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Upon the arrival of the societal table-flipper that is the COVID-19 virus, UAlbany closed down, pushed their students out, and required employees to work remotely. This left me in a place where I had to adapt to a new form of schedule which relied entirely upon my own discipline and choice as opposed to the set structure found on campus. This change allowed me to choose where and when I wanted to work. Instead of working in the brightly lit processing room of the Department of Special Collections & Archives, I would find myself surrounded by family and in the comfort of my own home. Moreover, I would be in a place where I would not have to worry about contracting the pandemic virus. Before the pandemic, my project in the Department of Special Collections & Archives involved vetting books in our department’s stacks to potentially be transferred to the...

Exactly two weeks ago, I was working at the Archives on the reference desk, as students from a variety of classes came to look at collections that they were assigned to for projects that were due right before spring break. While the time before Spring Break is usually busy with students trying to get last minute information before they went home, this time it was different. This time, the students did not know if they would ever get the chance to come back to campus this semester. Nervous students came in, trying to gather as much information as possible, and I tried to manage the reference desk, along with my co-workers, while also being hyper aware to sanitize our hands after we pulled collections from the back or handed a researcher a photo form. This anxiety continued throughout the day, but the staff at the department greeted everyone with a...

Greetings from the University Libraries! Hi my name is Mark Wolfe and I work in the Department of Special Collections and Archives that's actually located in the Science Library. While we wait for the coast to clear again to resume our normal lives, the librarians and archivists are all still here working, but instead of face to face we're helping you online. We can assist you with research projects using historical resources such as digitized photos, digitized audio and video, and digitized documents newspapers, and books. All of these resources that are online are historical in nature. If you're interested in these, you can go to our website, the archives website, which is https://archives.albany.edu. When you get to that website all you have to do is click on a contact button and you'll be led to a form that you fill out with your question or what interest you have...

Looking back, I was most struck by how many executions in the American South had been left uncounted in the original dataset. The first state that I was assigned to create metadata for was Mississippi. While I do not have a background in the history of the death penalty, there was something that just seemed... off about the data. When I initially scanned through the execution IDs that were already in use from M. Watt Espy's dataset, I was surprised to see what I thought were relatively long gaps in the time between executions in the 19th century. Had the state really not put anyone to death between 1859 and 1875? Given the rate of executions in Mississippi during the early 20th century, this didn't seem all that likely. Had the Civil War and Reconstruction perhaps been a period of significantly lower crime rates or lenient sentences? Newspaper clipping documenting...

Having spent countless days and months reading over and documenting the Espy materials, I have a come to appreciate what he was trying to accomplish. Having collected most of his materials before the Internet and the variety and number of sources he was able to gather shows his diligence and dedication. Sometimes the execution would be no more than a passing mention in a narrators recollections. Others would be thirty documents long having been written about over and over again. Some of those executed were well know criminals like, Bonnie and Clyde while others were not considered important enough at the time to bother publishing their names. A few were "special" enough to have invitations sent and this relic may be all that is left to inform the future of this person's death. I have read many letters written to court clerks, historical societies and libraries, following up on leads...

Watt Espy kept detailed notes of the executions that he found in various newspapers, archives, books, correspondence, and prison records. While Espy's notes were often detailed, the records themselves often lacked information that helped identify the person who was being executed. Often times, the records would indicate the crime committed, when and where the execution took place, the name of the executioner, any fees that the execution produced, and sometimes they even identified the witnesses that attended the execution. Despite all of these details, the name of the person being executed was often left out. Usually if the person being executed was African American or Native American, not only would the record not contain their name, but it would also not contain their gender. This contrasted the execution records of white Americans, which usually had identifiable information including the name of the person being executed, their family, details of the...

ALBANY, N.Y. (April 30, 2019) - The University Libraries at the University at Albany, SUNY today presented the 2019 Patricia Stocking Brown Research Awards to University at Albany graduate student Elizabeth Horning and undergraduate student Joshua Levine. A first year doctoral student in the Department of Educational Policy and Leadership, School of Education, Ms. Horning received $500 for her research on Dr. Alice Green. This project, initially created by Ms. Horning for her senior Capstone project in History under the supervision of Dr. Laura Wittern-Keller, examines the interdisciplinary education of the Albany-based, social justice advocate Dr. Green and her professional activism. As a graduate student, Ms. Horning is revising this project for publication and presentation opportunities and potentially expanding it to include other contemporaneous New York activists with education backgrounds. From left to right: Dr. Laura Wittern-Keller, Elizabeth Horning, Dr. Richard Hamm, Joshua Levine, Dr. Michitake Aso

Project Page Project Announcement, April 2017 Github repository It's well past time for an update on the Espy Project. We've done a lot over the past 6 months, working to make the stories of the over 15,000 people executed by the state accessible to the public. There is still plenty to do, but we're off to a great start. Here is what we've completed so far. We've successfully digitized almost 33,000 sides of index cards and started on the over 115,000 pages of reference material. Working with an outside vendor, we shipped off 21 boxes of index cards and 46 record boxes out for scanning. All of the index cards have been completed and reviewed, as well as 3 of the 46 boxes of reference material. This gives us enough to start moving along, creating metadata, and making everything available to the public. In the past, once we receive the...

Mark Wolfe, along with fourteen UAlbany faculty and staff, was named a winner of this year's President's Excellence Award, which honors those who are "exemplary models of the outstanding performance expected from all University employees." Mark Wolfe (center) with Dean Mugridge (left) and President Stellar (right). Mark is the Curator of Digital Collections, and this November 2017 will mark his 10th anniversary since starting his job. </img>

The University Libraries at the University at Albany, SUNY today presented the 2017 Patricia Stocking Brown Fund for Feminist Social Justice Research Award to University at Albany undergraduate student Sheri Sarnoff. A dual History/Psychology major, Ms. Sarnoff received $100 for her research on attempts to establish and maintain a day care facility at the University at Albany, 1969-1983. The project, created as part of the Department of History's Senior Honors Thesis Seminar, explores the respective roles of the Women's Liberation Front, families, and the University administration in efforts to provide on-campus child care. Professors Ryan Irwin and Kori Graves of the Department of History serve as faculty advisors to this project. Ms. Sarnoff expects to receive her Bachelor of Arts degree in May 2018. Sheri Sarnoff (center) with Professors Ryan Irwin (left) and Kori Graves of the Department of History. The annual Award honors Professor Patricia Stocking Brown, who taught...