Dean's Update: Joining the Drexel 125th Anniversary Celebrations
I write this month's update just hours before the campus grand celebration of the University's founding 125 years ago. The Libraries has enabled many to join the history bandwagon; a few highlights of its contributions follow.
The University Archives offers a wealth of evidence to tell the many historic stories shared on the occasion of our anniversary. Now in its fifth year, the Libraries' quarterly ScholarSip event is also focusing on the 125th anniversary. And just this past month, the Libraries launched its ScholarSnack series with a student presentation on doing Archival research to contribute to the anniversary book.
<< Drexel professor Richardson Dilworth signs copies of the book he co-edited in honor of Drexel's 125th anniversary.
Through an unusual channel, the Drexel University Archives recently received an important property record from 1891 that helps to document the University's founding. This indenture transferred ownership of land and buildings at the corner of Chestnut and 32nd streets to the trustees of what would become the Drexel Institute. Anthony J. Drexel and his wife, Ellen Rozet Drexel, received one dollar in cash for the property.
<< The indenture is handwritten on six sheets of 9x15-inch paper.
Developed as a space in the library uniquely reserved for faculty and staff, the Research Connections room on W. W. Hagerty Library's second floor is a gathering place for scholars from different fields. As we move into an increasingly interconnected world, it becomes essential to provide spaces like this for cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Think of all the people who would say you changed their life for the better. That is one analogy to describe the impact of a single scholar on their discipline: by tracking and analyzing the citations to all the articles that scholar has ever written. In the past, that was a daunting task, but now it is becoming fairly straightforward using various analytic tools, such as
InCites, available through Drexel University Libraries.
