The Flavia Reed Owen Special Collections and Archives unit of McGraw-Page Library houses several significant historical and literary collections in addition to preserving the historic archives of the college. Flavia Reed Owen was the much beloved College Librarian from 1946-1984.
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College Archives
The Randolph-Macon College Archives include materials dating from the founding of the college to the present, including books, documents and papers, publications, newspapers, microfilm and microfiche, drawings, photographs, scrapbooks, blueprints, film and audio recordings, and objects and artifacts.
Virginia Methodism
Special Collections houses the historic archive of the Virginia Conference of the United Methodist Church. The collection documents the history and growth of the Church in Virginia starting in the colonial period through the present. This collection includes books, papers, documents, publications, diaries, photographs, maps, paintings, church silver, filmstrips and projectors, and numerous other types of objects and artifacts.
The Herald-Progress Collection
McGraw-Page Library holds the 40,000 piece archive of the local newspaper, the Hanover Herald-Progress, which includes primarily photographs, but also contains many documents, articles, histories, and memoirs documenting the history of Hanover County, Virginia, and the Town of Ashland from colonial times to the present.
The Davis Collection: Intellectual Life in the Colonial South
The Library has the 4,000 volume personal book and journal collection of Richard Beale Davis, an R-MC alumnus who won the National Book Award in 1978 for his seminal work, Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, 1585-1763.
The Collections of J. Rives Childs
J. Rives Childs, a 1912 R-MC graduate, worked as a code breaker during WWI and his papers include correspondence, memoranda, and reports relating to deciphering of German codes during World War I. He also was a bibliophile and during his years in the Foreign Serivce, he collected extensively, bequeathing his personal collections of editions of Casanova, Henry Miller, and Restif de la Bretonne to the library.
The Casanova Collection
The J. Rives Childs Collection of Casanoviana is one of the world’s most extensive collections of rare editions of Casanova’s Memoires. The collection consists of over 2000 items including numerous rare volumes in many languages. In addition to the Memoires and writings of Casanova, the collection contains numerous bibliographies, biographies, sales catalogs, correspondence, playbills, and illustrations.
The Henry Miller Collection
Mr. Childs’ extensive correspondence with the author Henry Miller as well as a large collection of Miller’s works compose the core of this collection, which also includes other writers and artists who came within Miller's orbit. |
