September 7, 2016
Tomorrow, on September 8, the College will celebrate its first-ever
Founders Day. This new tradition will commemorate the founding of Virginia
Wesleyan College and will recognize important individuals in VWC history. It
has been 55 years since the College’s chartering in 1961, and this
first Founders Day will be an important event for our community.
In conjunction with this special day, Director of the Library Susan
Erickson advises that we are ready to launch a VWC
Digital Collections site that will provide online access
to materials from the College Archives and other special collections at
Hofheimer Library. The content currently focuses on Founders Day, with
both a Founders Day collection and a Founders Day exhibit. As we are able to
digitize and catalog other materials, the site will grow to include a yearbook
collection, a college newspaper collection, and more.
Special thanks to Librarian Sophie Rondeau, who has done a
phenomenal job putting together this new site. Sophie has worked
tirelessly to learn new technologies, metadata schema, and to follow up with
various vendors to make sure that we are providing high-quality digital
materials in an interface that is easy to navigate. The Founders Day
collection and exhibit stand as a proof of concept for what will be a growing
digital archive of materials about the College and community.
We’re grateful to Sophie for taking the lead on this project
and to College Archivist Dr. Stephen Mansfield for curating the content,
providing advice on which items would help tell the story of Founders Day and
writing much of the narrative that you see on the site. Thanks also to
Library Circulation Supervisor Karen Devereaux who has helped with scanning
some of the materials that will be forthcoming on the VWC Digital Collections
site.
Since the College's first graduating
class of approximately 75 pioneering students in 1970, the Virginia Wesleyan
community has grown to include some 1,400 students and 9,000 alumni.
The Virginia
Wesleyan College community will gather in the Jane P. Batten Student Center
tomorrow, Thursday, September 8, at 11 a.m. to celebrate our inaugural Founders
Day. I invite students, faculty, staff and several special guests to join us.
The event will also be webcast. It can be viewed at the following link: https://boxcast.tv/view/
