Library as muse
Students draw from Trinity library’s special collections to produce original creations

by Brianna Diaz

In the spring of 2012, the Watkinson Library introduced a semester-long, self-directed creative fellowship program for undergraduate students. The Watkinson Library Creative Fellowships were established to help students from a variety of academic disciplines produce original creative projects inspired by materials in the library’s special collections.

The Watkinson, located in the Raether Library and Information Technology Center, is available to the Trinity community and the general public as a resource for research. It houses Trinity’s rare book and special collections department, as well as the College Archives. The Watkinson holds more than 175,000 printed and manuscript volumes ranging from the 11th century to the present, 4,000 linear feet of manuscript and archival material, 25,000 pieces of sheet music (1720-1950), over 5,000 sound recordings, and thousands of maps, prints, broadsides, postcards, greeting cards, trade cards, ballad sheets, playbills, and posters.

The students who were awarded fellowships this past spring were given a stipend to execute their work and were advised along the way by Richard Ring, head curator and librarian at the Watkinson. “My thought was to create a fellowship program for undergraduates that would give them a chance to browse special collection shelves and create their own artistic projects,” Ring says. “My hope is to set a national trend encouraging undergraduates to use the collections not only for academic research, but for creative projects as well.”

The resulting student projects took a variety of forms, ranging from printed poetry to Web-based narratives to musical and film compositions. The fellows presented their projects at a reception held in May of this year. The Reporter interviewed them following their presentations. All of the projects may be found on the Web at http://digitalrepository.trincoll.edu/fellows/.

"The Watkinson fellowship gives you the space to do anything. You learn how to undertake and complete a large independent project. What sparked my imagination were the diary collections. Two of my favorites were from a schoolgirl and a widow. They had remarkable commonalities despite being at very different life stages. Both were completely open with their thoughts and honestly expressed their daily struggles. Initially I wanted to create a one-person performance piece, but Richard Ring encouraged me to test out film. I combined the honesty of the diaries and opinion essays from the 1800s and early 1900s with my own experiences. I added music and a narrative to create a new “diary entry” that reflects a modern life that isn’t too different from the past.”

Perin Adams ’13
Watkinson Anonymous Alumna Fellow
Majors: English literature and economics
Project: A 10-minute short film on silence, sound, and the general tensions in daily life.

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