people’s stories,” Richter says. “I think once I realized that archival collections had the power to share stories as well, I was hooked.” MAKING THE ARCHIVES AVAILABLE Elon began digitizing a portion of the archives in 2011 and has outsourced digital projects, such as the early student newspaper publications, alumni magazines and academic catalogs dating to 1891. Elon has also worked with the North Carolina Digital Heritage Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to get additional student newspapers, scrapbooks and yearbooks digitized. Regardless of whether information is made available digitally, Elon preserves the original, and it is clear there are items from the past that won’t ever be digitized because of copyright laws or the time and resources it takes to get it done. Since there is such a large volume to contend with, Belk Library has had to prioritize. “We thought about what publications we consult most frequently on a variety of questions that contain a lot of information over a large span of years,” Nash says. It’s the main reason the academic catalog was given priority because it doesn’t just provide a listing of the courses offered. It’s full of details, such as a description of the university, a listing of organizations and the board of trustees, tuition costs, the types of religions practiced as well as the changing infrastructure as buildings are torn down and added. “It’s something we consult on a regular basis,” Nash says. “We chose things that contain good snippets of university information.” In 2012 the archives staff started digitizing the audiovisual collection, which has more than 4,000 cataloged items. The collection contains the recordings of campus cultural events, Elon traditions and President Emeritus J. Earl Danieley’s walking tour of campus, to name a few. Nash and Linda Lashendock, the video archive technologist, developed procedures, policies and workflows for digitizing the collection that is likely to take years to complete. Even though the public can’t see every collection online, the digital finding aids, which are essentially detailed guides explaining what’s cataloged and available, make the university’s archives more accessible. “It reaches a wider audience, and they can be more autonomous in their research,” Nash says. “It can also serve as an open invitation to ask an archivist for help if they see something they are interested in.”
R
etired Army Col. Robert Fix P’08 reached out to the Elon University Belk Library Archives and Special Collections expecting to learn more about the life Pvt. Herbert Harper Barber, who graduated from Elon in 1918, led before he died during World War I. What he didn’t know until he delved into the details was that Barber’s story, preserved in the archives, might have a personal connection to him as well. As it turns out, Fix’s grandfather was the senior non-commissioned officer in charge of all the medics in the 165th Infantry Regiment during World War I. Barber, who was seriously wounded in battle, also served in the 165th Infantry Regiment. Fix immediately wondered if the paths the two men traveled had crossed. Then while at Elon for his son’s graduation in 2008, Fix stumbled upon a plaque honoring WWI and WWII veterans hanging in Alumni Memorial Gymnasium that includes Barber’s name. “I could feel the hair on the back of my neck stand up,” says Fix, who became interested in Barber while doing research for an ROTC speech he was giving at Elon. “Six weeks prior, I had never heard of this person. It was like the door to the hereafter had cracked just a little bit and Barber was there waving ‘I am here.’ Things like that don’t just happen. It was really poignant. It brought it full circle for that moment.” During a visit to France in 2012, Fix and his wife, retired Army Col. Debra Fix, decided to visit the cemetery in St. Mihiel where Barber was buried—a trip he later learned his own father, who also was a professional soldier, made almost exactly to the day 50 years prior. While there, Robert and Debra Fix walked among thousands of crosses searching for the one marking Barber’s grave. “We broke into tears when we got to it,” Fix says. And just like when his father visited, the couple was asked by the cemetery’s superintendent to lower the American flag that day. They also learned they were the first to visit Barber’s grave, according to cemetery records. “We were the first people in almost 100 years who had sought him out and paid tribute to him,” Fix says. “We found that incredibly moving.” Barber’s story remained relevant to Fix and in August, he contacted Nash again, hoping to dig deeper into the archives to learn more about Barber, his family history and time at Elon. Fix plans to visit the National Archives with his brother where historical documents from their grandfather’s military company are located. He expects those documents will contain more links to Barber. “We are not sure where this whole story ends,” Fix says. “It’s really been this amazing trek. None of this would have been possible without Katie and Elon archives having captured all of that. What Elon University has done has kept alive the memory of this young man not only in a historical sense but in a spiritual one.”
WHEN THE ARCHIVES COME TO LIFE
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