NC State University Libraries houses several original documents and artifacts in its Special Collections, many of which warrant analysis and lend deeper meaning to unheard student experiences throughout marginalized communities.

Special Collections gathers items relating to almost every aspect of NC State but specializes in those that relate to agriculture, architecture, design and engineering. Artifacts can range from T-shirts and flyers to letters and voice recordings.

Special Collections also collaborates with different campus departments, classes and student organizations to bring original documents to students.

Shima Hosseininasab, the instructional and outreach librarian for Special Collections and NC State alumnus with a Ph.D. in public history, said archives are a mode to preserve campus history.

“The role of archives within the University just goes beyond being mere storage,” Hosseininasab said. “It’s essential for understanding and preserving the unique narrative of our institution. The Special Collections act as a repository of collective memory that reflects individuals’ experiences and contributions across time.”

Virginia Ferris is a lead librarian for outreach and engagement for Special Collections at NC State University Libraries, where she promotes collections and works with other librarians on research. She often works with classes to showcase relevant aspects of the archives. 

When it comes to historical archives, there are often gaps or silences within the contents. If the content was collected by one sort of person, Ferris said, it only reflects the experience of one kind of person.

“What has made it to the archives has largely reflected the dominant population in positions of power at the University,” Ferris said. “That’s almost exclusively white men until later in the 20th century.” 

Ferris said it is important to look into silences and analyze them as evidence in themselves because it presents an opportunity to question why marginalized voices weren’t seen as valuable at the time or why there are no records of them today.

Ellen McGuire is the first recorded African American woman on campus who was mentioned in Technician articles. She was born into slavery and started her 50-year career at NC State in 1889. There are no records of her personal experience at the University. 

Another example of a notable silence is the existence of Justina Williams, NC State’s first Black faculty member, who joined the genetics department in the 1950s. There is one photograph of Williams working in her lab and a few mentions of her in departmental reports. Besides that, there is very little known about her time at NC State.

Ferris said this is not uncommon. A lot of modern archival work includes attempts at filling in the gaps in recorded history left by previous generations.

“And then [we ask], ‘How can we repair that?’” Ferris said. “How can we look at ways to recover voices from the past, folks who may have records now, who may have memories. Some of these people who may still be living that we could talk to and interview.”

Another effort in archives today is Reparative Archival Description, where they address harmful language within collections. In older artifacts, there is often offensive language. When this is the case, the librarians do not alter the artifact but add an annotation noting the nature of the language. 

Ferris said language is always evolving. It is important to preserve the items as a reflection of their time but also to recognize how things have changed.

“What we’re kind of dealing with today is trying to create a more inclusive and comprehensive, diverse record of the University’s history, its past and its present, going forward for future generations to learn from,” Ferris said.

A similar instance of an archival silence is a historical African American community on the same land as the current-day campus. Still under-researched, the town of Lincolnville is in records from early African American newspapers, located where Patterson Hall currently stands and extending further east and south.

Todd Kosmerick, a University archivist who works at the Library Special Collections Research Center, has worked on research regarding Lincolnville. He estimated the Black community was made up of about a dozen houses and around 50 people. 

The land was acquired by the University so they could build an agricultural center close to the State Fair, which was located just across Hillsborough Street at the time. Most of the records relating to the sale are from the University’s perspective, where they called the town Beef Hill or Cooks Hill.  

“We do have some slight evidence that maybe some of that property was acquired in a manner that was not as much of a positive outcome for the people of the community as it was for the University,” Kosmerick said.

It is unclear what the origins of the community were, how old it was or what happened to the residents afterwards. There is further research to be done to answer more questions, but it’s an example of Black histories being underrepresented in current records.

“If something happened so long ago that nobody’s alive that participated in that, really all you have is this documentation as your evidence,” Kosmerick said.

There is always hope to discover more, Kosmerick said. Not only does research often reveal more truths, but historical documents show up all the time in people’s basements and attics. The way they are being analyzed and interpreted is also advancing. 

“The historical profession is evolving too, and there’s always kind of new methods of going back to the same old evidence and thinking about it in a different way and kind of teasing more information out,” Kosmerick said.

The goal of the archives is to collect as much information as possible to preserve the truth of experiences on campus, past and present, so recovering these untold stories is a part of the archival staff’s mission.

“There’s no one student experience in the history of NC State,” Kosmerick said. “Every student has a different experience, and every community on campus has a different experience.”

A vast majority of the University archives are available online, having been digitized over the past few decades. Any student or staff member can look into any specific aspect of NC State history, and digitization has transformed how people can access historical materials.

“I think these types of engagement transcend the traditional educational boundaries and provide a more accessible experience for all our students and faculty members,” Hosseininasab said. 

Digitized archives also include living documents which are constantly being updated by additional community input. One resource is a series of timelines outlining the history of marginalized communities’ experiences on campus. 

“It can be a really important tool for students to look at the timelines and the digital collections and see what is the history that [they] personally connect to most here on campus,” Ferris said. 

Ferris said archiving history is a constantly ongoing process, in which students are the most powerful agents.

“We are always actively collecting and seeking to bring in more records and voices to have as part of our history moving forward,” Ferris said. “Students who are here today, you’re part of that history going on.”