Preserving the Past for the Future

The documents, books, maps, and photographs that are a part of the UTA Libraries Special Collections department continue to share life lessons with each person that stops by for a look. These items preserve the past to educate future generations. 

Priscilla Escobedo, Special Collections Archivist, stated the archived items tell the stories of the area from the people who experienced those events firsthand.  

The UTA Libraries website states Jenkins Garrett family donated more than 10,000 books, documents, graphics, maps, periodicals, manuscripts, newspapers, and pieces of sheet music. Since the donation in the 1970s, the archive has expanded to include Texas history, cartography, Spanish language history, Texas labor history, Texas political history, and UTA history.   

 “When we get a collection, we have our internal way of processing it as a gift or a donation. We make records about who donated this item and when it was donated,” Priscilla said. “Then we process the collection and put it into archival boxes.”  

Priscilla stated that depending on the size and complexity of the collection, students could help with processing collections. Once the processing is completed, the new collection will be available for the public to view.  

With the advances in technology, the archive has not only taken steps to care for physical media, but it goes further to preserve digital media.  

Kathryn Slover, Digital Archivist, stated that digital information is constantly changing by the second, and it is imperative to have these resources saved. 

“People don’t send letters to each other. They are sending tweets, texts, and emails. My job is to preserve newer content that hopefully will be valuable to future researchers and manage our web archive program,” Kathryn said. “We use a service created by the Internet Archive that captures web pages so we can preserve that content for many organizations. We have been archiving COVID-related pages as they frequently change. For the last couple of years, we have been trying to document and preserve that story for future research. 

The information housed inside the collection draws people in from the campus community, the local area, and globally.  

Priscilla and Kathryn shared that the events documented in the archives have valuable lessons, but people from those times can connect with a person.  

Documents that brought the past and future together for Kathryn in the archives were the Rebel mascot controversy on campus. During this moment, students succeeded in getting the mascot changed.   

 “For me, that was interesting because this was happening in the 1960s and early 1970s, and it mirrors stuff happening on college campuses now,” Kathryn said. “To me, it resonated with what I saw on my campus in Tennessee.” 

For Priscilla, it wasn’t an event but a person, Shirley Smith, whose personal papers, and photos are preserved in the archive.  

 “She was a young woman and was only 27 years old when she passed. She had some physical disabilities due to childhood polio, and she was very popular, charming, and pretty. There are photos of her at weddings and parties. She was the football sweetheart in high school and a librarian,” Priscilla said. “I was her age when I started here. For some reason, I really resonated with her. I really wanted to know more about her and her life.” 

Priscilla and Kathryn want to encourage people to stop by the Special Collections Department to research or expand their knowledge about the world around them. While looking at or reading materials in the archive, people will not only learn about the past, but they will learn about themselves in the process.  

 For more information about the Special Collections Department at UTA Libraries, go to https://libraries.uta.edu/collections/special-collections.