![[A Few Scratches]](images28/Cat01f.jpeg)
Welcome to my collection! I am a 1983 alumna of Mount Holyoke College. I do not work for the college, and I don't even live near it, but I've always loved my dear alma mater. I've been a collector of Mount Holyoke memorabilia for over 20 years, and began putting it online in 1996. I am currently about halfway through a program for a masters degree in library and information science, and I have created some parts of this website as homework assignments. I love creating digital surrogates of my paper memorabilia so that other people can find them online and discover their charms, too.
April 11, 2009:
Wow, four months since I've updated this page! I've been transcribing letters for the most part. It looks like I've added or corrected 97 letters since my last update! Most of those will be additions, but I know some of those files were modified because I found some typos and fixed them. Most of the letters are from the Abby Turner archive. I finally have bought the last of the lot. I miss getting the packages in the mail every month, but it will be nice to see the pile of letters to transcribe actually shrink for a change!
When I last wrote, I mentioned I was starting to scan a 1917 calendar. This was what I wrote then: "It was a page-a-day calendar, and it appears the student gave out pages to her friends and asked them for a favorite poem, quote, or photograph. The friend would inscribe it and give it back. Not all of the pages were inscribed by Mount Holyoke students, but many are. I've scanned the first three months, and I'll keep scanning a little at a time until it's done. I'm not sure I'll transcribe it all, but at the very least I will put the scans in order so that a user can page through and read the writing from the scans." Sad to say, I've done nothing since then on the calendar.
I did get another small archive of letters related to Dora Kasson class of 1860. I want to get started on transcribing those soon. There are about twelve of them.
My biggest photo discovery lately is a cabinet card album from the 1870s. It has a photo of Margaret Croft 1855 and her namesake niece in the class of 1883. I'm still trying to figure out the relationships between them and the other people in the album. I'm delighted to have this, since the Crofts were from Waterbury CT and I was born there.
I'm still plugging away at transcribing a list of all the alums from the first 100 years of the college. I'm in the M's somewhere now, and I hope to get the list done by the end of the year.
I'll try to remember to update this page from time to time to talk about my latest projects!