The archives are a place where civilization is preserved. A place where the past will survive into the future. A place for people to learn and remember about things that happened, and apply it.
History fades when no one saves it. At Bridgewater Stare University, Eric Morris, ’26, is helping make sure it doesn’t — a passion rooted in his early fascination with how the past shapes the present.
The history major is doing so under the guidance of BSU’s senior librarian Orson Kingsley as an archival intern, not only learning about the institution’s past but also archiving regional history and cataloguing special collections.
Eric’s interest in history was sparked long before the internship, by teachers who explained it in a way that helped him make connections between the past and how the world is today and inspired him to want to dig deeper.
“History is endlessly fascinating,” he said. “Even when you learn one thing, it makes you want to learn more. It’s an endless rabbit hole.”
As an intern, he’s been working in the archives on the third floor of BSU’s Maxwell Library.
One of his first tasks was digitizing the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League Collection housed in the library’s Archives & Special Collections, using the scanning machine to upload documents to give online access to researchers looking for information about the league.
Eric is currently working on a large map collection donated to the school, mostly by local residents. He uploads the metadata into finding aids on BSU's ArchivesSpace website.
“Some of the maps were donated to us; some were rescued — one was even found in a dumpster,” he said.
The maps have also revealed more of the university’s background.
“I’ve seen banners from when it was founded as the Normal School and evolved over time. We also have a couple of maps made by students from the 1930s,” he said. “I haven’t found anything too surprising, but it’s been very gratifying and intriguing.”
Before Eric took part in the internship, his main goal was to become a historian, and to write journals and books. And while that’s still of interest to him, he also thinks becoming an archivist is a possibility.
“I already understood how important history is. But now, working within the archives, I really get it,” he said. “The past does not exist outside of human memory and surviving records. Once something has happened, if there are no records of it for people in the future to access, then, to them, it might as well have never happened, because they’ll never be able to know that it did.”
Because of this, Eric said, it’s important to leave a paper trail for generations to come.
“The archives are a place where civilization is preserved,” he said. “A place where the past will survive into the future. A place for people to learn and remember about things that happened, and apply it.”
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