Hill Memorial Library will host the “Bird’s Eye View of LSU” exhibit until December 17 — a special collection curated by Assistant University Archivist Michelle Melancon that features historic photographs of the University’s campus and other memorabilia highlighting the history of the University.
“We have a huge collection of materials related to University history, including photographs, both from the older campus downtown and the campus where we are now,” said Leah Wood Jewett, Exhibitions Coordinator for the University’s Special Collections. “[These collections] date from the mid-1920s, so this is just a tiny little sample to give folks a taste of what is available.”
Next on the library’s agenda is “Investigating Sherlock: Selections from the Russell Mann Sherlock Holmes Research Collection,” which opens Monday, October 3. The exhibit will feature a wide selection of Sherlock Holmes fiction, scholarship and memorabilia donated to the LSU Libraries’ Special Collections by Russell Mann, a retired professor of journalism at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette.
Hill Memorial Library first opened in 1903 at the University’s downtown campus. The new campus was dedicated in 1926, and the library moved to its current location in 1958. The facility was updated in 1985 to include an exhibition gallery, lecture hall and a completely renovated stack space.
“The University Archives, part of our division, is campus history through photographs, printed materials, student organization records, departmental records … that’s held within the University Archives here in [Hill Memorial Library] in special collections,” Jewett said.
Photographs and printed materials predating the library’s move to the present campus in the mid-1920s have already been digitized and can be accessed through the library’s website. Resources dating from before that time may not have been digitized yet but are still viewable in the library in person, Jewett said.
The stacks of Hill Memorial Library hold books dating back more than 500 years. To preserve the integrity and condition of these resources, they are kept in more than six floors of accessible only by staff.
“Everything is housed according to archival standards,” Jewett said. “We have particular temperature and humidity controls in place because any significant changes in temperature or moisture level … can harm these paper-based materials.”