The Guardian of GW’s History: Inside the University Archives with Brigette Kamsler

January 10, 2025

Authored by:

Greg Varner

University Archivist Brigette Kamslerhas a story to tell-thousands of them, in fact-and many of them are about the history of the George Washington University. From her office in the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) of Gelman Library, Kamsler is the curator and caretaker of GW's historical records, a job she has held for the past six years. Name a topic, and Kamsler can likely point you to documents or other objects in the SCRC that will enrich your research.

All of SCRC's collections, including the university archives, are open to the public, and they are in regular, active use, occasionally even attracting researchers from other countries. Roughly a third of the contents in the collection have to do specifically with GW, Kamsler said, but scholars researching topics of national interest or Washington, D.C., history in general will also find a rich trove of information. GW also maintains the records of the National Education Association and collects labor history, particularly the records of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters.

"The University Archives is the official repository for the university," Kamsler said, "so we have the duty and authority to collect and preserve its history and to make it available."

The archives document every part of the university in one way or another. If you want to search the university's administrative records or read an old issue of the GW Hatchet, the archives can help. There are also copies of the Cherry Tree yearbook and other publications. When the Corcoran School moved under GW's umbrella, all of its materials came with it. Or you may be curious about the merger of the National University School of Law with GW Law. Or perhaps you're interested in the Mount Vernon Seminary and College that once occupied the Mount Vernon campus. Information on these and countless other topics awaits.

Kamsler earned an undergraduate degree in history, but a part-time job in her undergraduate university's archives persuaded her to pursue a master's degree in library science and become an archivist by profession.

"I'm working with history, not just learning about it. I'm making it available for people," Kamsler said. "It's like history in action instead of just reading about it in a book. Being able to work with the actual historical documents-that's what I like."

No group uses the archives more than students. Faculty members often have their classes make use of the materials.

"We have students from a variety of classes across the university," Kamsler said. For example, students in an American studies course may want to research student protests on college campuses in the 1960s. Students in the First-Year Experience course in Columbian College of Arts and Sciences are required to complete a research project in the archives. "This year, we had 1,300 undergraduates come through in about two weeks," Kamsler said.

Given the yearly turnover of students, Kamsler said, part of her job is to engage in regular outreach with various groups on campus. She can provide advice on how to care for records and help groups transfer records to the University Archives. Faculty, staff and administrators can also ask for advice on how to transfer their records.

People are often surprised, Kamsler said, by how complete the university's historical records are after more than 200 years of the institution's existence. (The archives were established in 1968.)

Nonetheless, she said, there are silences in the archives (and this is true of archives in general), either because people didn't want to transfer their records or because the materials and the people being documented weren't seen as important enough to maintain. The fact that so many records today are in digital form adds a new layer of complexity to preservation.

"It's a lot harder to keep an email or a digital document and continually transfer it forward, take care of it on a computer or a server," Kamsler said. People might assume that digital records are safer, but servers can fail, and technology changes rapidly, she added. "I'm not worried about these older things that are 200 years old. I'm more worried about our records now. People aren't seeing a pile of papers in their office and thinking, 'I should give those to the university archives.' They have records on their computer. Somebody retires or gets another job and their computer's turned into IT and wiped clean."

Technological changes of this sort will affect the archive profession, Kamsler said, noting that she is already experiencing the effects of the digital revolution.

"I still get a good amount of paper records, but I get more and more digital records transferred to us," she said. "We do what we can. There are standards for taking care of paper. We know exactly how to do it. We know temperature and humidity handling, all that stuff. But digital protocols change so rapidly over the months and years that we're just doing the best that we can."

GW Today asked Kamsler to briefly describe a few of the items pertaining to university history that can be found in the archives. She began with the first book of minutes of the GW Board of Trustees. (There are now more than 30 bound volumes of these minute books.) It contains a handwritten copy of the act to incorporate the Columbian College in the District of Columbia. It also contains a record of the school's first commencement ceremony in December 1824, attended by President John Quincy Adams and the Marquis de Lafayette, among other distinguished guests.

The archives contain documents relating to the name changes undergone by GW, which began on Meridian Hill as Columbian College and then, in the 1870s, became Columbian University. In 1904, the George Washington Memorial Association offered to fund a new building named for George Washington in the Van Ness area and relocate the campus to it. But the agreement fell apart; there was no new building and no money. Nonetheless, the university's name was changed, and GW soon moved to Foggy Bottom, where it has been ever since.

On college campuses, student activism generally comes with the territory. GW is no exception, as the archives prove. Archival copies of the Hatchet and the Cherry Tree yearbook contain information about student efforts surrounding the naming of the University Student Center, which was built in 1970. At that time, students pushed for a name commemorating the recent shooting by the National Guard of students at Kent State University in Ohio. The widow of Cloyd H. Marvin, then the recently deceased former GW president, donated money to the university and asked that the new student center be named in honor of her late husband. Students objected, given his bigoted views, which are demonstrated in his archival records. Because of the evidence of these records, Kamsler said, "the building was renamed in 2021. These materials may be decades old, but they can still make change." Some of the materials about the naming controversy can be viewed online.

Not all student activism is progressive. In February 1858, students of Columbian College, as GW was then known, asked the faculty to take a position on slavery. "It was a Southern school, and the students were actually more pro-slavery and the faculty were more antislavery," Kamsler said.

The Hatchet and other archival documents are rich sources of information on multiple topics. The Hatchet can be helpful to people researching subjects ranging from student protest to the history of science on campus. GW was known as a center of innovation in medicine and science, Kamsler said, in part because it hosted a physics conference at which the splitting of the atom was announced by Niels Bohr.

The School of Medicine and Health Sciences, which celebrated its bicentennial in 2024, has a distinguished history. After an attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan, the injured president was treated at GW Hospital.

Researchers interested in GW history will also find materials relating to the other universities or colleges that became part of GW. Benjamin Franklin University, formerly the Pace Institute, merged in 1987 with GW within the School of Business. As mentioned above, the Mount Vernon Seminary and College, a women's school founded in 1875, became part of GW in 1999. Some of its course catalogs and other materials are in the University Archives. Interested researchers will find materials on these topics and on the merger of National University with GW Law.

Before and after it became part of GW in 2014, the Corcoran School enjoyed a rich history. Its archives are now in Gelman Library, including documents about a symposium held in 1978 titled "Photography: Where We Are," attended by Susan Sontag and other noted critics and curators including Jane Livingston, Joel Snyder, Rosalind Krauss and Hilton Kramer.