As a particular contribution to the maintenance of Guilford’s Quaker heritage, and as a resource for teaching documentary research, the Friends Historical Collection of Hege Library acquires, organizes, preserves and makes available, not only to the college but to the wider community of researchers, materials, both published and unpublished, related to the history of the Religious Society of Friends. The collection has a special responsibility for comprehensiveness in preserving the spiritual, intellectual and cultural heritage of Quakerism in the southeastern United States. As the official repository for college records, the collection is responsible for Guilford’s institutional memory, preserving records of enduring value and making them accessible.

Friends Historical Collection Annual Report, 2006-2007

The Friends Historical Collection reaffirmed its commitment as the research center for the Quakerism in the southeastern United States with a newly revised mission statement. The new statement also highlights the increasing importance of the college archives and the increasing use of the collection by Guilford students. Improved outreach to the Guilford College community is in addition to continuing work with North Carolina Friends meetings and organizations and others researchers who visit to the collection. Staff strives to balance the needs to acquire and process incoming resources, preserve and improve access to existing materials, and provide timely and knowledgeable assistance to researchers, both in person and through correspondence. The following report describes the results of those efforts during the 2006-2007 academic year.

Notable Events and Projects

The school year started with an archives-focused orientation program, entitled “Old School,” for a group of incoming first year and transfer students. This was offered as one option among a number of two-day sessions scheduled as a part of an expanded week-long orientation schedule. Students learned about the history of the college through a combination of lectures and group activities. Highlights included interviewing alumni from past decades, using archival materials to learn about specific topics of interest, and enjoying snacks based on recipes used historically by Mary Hobbs Hall residents and Ernestine Milner’s cucumber punch. Aspects of the programming may be offered through other outreach initiatives in the future. However, the college decided not to offer the lengthier orientation week again, at least not in the foreseen future.

The Friends Historical Collection experienced more lime light than usual in several unexpected ways. On a purely positive note, award winning author David McCullough stopped by for a visit prior to his Guilford Bryan Series lecture in November and made a reference to the visit in his public evening lecture. The Friends Historical Collection itself was center stage with an article in the Fall/Winter 2006 issue of North Carolina Libraries entitled “Records of the Children of the Light: The Friends Historical Collection at Guilford College,” by Joseph Thomas.

A difficult and emotional campus incident involving a fight between students in January brought the attention of international media. Calls were received in the Friends Historical Collection as reporters sought additional information about the college. Gwen Erickson provided interviews about Guilford’s history as a Quaker college and the Friends Historical Collection’s Research Room provided the back drop for a local television news piece about Guilford’s early history. Gwen also co-led a session, entitled “A Socio-History of Guilford College,” during a community “teach-in” held in response to the campus events in January and served on the ad hoc teach-in committee.

Staff and Volunteers

Friends Historical Collection staff remained fairly stable for the majority of the year. No major staffing changes, other than adding a few additional hours with new students, occurred during the academic year. The continued presence of both the college’s archives associate position held by Elizabeth Cook and North Carolina Yearly Meeting (FUM)’s archives assistant position combined to provide forty hours of consistent and knowledgeable assistance each week. This provided much needed support for the Friends Historical Collection Librarian and the additional layer of capable reference skills were appreciated by the volunteers when researcher inquiries were beyond the basics.

J. Timothy “Tim” Cole completed his third year as the North Carolina Yearly Meeting Archives Assistant. During his ten hours each week, Tim accessioned incoming meeting records, assisted researchers, prepared records for microfilming, and scanned images for several publication projects. In addition to his routine work, Tim also created several informative exhibits for our display cases outside of the research room and applied his skills as a manuscript processor to create finding aids. The Friends Historical Collection and North Carolina Yearly Meeting’s Records Committee were glad to have such a capable person in this position for several years. Tim resigned in May for a full-time position with the Greensboro Public Library’s Information Services Department and a new archives assistant will be introduced in next year’s report.

Student staff ably assisted in operations by shelving, filing, and photocopying. They also accomplished several major projects, including some very visible changes. Katie Yow completed a monumental collection shift in July 2006 as Quaker periodicals were moved from the Quaker stacks (Library 117) to a new Quaker Periodical Reading Room (Library 120). This move provided much needed space for monographs, yearly meeting minutes and disciplines, and college publications. Both rooms remain open to the public whenever the library is open. Abigail Roger returned for a second academic year and inventoried artifact and manuscript collections. She also assisted with organizing slides from the J. Floyd “Pete” Moore Collection and began to work with displays. Grace Montgomery ably handled routine shelving and assisted with a project to reclassify the yearly meeting disciplines. Sherice Chandler served as the student assistant for college archives. Chris Pugilese serve as summer staff in May and June 2007 and undertook an inventory of Quaker circulating publications to identify any missing books or fragile items needing repair or reclassification.

A dedicated group of volunteers continue to staff the research room. Theodore Perkins offered his reliable services two mornings each week and occasionally filled in for others when needed. Elizabeth Lasley, Harry Nagel, and Marietta Wright received training and joined to roster. Helen Cott resigned to move to her new home in Tennessee. Docent emeriti Margaret Beal, a long-time Friday afternoon volunteer and indexer of the Guilford College Magazine, passed away. She continued to remember the Friends Historical Collection after her retirement and her friendly smile was missed at the annual luncheon. Docents were appreciated and enjoyed visiting with one another at their annual spring luncheon. This year’s speaker was Carol Stoneburner, retired founding director of the women’s studies program at Guilford College, who spoke on Quaker women and their impressive influence.

Librarian and Archivist Gwen Gosney Erickson continued her involvement in the Society of North Carolina Archivists by serving as past president/Education chair, offering a workshop at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill on “Finding a Job in Archives.” and presenting as a part of a panel on religious archives at the organization’s fall meeting at Johnson C. Smith University in Charlotte, North Carolina. Closer to home, Gwen served as a faculty representative to the college’s Budget Committee for a second year and chaired a national search for Hege Library’s new Information Literacy Coordinator. She also supervised Guilford senior Eric Patterson for his independent study course on public history.

Archives Associate Liz Cook completed her second year on staff. With basic Friends Historical Collection knowledge firmly in her grasp, Liz pursued more advanced training for her work with the college’s archives and records management program. She was accepted as a participant in a week-long Digitization Institution sponsored by NC-ECHO (North Carolina – Exploring Cultural Heritage Online) in September where she learned standards for creating digital images and made important connections with others who are working with historical materials in North Carolina. She also took an online course from the American Records Management Association on records management during the fall semester. Liz became an active member of Guilford’s organization for support staff and joined the Society of North Carolina Archivists’ Archives Week Committee for 2007. She also provided leadership for the Hege Re-users Recycling Team in November. The group completed several recycling activities in the building and won a campus recycling competition.

Research and Services

Researchers from near and far visited the Friends Historical Collection to consult unique resources. Lloyd Lee Wilson spent several weeks during the spring studying monthly meeting records and other manuscript materials for his research on history of North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative). This work was supported financially by the North Carolina Friends Historical Society’s Seth and Mary Edith Hinshaw Fellowship. Other notable researchers during the year included a Tennessee Friend working on a history of Lost Creek Quarter, a china collector studying Quaker minister (and former member of Rich Square Monthly Meeting) Richard Jordan, and a local Friend doing a photography documentation project on North Carolina meetinghouses. The collection also continues to receive routine genealogical inquiries, both through telephone and e-mail questions and with visits by family historians, and a variety of reference questions relating to the history of Friends, especially those in the Guilford County area. Guilford students used manuscript materials to research the Buck Creek Civilian Public Service Camp, Quaker relief work in 1948 Germany, and the moral protests of nineteenth century Friends Harriet Peck and Tilghman Vestal. There was also an increase in student use of the college archives for research, including topics in history, environmental studies, and women’s studies.

Image requests continue to increase, both from individuals and from publishers. Coastwatch, North Carolina Historical Review, the North Carolina Friends Historical Society Newsletter requested images to accompany articles. Images were also provided for Billy Britt’s book on North Carolina ministers, a publication on High Point architecture, and Founded by Friends: The Heritage of 15 American Colleges and Universities (Scarecrow, 2007). Both images and information were provided for a calendar and a DVD in production for celebrations surrounding the bicentennial of Greensboro in 2008.

A group of graduate students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill used North Carolina Yearly Meeting’s Meeting for Sufferings Minutes and Correspondence for a class project developing a grant proposal for digitizing archival materials. This was a beneficial partnership as the students had the opportunity to use original materials and learn more about the work involved in archives located at smaller institutions. Guilford benefited as the students provided their resulting proposal document which can be used in our future digitizing planning.

Several Guilford classes learned about the resources available in the archives. John and Carol Stoneburner brought their class on Quaker women to learn about the preservation of Quaker women’s history in archives. Jim Hood’s English class on nature writing visited to get tips about using local archives for researching the history of land. Gwen Erickson attended Phil Slaby’s history research seminar at the beginning of the semester to provide an overview of resources available in local archives and instructions on how to find information in archives. Beyond campus, Gwen collaborated with the Guilford County Schools regarding the use of local cultural institutions in teaching history and wrote a letter as a partner institution to support the school system’s application for a Teaching American History grant from the federal government. Staff from Pfeiffer University’s library and from High Point Public Library’s North Carolina Collection visited for tours.

Presentations were given to the Durham Genealogical Society on finding ancestors in Quaker records and to the Historic Jamestown Society on Quakers in Jamestown. Further afield, Gwen shared historical information about Quakers in South Carolina as a part of the Palmetto Friends Gathering program in Lexington, South Carolina. Some of this information in included in the brief entry Gwen authored for The South Carolina Encyclopedia (2006).

Guilford participated in the second annual North Carolina Archives Week with a college history trivia quiz in the campus electronic announcements message and behind the scenes tours. Both activities were well received and plans are in place to participate with such activities again in 2007.

A new exhibit on the history of dancing at Guilford College premiered in the small exhibit case outside the research room as a part of Archives Week highlights. Exhibits were changed regularly in the two cases. Archives Assistant Tim Cole used his skills to create attractive displays with a minimum of resources. Independent study student Eric Patterson presented his final project with a small exhibit on the college’s lake. Student worker Abbie Rogers created a display on the history of spring celebrations at Guilford.

In addition to continued receipt of new publications, incoming materials included the Kenneth A. Hovey Shaw-Cude Collection and several artifacts and additions to existing collections. Archives Assistant Tim Cole improved access to several existing collections by doing further organization and drafting more complete finding aids for the papers of Algie I. Newlin, Fred Hughes, and Mary Brown Feagins. Some items identified as a result of this work were used by researchers during the spring semester.

Yearly Meeting Archives

Minutes and records were received from twenty-nine different monthly and quarterly meetings, including twenty-two meetings of North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Friends United Meeting). Most of these were regular deposits from groups that have been consistently conscientious in archiving their records. Some meetings have never brought records or are behind on deposits. It is hoped that a larger number of meetings affiliated with North Carolina Yearly Meeting (FUM) will arrange to have their materials preserved in the archives in the coming year. Records were also received from meetings affiliated with North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative) and Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting and Association.

Several unaffiliated monthly meetings continue to use the Friends Historical Collection for their archives, including Raleigh, Davidson, and Chapel Hill Monthly Meetings in North Carolina. A notable addition was Fairhope Monthly Meeting in Fairhope, Alabama, and formerly of Ohio Yearly Meeting. Fairhope designated the Friends Historical Collection as their archives and deposited records dating from 1917 to 1966. This provides information not only about a unique community of Friends in Alabama, but also documents a group of Friends who resettled in Monteverde, Costa Rica in the mid-twentieth century.

In addition to basic questions from current meeting members, several dedicated North Carolina Friends spent extra time in the Friends Historical Collection this year. Kay Coltrane was a regular with her research for a new Centre Meeting history. Billy Britt checked facts for his research on North Carolina Quaker pastors for his new book and staff assisted with locating images for the final publication. Collection staff also provided assistance for a revision of the Deep River Meeting history. Yearly meeting records were also used extensively in projects on the history of Lost Creek Quarter and Lloyd Lee Wilson’s history of North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative).

Guilford College Archives

Both organization and research use of the Guilford College Archives grew significantly this past year. This growing component of the Friends Historical Collection would not be possible without the addition of Archives Associate Liz Cook in 2005. Liz continued to assess current archival holdings and also met with several departments across campus to draft records schedules. Initial templates were drafted for a faculty records schedule and significant organization and revised finding aids were done for the Registrar’s and Board of Trustees records. Information Technology staff were consulted to discuss collaboration in records management work, especially in light of policy issues regarding confidentiality and identification of key permanent records held within campus offices. Formal records schedule work and informal conversations about the locations of various records assisted college archives staff to document the vast amount of work yet to do and educated personnel in various campus offices about archival resources.

Summer projects included preliminary processing of approximately 120 linear feet of college records stored in the library’s basement. Most of these were outdated records requiring destruction. About a third of the total was designated for further processing to be added to the college archives. It is hoped that continued development of records schedules for campus departments will decrease unneeded storage of outdated temporary records and facilitate timely deposit of permanent archival records. This will be a continuing project with slow progress.

Liz Cook enrolled in an online records management course during the fall semester which gave her a broader view of records management in general and also provided valuable information for her work with Guilford’s program. It was especially useful in increasing awareness of key issues in the field and providing a context for developing Guilford-specific record schedules and procedures. Liz took copious notes throughout the course so that other staff may also benefit from the information presented.

A major accomplishment of the year was a project to microfilm The Guilfordian, the college’s campus paper from 1914 to present. The time had come to get this done due to increasing demands and the need to preserve the often-fragile pages. Liz Cook supervised student assistants and volunteers in the preparation process to be sure that all issues from 1914 to 2005 were accounted for and organized for filming. The master set was then shipped to OCLC Preservation Services in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, for professional archival filming. Other key college records are to be filmed in future projects.

A newly updated brochure with full color images and the newly revised Friends Historical Collection mission statement were printed and plans drafted for a redesign of the collection’s Web site. The brochure is now available and the new Web site is at www.guilford.edu/fhc with additional updates and resources on the way.

North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Friends United Meeting) Deposits

Meeting Name	Deposit
Archdale	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 2003-2004, 1/2005-12/2006
Centre	Ministry and Counsel Minutes, 7/2005-11/2006; Centre Friends Cemetery Records, 1757 - February 2007, compiled by Kay D. Coltrane and Darlene S. Parsons (2007).
Chatham	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 2004; Ministry and Counsel Minutes, 2004
Eastern Quarter	Quarterly Meeting Minutes, 7/2001-5/2006
Forbush	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 11/28/1979, 5/2004, 7/2005-6/2006
Greensboro First Friends	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 2006; Ministry and Counsel Minutes, 2006; United Society of Friends Women Minutes, 8/2003-6/2007
Holly Spring	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 7/1993-12/2005
Hood Swamp	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 2/2005-12/2005
Jamestown	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 1/1984-11/1988, 1/2004-12/2006
Kernersville	Minutes, 5/1999, 8/1999-12/2001
Liberty	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 3/2004-7/2006; Ministry and Counsel Minutes, 3/2004-7/2005
Mount Airy	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 12/2005-12/2006
Mount Carmel	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 2001-2006
New Garden	Papers and Memorials, 2004-2006
New Hope (CQ)	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 2006
Pine Hill	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 2005
Poplar Ridge	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 1/2002-4/2002, 1/2005-12/2006
Science Hill	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 7/2005-6/2006; Ministry and Counsel Minutes, 7/2005-6/2006; Quaker Ladies Minutes, 2005
Surry Quarter	Quarterly Meeting Minutes, Memorials, and Spiritual Condition Reports, 4/2005-10/2006
Union Cross	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 2006
Up River	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 7/2001-6/2006; Ministry and Counsel Minutes, 7/2001-5/2006; The Lamplighter, 1/2004-11/2004
Winthrop	Monthly Meeting Minutes and Attachments, 2006

NCYM (FUM) Meeting Newsletters received in 2006 - 2007: Charlotte, Deep Creek, Greensboro (First Friends), New Garden, Up River, and Winston-Salem

North Carolina Yearly Meeting (Conservative) Deposits

Meeting Name	Deposit
Rich Square	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 2/1999-6/1999, 10/2000-12/2000, 7/2002-5/2003

NCYM (C) Meeting Newsletters received in 2006 - 2007: Friendship and Virginia Beach

Southern Appalachian Yearly Meeting and Association (SAYMA) Deposits

Meeting Name	Deposit
Brevard	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 5/2004-7/2006
Celo	Monthly Meeting Minutes (and accompanying documents), 2006
Foxfire	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 7/2006-2/2007
Memphis	Monthly Meeting Minutes and Newsletters, 2006
Swannanoa	Monthly Meeting Minutes, 2005-2006; Membership Lists, 2005-2006; State of Meeting, 2004-2005; Committee Reports, 2005-2006; End of Life Guidance, 2006

SAYMA Meeting Newsletters received in 2006 – 2007: Berea, Charleston, and Columbia

Other Record Groups

Record Group	Deposit
Virginia Beach Friends School	Yearbooks, Papers, School Board Minutes

^Regular annualized deposits from Guilford College and other records groups. However, any major deposits, such as those that start new record series or fill major gaps, are listed in the annual report.