January 2011 Archives

Over 50 images of buildings in Richmond's historic Jackson Ward neighborhood are on display on the fourth floor of the James Branch Cabell Library as part of VCU Libraries' observance of Black History Month. The images were originally used in The Jackson Ward Historic District published by the city in 1978. The images were taken by John Zehmer and the text was provided by Richmond architectural historian Robert P. Winthrop. An online version of the book was created by VCU Libraries in 2008 as part of the library's Digital Collections.

The online collection presents the entire book as originally published, page by page. Each of the original photographic prints, scanned from the mock-up boards, is available. Each photograph is presented with the accompanying text from the original book, with additional information about the architectural style and features of the building depicted.

A small portion of the original mock-up boards with photographs of buildings in Jackson Ward, many demolished since they were taken in 1978, will be on display in the fourth floor exhibit area of the James Branch Cabell Library from now until the end of the semester. The original photographs are housed in Special Collections and Archives.

Now available online: the entire archive of the Commonwealth Times, VCU's student newspaper. This digital collection includes over 1,680 issues of the Commonwealth Times, spanning the years from 1969 through 2010. The Commonwealth Times began publishing in September 1969, at the peak of the political and social turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s. The changing cultural attitudes of those times were reflected in the newspaper and over the decades the CT has continued to try to capture the events and essence of the university. The CT continues to publish in print but is also available online.

Each issue up to the summer of 2004 has been scanned in its entirety from original print copies. Starting with September 2004, we are presenting digital archive PDFs received directly from the Commonwealth Times. The complete text of every issue is fully searchable. A text search can also be narrowed to only search front page headlines. For each issue, there is a link to a full PDF of the entire issue.

This collection is part of the VCU Libraries Digital Collections, a growing resource for the VCU and global communities.