Looking back at the lives and environments of those who came before us can teach us invaluable lessons about where things stood in the past. It reveals some of what went into causing the conditions of the world today and helps to inform us of where the future may be headed.
After displaying our archives, dating back to 1992, for our launch party earlier this semester, The Nubian Message was interested in learning more about the important process behind documenting, preserving and archiving our history.
We reached out to Dr. Edward Funkhouser, an amateur photographer and decades-long pillar in the Department of Communication, Digital Archivist for University Libraries’ Shelly Black, and University Archivist, Todd Kosmerick for their perspectives.
Photography
Dr. Funkhouser has had a lifelong interest in photography, getting his start taking pictures for his high school journalism club and continued to take pictures and experiment with film while stationed in Korea during his time in the army. When he came to NC State in 1977, it only made sense that Funkhouser would continue in his hobby.
And continue he has, Dr. Funkhouser has photographed many different eras and important moments in NC State’s history, from the destruction of Harrelson Hall, which he won an award from CASE (The Council for Advancement and Support of Education) for capturing, to President Obama speaking at Reynolds Coliseum while on the campaign trail, to long-gone features of Hillsborough Street and much more.
Dr. Funkhouser’s photography is so prolific that former Vice Provost and Director of the NC State University Libraries, Susan Nutter, established the ‘Edward T. Funkhouser Photographs’ archive within the libraries.
Over the years, Dr. Funkhouser has continued to feed into this archive, amassing more than 10,000 photographs of NC State’s campus and rich history and totaling 455 pages worth of content.
The Nubian Message spoke to Funkhouser about what inspires his work and why it all matters.
When asked about the value of capturing the world around us and the changes that it goes through, Dr. Funkhouser said, “It’s sort of an educational thing, but I think it helps people appreciate what we have here.”
He talked about how people often get so busy that they may not slow down to take a look at what they have around them.
Funkhouser says his favorite change on campus that he’s been able to capture was the tearing down of the old student center, what we now know today as Talley Student Union.
In his photography, he tries to document things that happen “temporarily that people will forget about” so that people 100 years from now can look back and see what came before them.
“After I’m long gone, I think that people might be using these photographs,” he said. “If you want your work to have a lasting impact on the world, photography is one way to do that. My work with photography will probably outlast any other work that I’ve done–my guess is.”
Funkhouser hopes his work causes people to see “the diversity and the beauty of the campus and take another look at all the activities that are on this campus.”
Digital Archiving
Shelly Black, Digital Archivist for NC State’s University Libraries first became interested in archiving when she got a job in an academic library whilst working a communication and marketing role.
“I was really inspired and captivated by everything that the staff in Special Collections did,” Black said.
“When I was in undergrad, I actually had no idea that the archives and special collections existed, so it was really surprising to me to learn that this resource existed and that they collected stories about regular, everyday people in the past, people that looked like me,” she said.
Black detailed, “it was really powerful and empowering to learn more about the histories of everyday people, as opposed to just the people we read about in a lot of history books or what’s taught in high school,” adding that it’s often the stories of the rich and powerful that are focused on instead.
She says this is what makes archives and special collections so great. You “get a peek into maybe a diary or the records created by people who might not be well known, but really represent what life was like for a certain identity at some point in time.”
Black’s work focuses on born-digital records, meaning records that originated in digital form. “I often work with content off of floppy disks, CDs and old hard drives.”
She spoke about the effort that goes into digital archiving saying, “Contrary to what a lot of folks might think it’s like, to preserve digital documents requires as much intervention and care as it does to preserve physical documents.” She explains by saying, “They might not be affected by humidity or rain, environmental factors like that, but because technology changes so rapidly…maybe the software changes, maybe the company that makes the software no longer exists.”
When asked what we can learn about societal or cultural progress from looking at archives, Black said that while things in the present day often feel tumultuous, “The power of having historical records is that you’re able to get the long view.”
She said having archives help us to realize how long people have been fighting for certain causes and see how things have already changed. In doing so, archives help “give you the perspective and grounding to better understand current events” and how we got to those things.
When it came to advice for those interested in learning more about archiving, Black said, “Just visit archives. No two archives are the same. We all have unique materials, and I think there’s an element of serendipity.” She says, “You never know what you can find. Even for those who work in the archives, we have such a big volume of stuff that there’s always something that surprises us or just delights us.”
Physical Archiving
Todd Kosmerick, University Archivist for NC State’s University Libraries, says his interest in archiving started while working in the library at the University of Michigan.
He worked with a lot of microfilm that had old newspapers on them and says he really enjoyed this work and “did some exploring and learned about the world of archives and decided that’s what I wanted to do.” After that he went to the University of Maryland and got a double Master’s in Library Science and History. He worked as a professional archivist in Maryland and Oklahoma before landing at NC State, where he’s been for the past 20 years.
Kosmerick says, “we can’t really understand what’s happening today unless we understand our past and the documents are key to trying to understand that.”
He says “Even though we are a STEM campus, people are still, nonetheless, very interested in the history of the institution and in the full history of the institution, its past that can be celebrated but also its past that was not always good,” adding, “we try and capture all of it in the archives.”
NC State Libraries University Archives are comprehensive, dating back to 1879 and contain reports, meeting minutes, flyers, newsletters, organizational charts, speeches, student organization records, architectural drawings, maps, motion picture films and video and audio recordings and more.
Archives can help us see the ways in which places, people and cultures change over time. From these photographs, documents and other records, we can better understand the mistakes of the past to know what to do as we move into the future.
