Plate 14, Dark Lanes in Ophiuchus, from A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Milky Way by Edward Emerson Barnard.

Archives: The Final Frontier

What space does the archives occupy in an institution focused on science and technology? At the Georgia Institute of Technology, the Library as a whole, and the Special Collections and Archives Department as a unit, is considering this question as we undergo a massive renovation of space and reimagining of services. The theme of space can be interpreted in a number of ways from our perspective. Space in its other-worldly concept is well-documented in our materials through the Science Fiction Collections. As an intellectual space, the archives and its collections expose and connect current students to past research created by Georgia Tech alumni. Space can relate to the physical location of something. The prime real estate of the Georgia Tech Library makes it a great physical space from which to display, discover, and interpret our collections.

At first blush, SPACE and archival-inspired exhibits orbit in different galaxies. One occupies the unexplored territory of future possibilities, the other firmly represents the relics of past achievements. A deeper dive into the two worlds shows many opportunities for scaffolding new discoveries onto known quantities. The primary source materials and exhibit displays function as discovery tools and provide catalysts for curiosity. The materials in the archival collections branch beyond what is typically thought of as commonplace at Georgia Tech or within STEM subjects. The exhibit program at the Georgia Tech Library is not a means to an end. Rather, it represents another tool in our box that helps connect our users to our holdings, spaces, services, and people. Curated displays incorporate outreach initiatives that include archival instruction, campus collaboration, and library resources. And they show the continued relevance of some of the libraries' oldest materials through contemporary interpretation.

Contastic! – Science Fiction Collections, Dragoncon, and Exhibitions Beyond the Reading Room

The Science Fiction Collection is one of Georgia Tech’s more unique resources for education and research.  The origin of this collection dates to 1998 when Georgia Tech literature professor Irving “Bud” Foote laid the foundation for the collection by donating his personal book and magazine collection to the Georgia Tech Archives.  The Archives holdings represent one of the largest collections of this type in the southeast United States. The collection includes over 10,000 science fiction and fantasy novels, anthologies, and more than 1,000 periodical issues. American science fiction printed between 1950 and 1990 is the collection's strongest coverage area. Documentation of Science Fiction and Fantasy conventions has also become a component part of the collection and a means of documenting the growth of interest in SciFi across various media.

Georgia Tech was one of the first institutes of higher education to provide classes in science fiction for credit. The futuristic themes of the science fiction genre are particularly relevant to the audience on a STEM campus. Products and scenarios described in the narratives of science fiction novels and pulp-magazines in many instances represent an eventual reality. They come to life through the creative ingenuity of scholarly endeavors. The archivists provide instruction sessions each semester to English 1101 and 1102 classes using the science fiction collections. The writing style of the genre is a good introduction to technical writing skills required to write research briefs for broader consumption. Beyond the classroom, our goal is to engage the campus community in a feeling of wonderment and excitement only dreamed of in science fiction literature, but actualized through research, experimentation, and current cultural movements.

Each year in Atlanta, over the Labor Day holiday, an influx of SciFi and Fantasy fans journey to the DragonCon convention to participate in multiple events, panel discussions, as well as an annual parade of costumed convention-goers through city streets. Recognizing the annual event as an opportunity to create a higher visibility for the Science Fiction Collections, the library's Exhibitions Manager sought the collaboration of Science Fiction and Humanities Librarian, Karen Viars, and Dr. Lisa Yaszek, Professor of Science Fiction Studies in the School of Literature, Media and Communication (LMC).  Selected artifacts for the exhibit included an extensive collection of programs and ephemera documenting the growth and development of the DragonCon event over the past 20 years. The final selection of artifacts also included items loaned by Viars for the exhibit. Co-curators Viars and Yaszek authored label copy outlining the development of the "con" movement as a means for fans to share their interests.

Additionally, we sought a means of extending the reach of the exhibition beyond a traditional reading room or gallery environment.  The Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons is a state of the art academic complex adjacent to Tech’s main library. 

Con-tastic! event poster

The exhibition team used one of the building’s open gallery/study spaces to accommodate a “pop up” style exhibit for the project, affording the exhibit a high level of visibility among students and faculty during its eight-week run.

The exhibit represented an opportunity for the archives to initiate and develop co-curator collaborations with subject matter experts beyond the archives and library.  The project also represented an experiment in developing exhibits for spaces not adjacent to the principal collections access area, i.e., the traditional reading room.

Georgia Tech's Winsett Gallery

Showcasing the Materiality of the Book - Students Explore the Rare Book Collection 

The Georgia Tech Library's Rare Book collection is a treasured asset of the Special Collections and Archives. The Institute's first Library Director, Dorothy Crosland, began to intentionally develop the collecting area in the 1950s with the purchase of Sir Isaac Newton's Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica (London, 1687).   This work set the tone for the collection's focus on science, technology, mathematics, and probability. The collection also contains an extensive number or rare works from the fields of architecture, textile industry, and the arts.

This collection was a means to enhance Georgia Tech’s institutional prestige, but also built a foundational collection of rare books documenting the history of science and technology.  Today the collection serves as a window into the past. Georgia Tech archivists often collaborate with professors and instructors to make these titles available for viewing by classes with interests in the research areas documented by the collection.  As an example of this type of outreach, archivists collaborated with Dr. Kate Holterhoff, a Brittain Fellow in the School of Literature, Media and Culture, to use selected titles from the rare book collection as a tactile means of considering, in Holterhoff’s words, the “materiality of the book."

Dorothy Crosland with Blaeu Atlas

Archivists led orientation sessions for the students to introduce them to archival research (i.e decoding a finding aid) and in the proper handling of the archival materials themselves. The students used a variety of lesser-known titles from the collection covering topics as diverse as North American birds, practical geometry and the manufacture of textiles.  

Example texts included the Journal für Fabriken, Manufakturen, Handlung, Kunst und Mode, a German textile book with fabric swatches dating from 1791. This title also speaks to Georgia Tech’s early history as a technological institute dedicated to promoting textile engineering in the Southern cotton belt.

Journal für Fabriken, Manufakturen, Handlung, Kunst und Mode

Holterhoff's students examined the content and production methods of a selected work, interpreting it in a museum-style graphic much as a curator and exhibit designer would.  The resulting graphics were displayed in conjunction with the original works in the archives’ reading room. The assignment, as Holterhoff said, “enabled students to gain hands-on experience with archival materials, while considering the purpose of archives, the role of digital archivists, and the life cycle of library collections.” In this exhibit, a more traditional exhibition space was employed – the archival reading room – but the guest curators in this instance were the student users of the collections.

(above, right) Neely exhbit cases 

The Great American Eclipse Comes to Georgia Tech

The rare book collection also contains a number of ornately illustrated works such as the Dutch language edition of Joan Blaeu's Grooten Atlas, or Grand Atlas (ca. 1660). This nine-volume set is one of the library's most enticing treasures representing the zenith of seventeenth century Dutch cartography. Under archival supervision, physics and astronomy professors at Georgia Tech request the Atlases and other rare books to connect students to the legacy of their fields. The Robert C. Williams Museum of Papermaking, located on the Georgia Tech campus, featured all nine volumes of the Grand Atlas in a 2015 exhibit. The Grand Atlas maps the spaces of the then known world in hundreds of beautifully detailed and hand-colored illustrations. One plate depicts Tycho Brahe's observatory on the Island of Hven in the Baltic.  Brahe was an astronomer and mentor to Joan Blaeu's father. Brahe's astronomic studies contributed to celestial navigation which provided the foundation to create the Atlases.

While the Blaeu Atlas represents European culture’s attempts to map and define the terrestrial world – literally mapping the physical space of the world – a lesser known work in the collection makes a similarly bold attempt to map the vastness of outer space.

Edward Emerson Barnard’s A Photographic Atlas of Selected Regions of the Galaxy represents the efforts of a mostly self-taught astronomer to map the Milky Way galaxy.  Born in Nashville in 1857,

Illustration of Tycho Brahe's observatory from the Blaue Atlas

Barnard started working at age nine in a photographer’s studio where he acquired the requisite skill and patience with photographic equipment that would later serve him well in tracking and photographing the night sky through a powerful observatory telescope.  By age 17, Barnard had begun to teach himself astronomy, purchasing his own five-inch refractor telescope and discovering two comets by the time he was 25. Vanderbilt University hired him as an astronomer and enrolled him as a student despite his lack of early formal education. Barnard’s knowledge and expertise led to later positions at the observatories in California where he made many of the photographs included in his atlas.

The exhibition of Barnard’s volumes mapping the night sky presented another opportunity for the archives to connect its collections to contemporary events. 2017’s Great American Eclipse coincided with the first full day of classes for the Fall semester at Georgia Tech. In collaboration with Georgia Tech’s College of Sciences, the Library Exhibitions Manager helped plan and design a small “pop up” exhibit in the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons.  The mission of the “pop up” exhibit was principally to promote campus activities related to the solar event. Approximately 8,000 pairs of Georgia Tech branded eclipse glasses were distributed on campus on the day of the event. A wide expanse of lawn at the center of campus, commonly known as “Tech Green,” saw a gathering of hundreds of students, faculty and staff to witness the 97 percent eclipse of the sun.

While the Clough Commons “pop up” exhibit represented a collaboration with campus partners to promote a campus-wide event in spaces outside the main library, the archives also seized upon the opportunity to present a “satellite” installation of Barnard’s Photographic Atlas as a means of tying our collections to contemporary events and interests.

Photo by Rob Felt and Christopher Moore

Library Next - Stepping Into the Future 

We intentionally search for ways to associate our collections with current events and the permanent interests of the Tech community. The Georgia Tech Library Next initiative is looking at physical and intellectual spaces suited to 21st century library users. Currently, our spaces are in a state of flux with major reconstruction and renovations occurring on the two library towers from 2017-2020. Library faculty and staff have had to improvise in smaller spaces, shuffle between distant spaces, and adapt to multi-use, swing spaces. Yet the ad hoc nature of our current environment has offered the opportunity to prototype and test potential services. The Library occupies a central space within the campus context from both a physical and intellectual standpoint, serving as a crossroads for scholarship.The exhibits and archives components of the Library Next program seek a more polished, interactive, and accessible service design. Exhibits are one facet of the library's future Service Programs through which we can act as a creative facilitator. The archival program helps users experience the past and apply it to the present in a different dimension. The future Archives Reading Room will feature a 20-foot wide view wall display case, similar to that of a retail store, in which a variety of collections can be displayed. Through the display case, visitors will be provided a visual gateway to our collections. Additionally, a dedicated special exhibits gallery space will offer a way to engage and entice users through the presentation of special collections materials and other scholarly content beyond the confines of the Reading Room. A pillar of the Library Next initiative is to enhance the virtual experience to all services. Leveraging the tools of online technology extends the reach and influence of special collections materials beyond the limited audience provided through physical proximity. In the past, the exhibits and archival programs created online exhibits to achieve these ends. The new direction for digital spaces seeks more interactions for the user to choose, discover, and build a tailored, personal experience, extending future exhibit experiences into virtual space.

Kirk Henderson serves as Exhibitions Program Manager for the Georgia Tech Library where he develops and designs exhibits focusing on archival collections as well as exhibits showcasing student work and research at Georgia Tech.

Amanda Pellerin is the Access Archivist at the Georgia Tech Library. She equally enjoys working in quiet solitude with archival materials and in the louder world of archival reference, instruction, outreach, and advocacy.