After discussing the various collections in the Scarborough Library at Shepherd University with Christy Toms (The Coordinator of Archives and Special Collections) I discovered some interesting facts about the collection.

Ancient Artifacts

First, the oldest book in the collection was the “Memoirs of the Life of the Late Charles Lee Esquire”. It was published in 1792 in London by J.S Jordan. It is not known who owned the book previously because unfortunately Shepherd University has no record and there were no notations inside the book to tell me otherwise. The book discusses his military career as well as his radical Whig republicanism reputation. Anyone who owned this book would have an interest in the life of a soldier and somewhat of an extremist during this time.

Fingerprints of the Past

Some evidence I found of a book with notations in our collection was in “A History of Shepherd College”. It was published in 1967 in West Virginia. The author was Arthur Gordon Slonaker. Inside was an inscription to the owner of the book, Martha Campbell, from a professor. Unfortunately I could not find much about her due to the lack of middle name ok the inscription. What I do know is that students aren’t much different from that time as there are today. She used this book to learn more about the university she was attending and had possibly a favorite professor sign it.

Collections of History

When speaking with Christy Toms, I learned a little bit about a collection of yearbooks. What was interesting is there were gaps in years of the collection. For example, during World War I as well as the Great Depression and World War II. This would have represented the idea that a yearbook was less of a necessity in their life due to financial problems. The unifying theme in this collection is that they all are from Shepherd University. The collection came from members of the community donating their yearbooks in order for others to learn about past. This is a great example of a book as an artifact. Although they are not necessarily a literary work, they still can tell us a lot about the past and the owners of these books. To see more on the Shepherd University yearbook collection, click here.