Improving the Storage Environment of the Collections in the Flavia Reed Owen Special Collections and Archives at Randolph-Macon College

FAIN: PG-263550-19

Randolph-Macon College (Ashland, VA 23005-1634)
Laurie A. Preston (Project Director: May 2018 to February 2022)

The purchase of storage furniture and preservation supplies to rehouse materials in the McGraw-Page Library’s Special Collections.  Among the unique items housed therein are an 1853 edition of Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, a rare 1860 Virginia Republic presidential ballot, and a 14^th-century Spanish illuminated manuscript.  The library’s special collections also include 2,000 rare items and volumes related to 18^th-century Italian author Giacomo Girolamo Casanova, 132 linear feet of publications documenting the intellectual life of the colonial South, and an historic archive of the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church, dating from the colonial period to the present.

The Flavia Reed Owen Special Collections and Archives in the McGraw-Page Library at Randolph-Macon College houses significant historical and literary collections. Consultant recommendations from a 2016 NEH funded grant provide the basis for this proposal to purchase materials to rehouse and stabilize the most fragile and vulnerable portions of the collections.