Special Collections & Archives: Mini Collections

What has been your COVID-19 Experience at Whittier College?

Wardman Library continues to collect the experiences of the Whittier College community during the COVID-19 pandemic. We want to archive and share the stories, photographs, videos, and other documents of your experience. While we have returned to campus, the impact of COVID-19 continues. 

If you have been a part of the Whittier College community between March 2020 and now--we want to document your experience!

Please take a look at what we currently have in our COVID-19 @ Whittier College Archive and contact us if you are interested in learning more.

What should I save and send?

• Whatever you are thinking, experiencing, or observing about the pandemic. Historical events are often lacking documentation from personal perspectives, so we want to collect information that reflects that point of view! If it's important enough to you to record in your day-to-day life, it's important enough to be collected in the archive.
• Writing: diary entries, reflections, opinions, correspondence, assignments and essays, etc.
  • Please submit as a PDF or Word document
• Photographs
  • In JPG or TIFF format
• Videos
  • In MP4 and MP3 formats

What will the Library do with my materials?

• You materials will be recorded under your name, as well as that of any co-creators.
• The materials will then be made available in the Poet Commons,  Whittier College's digital repository. They are then publicly accessible for use in scholarship, as well as forming a record of institutional history.  

Note about privacy

• This is a public project-- if you have information you don't want the world to know, don't share it.
  • You also have the option to contribute anonymously.
• Consider carefully before sharing your personal medical information, or that of others, in your observations.

Questions?

• Who can submit content?
  • Any student, faculty, or staff.
• How do I submit content?
  • Begin by contacting us at library@whittier.edu.

Zilpha Snyder, nee Keatley, was born in 1927. She graduated from Whittier College in 1948 and taught elementary school until 1962. During this time, she married Larry Allan Snyder and the couple had two biological children and one adopted child. In 1998, Snyder received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Whittier College. She is best known for her authorship of children's books, including the Newbery Honor award-winning books The Egypt Game, The Headless Cupid, and The Witches of Worm. She died of a stroke in 2014.

Search this collection via the library CATALOG or our Finding Aid.

Clyde F. Baldwin, a Whittier resident, travelled with twenty-one other men in north-western Alaska on a gold hunting expedition from 1898 to 1899. Anna Hunnicutt lived in the Alaska territory as a missionary of the Whittier Friends Church for much of her young adulthood. Additionally, Anna’s mother encountered the crew of the Penelope in 1898. The Baldwin Collection is composed of two hundred 4”x5” gelatin dry-plate glass negatives made by Clyde F. Baldwin during the prospecting tour, a set of papers listing the captions of the photos, and a set of scanned letters from Quaker missionaries in Alaska.

View digitized items from this collection here.

William Somerset Maugham (1874-1965) was a queer playwright and author known for his raw depictions of wartime and working-class life. He served as an ambulance driver during World War Two and was a member of the British Secret Service. The W. S. Maugham Collection consists of books written by William Somerset Maugham, as well as papers written by and pertaining to him.

Search this collection via the library CATALOG or our Finding Aid.