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Sep 30 2024

Curation in real time: the scrapbooks that tell our ‘Hawkeye Histories’

Posted byNatalee DawsonPosted inUncategorized

When Dr. Jennifer Sterling set out to create the fall 2024 Main Library Gallery exhibit, Hawkeye Histories | Sporting Stories, she chose to include a handful of scrapbooks from the Iowa Women’s Archives and the University Archives at the University of Iowa Libraries. These items add a personal touch to the exhibition, showing how Hawkeye student-athletes perceived their own endeavors. Here, we break down what makes scrapbooks such lively additions to the archives.

Image of a scrabook featuring a black and white photo of students running track circa the 1920s.
Julius Hecker’s scrapbook is a favorite of Matrice Young, student life archivist, who says “most photographs…get their own wonder.” [RG30.0001.034]
Image of a scrabook featuring a black and white photo of students running track circa the 1920s.
Julius Hecker’s scrapbook is a favorite of Matrice Young, student life archivist, who says “most photographs…get their own wonder.” [RG30.0001.034]
Image of a scrabook featuring a black and white photo of students running track circa the 1920s.
Julius Hecker’s scrapbook is a favorite of Matrice Young, student life archivist, who says “most photographs…get their own wonder.” [RG30.0001.034]

What is an athletic scrapbook?

An athlete’s scrapbook may contain items like photographs, newspaper clippings, team rosters, and keepsakes like ribbons and miniature pennants. Handwritten notes, captions, and long-lost inside jokes can also be found among these pages.

Because they were so deliberately arranged by their creators, scrapbooks are almost exhibitions unto themselves. The way pages are arranged offers additional opportunities for athletes’ accomplishments to shine, showing which moments received top billing. Matrice Young, student life archivist, says that her favorite scrapbook in the exhibit belongs to Julius Hecker (BA ’12). “I like that most photographs get their own page, and as such, get their own wonder,” Young says.

A person opens a scrapbook and shows various undiscernable clippings collected between two pages.
Scrapbooks like this one from the IWA’s Department of Physical Education Records contain a wide variety of materials, creating an almost three-dimensional effect. [IWA0106]
A person opens a scrapbook and shows various undiscernable clippings collected between two pages.
Scrapbooks like this one from the IWA’s Department of Physical Education Records contain a wide variety of materials, creating an almost three-dimensional effect. [IWA0106]
A person opens a scrapbook and shows various undiscernable clippings collected between two pages.
Scrapbooks like this one from the IWA’s Department of Physical Education Records contain a wide variety of materials, creating an almost three-dimensional effect. [IWA0106]
A scrapbook featuring two photos of students using bows and arrows during the 1940s.
This scrapbook was curated by the Archery Club during the 1940s—a rare coeducational sport. [IWA0106]
A scrapbook featuring two photos of students using bows and arrows during the 1940s.
This scrapbook was curated by the Archery Club during the 1940s—a rare coeducational sport. [IWA0106]
A scrapbook featuring two photos of students using bows and arrows during the 1940s.
This scrapbook was curated by the Archery Club during the 1940s—a rare coeducational sport. [IWA0106]

Filling the margins

Scrapbooks offer unique insight into how their makers viewed the subject matter in real time. By arranging images, text, and other significant materials on the page, scrapbookers were engaging in a small-scale curation of their contemporary world. “[Scrapbooks] reflect what was important to their creators and what they thought was important to preserve,” says Sterling.

Sterling likes to draw visitors’ attention to the Archery Club scrapbook, which offers a rare look at a coeducational sport during the 1940s. In its pages, men and women compete against one another, practice together, and belong to the same team.

Long before Title IX began to address inequality in university athletics, members of women’s teams were already at work documenting their own stories. Women’s club sports like fencing had particularly comprehensive scrapbooks, which Sterling says has helped to keep their memories alive. “The histories we are able to tell about early women’s sports at Iowa are largely due to the detailed documentation the association and their clubs maintained, and the Iowa Women’s Archives’ (IWA) careful preservation of them.”

Taking a page out of their book

Anna Holland, associate curator for the IWA, hopes that today’s students will take inspiration from the scrapbooks of the past, even if their curation takes a different (likely digital) form. “I hope that current students will move with intention to save what matters to them so we will all have it to look back on in the future.”