University Archives: A Short History
By Ben Primer, University archivist
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Two fires in Nassau Hall, in 1802 and 1855, could have destroyed everything, but virtually all of the vital early records of the University survive, including the charter from Governor Jonathan Belcher, a complete set of trustees' minutes, minutes of faculty meetings beginning in 1787, the treasurer's ledgers beginning in 1769 and the files of most presidents of the University from John Maclean (1854-1868) to the present.
While most of the early records of student organizations perished in the Nassau Hall fire of 1802, thereafter records are more complete. Clio records start in 1789, Whig in 1802, the Nassau Hall Bible Society in 1813 and the Philadelphian Society in 1855. Full runs of student publications are available for all the important student periodicals. The early organizational efforts of alumni, beginning with the Alumni Association of Nassau Hall in 1826, are well documented. Architectural drawings exist for a surprising number of buildings, and correspondence with architects, planners and landscape architects provides a rich source of information about the campus.
Maps and iconography of the campus abound, both in the Archives and the Visual Materials Division of Rare Books and Special Collections. Photos of the campus and its faculty and students date back to 1850, when the senior class posed for daguerreotypes. Even earlier, students and faculty arranged for engravings that were bound into books. The earliest movie film in the Archives is of President John Grier Hibben's inauguration in 1912, attended by President William Howard Taft. Since that time the record of P-rades, athletic contests, graduations, lectures and undergraduate activities recorded in various audiovisual media has grown exponentially. The Archives also houses a variety of ephemera ranging from elaborately carved 19th-century canes to Bicenquinquagenary Water (BCQ H2O) bottled in plastic for the 250th anniversary of the University.
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The chief architects of what became the University Archives were the men who served as secretary of the University, an office established by the trustees in 1901. To date only five individuals have served as secretary; their principal duty has been to serve the office of the president as the official responsible for the actions of the corporation, its trustees and executive committee.
The existence of the modern Archives is in no small measure the work of Varnum Lansing Collins, Class of 1892. Named editor of the General Catalogue/Biographical Catalogue in 1906, he compiled files on alumni and on possible, doubtful and fraudulent "alumni" that have been gold mines for researchers ever since. As secretary from 1917 he began what is now known as the Historical Subject File, an enormous cache of Princeton history, lore and trivia.
Collins' successor, Alexander Leitch '24, became secretary in 1936. A list of the functions and duties of the secretary's office for the 1940s includes "maintenance of deceased alumni files yearbooks, Heralds, Reunion Books, Class Publications handling of genealogical inquiries maintenance of the historical file and answer[ing] inquiries maintain[ing] faculty information files--official records of promotion dates, salaries, newsclips."
Leitch also faced a growing crisis of space in Nassau Hall. Files and indexes were stored in at least five different rooms on the third floor of the east wing of Nassau Hall, where the secretary was headquartered. By 1949 the secretary's office maintained records for 27,000 living alumni and 9,000 deceased alumni that filled 45 filing cabinets. In 1949 the newly formed Bureau of Alumni Records in the former Pyne Library took over the files of all living alumni, and two-thirds of the files left the secretary's office.
In these years staff were authorized to show or lend folders to administrative officers and their secretaries and to government officials (FBI, State Department and Office of War Information investigators for instance). But, the access policy stated, "Never, in any case, let a newspaperman handle or look at a folder! Do not loan sketches, pictures, original manuscripts and letters or old pamphlets, which could never be replaced, to anyone except the University Library."
1959 budget: $10,000
Especially authorized to use and borrow its records was Henry Savage '15, who held the title "Archivist in the University Library," starting in 1944. Although University Librarian Julian Boyd was interested in establishing the Archives as a separate office within the library, he limited Savage's efforts. In 1950 he rejected Savage's proposal to form a real archives by acquiring departmental records, and Savage had no better luck with Boyd's successors.
In 1955 Librarian William Dix engaged Halsey Thomas, Keeper of Columbiana since 1928 and a resident of Princeton, to prepare a report on the archival situation at Princeton. In 1957 Dix proposed the establishment of the Princeton University Archives to the new President Robert Goheen '40. The proposed annual budget for an archivist, one assistant and supplies totalled $10,700. The proposal was funded in 1959, and Dix hired Thomas as archivist, indicating that the Archives would focus solely on official records, while material about Princeton would remain the responsibility of Savage, whose title became Curator of Princetoniana.
The president's office issued a memorandum regarding the existence and functions of the new Archives, and almost immediately records poured in from the registrar, Annual Giving, library departments, the Chapel and the secretary's office. The Department of Rare Books transferred a large quantity of material to the Archives, and in the early 1960s records of the president's office, the Graduate School and various academic departments were added, as well as a set of all books published by Princeton University Press.
When Thomas retired in 1969, his replacement, Francis Dallett, served for only a year before departing for the archives at the University of Pennsylvania.
Move to Mudd
Earle Coleman, who had earlier served as curator of rare books and history bibliographer, began as the fourth University Archivist in 1971. His tenure was interrupted by a leave of absence for two years from 1972 to 1974, during which time the work fell to acting archivist Edith James, who routinized accessioning, processed one hundred series of new records, filed stray materials, cleaned up the annex storage area, inventoried all records and wrote an operations manual.
Coleman returned from his leave in 1975 and immediately set to work on a host of processing projects in preparation for the move to the new Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library, soon to be built on Olden Street. He also took charge of the logistics of cataloging dissertations and theses, which would thereafter be housed in the new facility. The move to Mudd added significantly to Coleman's responsibilities, because all aspects of building maintenance now fell to him. His annual reports are filled with problems relating to roof leaks, elevator outages and security glitches.
The Archives supported four major research projects during the Coleman era: Alexander Leitch's A Princeton Companion, a five-volume biographical directory called simply The Princetonians, Gerald Breese's Princeton University Land, 1752-1984, and The Princeton Graduate School: A History, by W. Thorp, M. Myers and J. Finch. Research use of the Archives more than doubled after the Mudd Library opened.
The quantity of material accessioned annually also continued to grow during the Coleman years. Yearly accessions of fewer than 100 feet were soon replaced by annual accretions of as many as 450 feet. Between 1976 and 1981, Frederic Fox '39 aided Coleman as official Keeper of Princetoniana. After his death, the Alumni Council formed a Princetoniana Committee to help with the disposition of Princeton memorabilia.
Coleman retired on in March 1990 and was succeeded by the author, who had arrived at Princeton only three months earlier as Curator of Public Policy Papers. The two units were combined, and this represents the most important change for the Archives since 1990. The librarian enlarged the permanent staff of the Mudd Library by the addition of two new positions in 1993. With a third professional on board, a division of activities between reference and technical services was possible.
Now open five days a week
The facility is now open for research use five days and one evening a week. The Archives has also sought to make its holdings known to a broader public. Exhibitions at both Mudd and Firestone Libraries have made the general public aware of Princeton's role in events ranging from the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago and the formation of the modern Olympics in the 1890s to Princeton in caricature and the Cleveland Tower carillon in this century. Donors have given many valuable archival materials in recent years.
Because no finding aids existed for archival records in 1990, staff have especially focused efforts on improved access to material. Staff used computers to index heavily used record series and to write finding aids for processed records collections. The archivists hired an army of students to process records, and purchased appropriate acid-free materials to house them.
The Archives also conducted an inventory of the whole corpus of archival records, which is now available to researchers. Machine-readable cataloging for large numbers of uncataloged books and serials and for the newly processed archival collections provides international access to information about the holdings of the Archives (see www.princeton.edu/mudd). Five special processing projects have directed resources to organizing University records related to World War II, glassplate negatives, the records of the American Whig and Cliosophic Societies, the records of the Graduate School, and the University's collection of historical photographs.
The archivist focused attention on the infrastructure of the Seeley G. Mudd Manuscript Library as well. In the last three years the monitoring controls for the security, environmental and fire suppression systems in the building have all been replaced. New carpeting, a fresh coat of paint and replacement of fogged double-glazed windows have returned the facility to a condition akin to when it opened 20 years ago.
A longer version of this article was published in the autumn 1996 issue of the Princeton University Library Chronicle.
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