York Free Academy”and reading in its pages the way students celebrated the name change oftheir beloved Free Academy of New York to the College of the City of NewYork in 1866. Students marked the occasion by a procession from LexingtonAvenue and 23rd Street in New York City to 42nd Street and 5th Avenue.Upon arrival they played a dirge, followed by the “burning of the corpse”and then the burial of the ashes.7 The brochure brings to life this forgottenevent in the history of what is today the City University of New York. Ifthis item was not preserved in a college archive quite a different picturemight emerge of the event from newspaper accounts and personal memoirs.Encouraging the college community to work with the archives to ensure thatthese ephemeral items will be preserved is of paramount importance andshould be a top priority for the college archivist.

The challenges to twenty-first century college archivists to preserve acomplete record of their respective institution are of concern to the archivalprofession. Technological advances including the tape-recorder, e-mail, andthe Internet has impacted the way we communicate and what needs to besaved for future research. The twentieth-century college archivist knew thatcollecting and preserving the written record and in many cases recordingsand visual materials would be sufficient in documenting the history of thecollege or university. However, the twenty-first century archivist must furtherconsider oral history and the way it is disseminated using electronic media. AsEllen Swain reminds us, “College students at the turn of the twentieth centurymaintained elaborate scrapbooks and diaries, and corresponded with friendsand family on mailed stationary. Their counterparts in 2003 maintain elab-orate Web pages, record their thoughts and activities on blogs (Web-logs),and correspond through e-mail. Oral history, as well as Web-based docu-mentation strategies, will be critical for understanding student experience inthe coming decades.”8

The digitization of archival collections is indisputably one of the mostsignificant late- twentieth- and early twenty-first-century archival develop-ments. Finding aids are prepared by archivists as a guide to what collections

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consist of, their provenance, organization, and descriptions of the subjects,people, and time periods covered. Before digitization was introduced, thesefinding aids were the domain of the archivist, who decided on what col-lections were appropriate to the researcher and who guided them throughthe collections with printed finding aids. Patrons relied on the expertiseof the archivist and had limited opportunities to explore collections thatweren’t specifically designated as relevant. With colleges and universitiesputting archival finding aids online, the opportunities available for researchabound. From home, the library, or any place where there is Internet access,a researcher has the ability to search the available finding aids and decidewhat collections are suitable to his/her research. Having these finding aidsavailable on the Web can spike research interest and promote scholarshipabout the college or university. “New forms of research develop,” stated Al-ice Prochaska, “facilitated by the materials that we bring into the scholarlydomain and the links and software developments that we create with ourcolleagues in information technology and the electronic industries.”9

Many colleges and universities have digitized important collections andmade them available to the public online. This is an important process whenconsidering the issue of preservation. As Prochaska asserted, “We have anew set of choices in the realms of preservation, reformatting, and security.We are able to pursue high ideals for sharing a common cultural and his-torical inheritance by digitizing rare and unique materials for a worldwideaudience.”10 Before major initiatives in digitizing materials became the norm,preserving a college’s memory often involved photocopying or microfilmingfragile materials. These preservation methods had their drawbacks and werenot appropriate for all archival materials. The microfilming process coulddestroy the original item and what was left was a copy whose future wasin peril. However, microfilming or photocopying is often still the preferredmethod of preservation for materials such as fragile college scrapbooks thatcontain newspaper clippings.11 In examining preservation and access issuesrelating to scrapbooks, Sally Childs-Helton stated, “Individuals using elec-tronic technologies and tools can do many things never dreamed of by pastgenerations, but what digitization in its many forms cannot yet do well ispreserve information through time. Because of this, important niche mar-kets remain where microfilming remains viable, particularly for long-termpreservation of information.”12 Maintaining a preservation program guaran-tees that college and university archival collections will be available for futureresearchers.

Baruch College has an impressive history in the annals of higher ed-ucation. Beginning the long journey from the Free Academy established in1847 to Baruch College, part of the City University of New York, it has trans-formed the lives of generations of New York City immigrants. As the CollegeArchivist, helping to tell this story has been my privilege over the years. Ihave always considered the importance of fugitive materials, administrative

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documents, school publications, and audiovisual resources, and so on, forthose interested in getting a sense of college life and I have attempted toalert all offices of my interest in preserving these items. In Varsity Letters,Documenting Colleges and Universities, Helen Samuels stated, “Many stu-dent organizations create records as a natural part of their activities—studentpublications, programs of performances, souvenir books of athletic events,programs of worship services—but other less formal organizations and ac-tivities produce no records.”13

While collecting materials is just one part of the job of a college archivist,another equally important task is to create venues for students, alumni, andthe college community to learn the history of their venerable institution.This has been accomplished at Baruch College through publications, bothacademic and non-academic, conference presentations, physical exhibits cel-ebrating landmark anniversaries, and online exhibits. Our latest addition isthe creation of a history gallery.

Each of these projects has raised the awareness of the Baruch Collegecommunity, as well as those outside our walls to the honored place that thecollege has in New York City history. Although the writing of articles andthe presentation of papers at conferences is important, visually presentinga story has a higher impact. As Karen Stanworth stated, “Visual culture is apowerful phenomenon that has been relatively neglected in comparison tothe study of the written documents, which have dominated the educationalprocess.”14

At Baruch College the archivist has told the story of the college aswell as the university by curating or co-curating two temporary exhibitson campus. The first one was titled “The Heritage of Baruch College: A25th Anniversary Celebration” which was installed in the Mishkin Gallery, aBaruch College exhibit space opened to the public. There were gallery talksand tours of the exhibit, which aimed to attract an audience broader thanjust the immediate Baruch community. Another anniversary followed fouryears later, and two other City University of New York archivists joined me inplanning an exhibit to celebrate the founding of the Free Academy, precursorto Baruch College and the City University of New York. Anthony Cucchiara,Professor and College Archivist at Brooklyn College, and Barbara Dunlap,Professor Emeritus and former College Archivist at the College of the Cityof New York, were enthusiastic promoters of the history of their respectivecolleges as well as that of the entire university system. We worked as a teamto uncover the history of each campus of the City University of New York andfind the common thread that binds them all to the original Free Academy. Wevisited each of the campuses and discovered that many of the campuses hadno formal archive or official archivist, meaning that materials could be foundaround the campuses, including in faculty or administrative offices or roomsset aside in the library for miscellaneous and unorganized materials. It wasapparent that more attention had to be placed on collecting and preserving

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institutional history at many of the CUNY campuses, and we hoped that ourvisits to the colleges and requests to library and college administrators forarchival materials would provide an impetus for action. We found enoughrelevant archival material to tell the story of the 150 years since the foundingof the Free Academy, and created in collaboration with Hixon Design anexhibit that travelled to nine campuses and was viewed by hundreds ofstudents, faculty, and administrators. In addition, we put together a brochureabout the exhibit that was distributed to all visitors. Finally, we published abook From the Free Academy to CUNY, an illustrated history of the campusesthat make up the City University of New York. Our efforts to publicize thehistory of our university system using archival materials proved successfuland we received positive feedback from the hosting institutions. Whetherthis exhibit actually made the campus administrators realize the importanceof collecting and preserving the history of their respective colleges is unclear.What did happen was that in the years since the exhibit all of the CUNYcampuses have an assigned College Archivist, and there is an active CUNY-wide archival roundtable that meets regularly to discuss issues concerningarchival management. In addition, campus archives have focused attentionon the history of individual colleges and new historical collections havebeen processed and several online exhibits, books, and articles have beenproduced.

Since its inception, Baruch College has attempted to keep pace with thegrowing student population and has expanded the campus by acquiring orconstructing new instructional buildings to house the over 16,000 students at-tending the college. Being primarily a commuter school, students usually areunaware that 17 Lexington Avenue is the site of the original Free Academy;this is considered our “sacred site.” As Thelin stated, “Another way to bringhistory to life on the American campus is to seek what each institution hascome to regard as its distinctive “sacred ground.”15 With this in mind, BaruchCollege President Stan Altman, a strong supporter of publicizing the historyof our institution and the role that it has played in the lives of New Yorkers,was anxious to establish a hall of history where incoming students, parents,and the entire Baruch community can learn the history of the college andtake pride in our distinguished place in the history of New York City highereducation.

The process of making the idea of a hall of history a reality took severalmonths of planning and refining of concepts on what would be the mosteffective way to publicize our story. We hired Hixon Design to create anexhibit that would bring President Altman’s vision to life. The decision wasmade to first flank the lobby with two banners on opposite sides—one high-lighting the history of the college and the other looking toward the future ofthe college and its students. The banners were eye-catching and immediatelyestablished the lobby as a place where the Baruch community could learnabout the college. The second phase of the project was to tell the story of

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our namesake, Bernard M. Baruch. An innovative design plan was developedby Hixon Design that would tell the story of the life and times of BernardM. Baruch on a ten-foot-high cylinder in the center of a circular bench. Animpressive attention-getter, the cylinder incorporates visual material and textto highlight the accomplishments of the 1889 graduate of the college whowent on to become a financier, philanthropist, and an advisor to Presidentsof the United States. Many students at the college are unaware of Baruch’saccomplishments, and it is hoped that his life can serve as an inspirationto them. The third phase of the hall of history was a series of five panelswith graphics and text placed on the wall facing the Bernard M. Baruchcylinder. “A Pioneering Institution for a New People: Baruch College andthe Privileged Many” serves as the theme for the accompanying panels. Thepanels were arranged chronologically and each one began with a BernardM. Baruch quotation, and went on to link the history of the college with thehistory of the City of New York.

The completion of the third phase of this permanent hall of historyhopefully will not be the end of the project. There is more to be told and asthe Baruch College archivist, I feel it is important that the college communitytake pride in our place in the history of higher education and the history ofNew York City. All of the campus buildings and their surroundings are ofhistorical importance and it would be wonderful if this story could also berevealed to the Baruch College community.

The hall of history is a striking exhibit that will reach thousands ofvisitors each year. However, online exhibits have the potential of an endlessnumber of viewers from around the world. As Leong Chee Khoon andChennupati K. Ramaiah asserted, “In fact, once the exhibition is put online,it becomes immediately available to students all over the world, forming partof the global cultural exchange.”16 The college archivist has an opportunityby producing online exhibits to showcase the treasures of the archive thatmight otherwise not be available except by special request. Any aspect of acollege or university’s history can be mined for an interesting exhibit and atBaruch College we did this for several of our online exhibits. We producedan online exhibit recently, titled “World War II Comes to Lexington Avenue”which pays tribute to those alumni who served and in many instances gavetheir lives to the war effort. Drawing on materials that we have in ourarchives a picture emerges of what life was like on campus during the waryears. The names of the soldiers who were killed are streamed across the topof the page, honoring their memory.17 Another aspect of our college’s historythat we presented in an online format is our history as a commuter school.Students have lived within the bounds of the public transportation systemsince the founding of the Free Academy, and the trolley and subway linesdetermined how far away from the school students could live. In “SubwayUniversity: Traveling to the Free Academy, Baruch and City College,” wetransformed a physical exhibit curated by the City College Archivist, Professor

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Sydney Van Nort, into a visually appealing and informative online exhibit.18

Recognizing famous alumni in exhibits can benefit a college or universityand also serve as a public relations tool. Upton Sinclair, an 1897 graduateof the college, is the subject of one of our exhibits and it was prepared tocoincide with the 110th anniversary of his graduation. It was a surprise tomany in the Baruch community to learn that this influential writer and socialreformer was an alumnus of the college.19 These are just a few examplesof how college or university archivists can use their own unique story topromote the history of their institution.

It is important that archives remain vital in the twenty-first century. Withseemingly endless access to information through the Internet, the college oruniversity archivist must take a proactive role in assuring the administrationthat without an archival program in place to preserve the records of thecollege, the history of the institution will be lost and forgotten. Acting inthe role of college historian, the archivist has the opportunity to spread theword to their college community that the archives collects and preservesrecords related to all aspects of the history of the college and that it wel-comes contributions as well as researchers. Keeping interest alive can be achallenge but by using exhibits, publications, special presentations, and so-cial network connectors such as Twitter and Facebook, the college archivistcan accomplish the task and the institution will benefit for years to come.

NOTES

1. Clifford K. Shipton, “The Harvard University Archives: Goal and Function,” Harvard UniversityBulletin 1 (1947): 102.

2. Clifford K. Shipton, “College Archives and Academic Research,” The American Archivist 27(1964): 395.

3. John Melville Jennings, “Archival Activity in American Universities and College,” The AmericanArchivist 12 (1949): 155–156.

4. John R. Thelin, “Archives and the Cure for Institutional Amnesia: College and University Sagaas Part of the Campus Memory,” Journal of Archival Organization 7, nos. 1/2 (2009): 6.

5. Elizabeth Konzak and Dwain P. Teague, “Reconnect with your Alumni and Connect to Donors,”Technical Services Quarterly, 26 (2009): 225.

6. Georgia B. Barnhill, “Why Not Ephemera? The Emergence of Ephemera in Libraries,” RBM: AJournal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage, 9 (2008): 135.

7. Burial of the New York Free Academy (New York: The College of the City of New York, 1866).8. Ellen D. Swain, “Oral History in the Archives: Its Documentary Role in the Twenty-First Cen-

tury,” The American Archivist 66 (2003): 148–149.9. Alice Prochaska, “Digital Special Collections: The Big Picture,” RBM: A Journal of Rare Books,

Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage,”10 (2009): 13.10. Ibid., 13.11. Sally Childs-Helton, “Evaluating Scrapbooks for Preservation and Access: Information or Arti-

fact?” MAC Newsletter 37 (2009): 30.12. Kim Hagerty and Frank Boles, “Microfilming in the Digital Age at the Clarke Library,” Microform

and Imaging Review 39 (2010): 32.13. Helen Willa Samuels, Varsity Letters: Documenting Modern College and Universities. (Lanham,

MD and London: The Society of American Archivists and the Scarecrow Press, Inc, 1998).14. Karen Stanworth, “In Sight of Visual Culture,” Symploke 10 (2002): 107.

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15. Thelin, 9.16. Leong Chee Khoon and Chennupati K. Ramaiah, “An Overview of Online Exhibitions,”

DESIDOC Journal of Library and Information Technology 28 (2008): 9.17. Available at http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/war exhibit/.18. Available at http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/digital/2000/subway/default.htm.19. Available at http://newman.baruch.cuny.edu/digital/2007/upton/index.html.

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