A new resource is now available online to help you get a glimpse into Hope College’s past. In addition to print collections in the Joint Archives of Holland and Van Wylen, the library now has a digitized collection of many images of life at Hope in a database called Image Collections @ Hope College. This resource currently has over 400 images in Student life, History of Science, and Nykerk Cup Competition collections.
Christine Cho, a Metadata Librarian at Van Wylen has been working with Geoffrey Reynolds from the Joint Archives of Holland to add historical images to Image Collections. Currently, Cho is using Envisioning Hope College, a collection of letters written from A.C. Van Raalte to Phillip Phelps in the early years of Hope’s existence, to help prepare another collection of historical images for inclusion in the database.
Though Image Collections @ Hope College is in its early stages right now, eventually the site will have even more image collections that will be helpful to students. One collection that is planned is a group of images from the history of Holland.
“Hopefully we get a lot more content up there, so students find it useful for their research and faculty can also use it in their teaching,” Cho said.
— Bethany Stripp, Library Student Blogger
This is great, particularly the upcoming letters and Holland photos. Once completed, I hope the organizers will allow contributors to submit images to be considered for possible inclusion, especially to round-out collection sub-categories that may be small.