Archives and Special Collections

Welcome to Archives, Special Collections & Community at Davidson College! Our team helps preserve the institutional records of the college, manuscript collections from the local community, and rare books and special collections materials. We provide students, faculty, staff, and community members with opportunities for original research, inquiry-driven study, and object-inspired learning through instruction sessions and reference support. Through our work, our community engages critically with the past to understand our present and inform our future. For more information about our department and our collections, please email us at archives@davidson.edu.

Learn more about our department and our collections by watching this brief video!

For the Fall 2020 semester, Archives, Special Collections & Community staff are primarily working remotely. We are continuing to support the research and instructional needs of Davidson's students, faculty, and staff as much as possible with reduced access to our physical collections. 

• Remote Reference: Please email us at archives@davidson.edu for assistance with research questions. Reference assistance will be provided primarily via email (archives@davidson.edu) or Zoom. We will do our best to help current Davidson students, faculty, and staff with their requests.
• Remote Instruction: Davidson faculty who would like their students to use materials from Archives and Special Collections while teaching remotely should email archives@davidson.edu. We are happy to brainstorm ways to provide students with access to our unique and rare materials. Instruction sessions by Archives, Special Collections & Community staff will be provided asynchronously, with options for drop-in Zoom sessions. 
• Digital Collections: Many materials from Archives and Special Collections have been digitized and are available remotely through our Digital Collections guide. Additional resources can be found on our various research guides and the Remote Learning & Research guide. To browse our archival and manuscript collections, please visit our online catalog and if there are materials you are interested in viewing, please email us at archives@davidson.edu and we will review your request. 

All services will be by appointment only. In-person access to materials will be considered on a case-by-case basis and provided when necessary, with appropriate social distancing and wearing of masks or face coverings. 

As Davidson adjusts to the COVID-19 pandemic, we are challenged to develop new ways to engage and interact with our community. The College Archives, which regularly collects, shares, and preserves the college’s and community’s unique stories, would like to document the experiences of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and community members during these uncertain times. 

To this end, we are excited to present the initiative "(Re)Collecting COVID-19: Davidson & Lake Norman Stories." In this crowdsourcing project, we invite you to share your COVID-19 story through the contribution of original words, music, video, art, or images, regardless of whether you are on campus, in the Town of Davidson, the Lake Norman area, or thousands of miles away.

Items may be contributed through at least the end of the calendar year. Please check out the site, consider making a contribution, and share this project with others you think would be interested.