As part of the continuing celebration of the 175th anniversary of the South Caroliniana Library, visual materials archivist Beth Bilderback gave a presentation Tuesday on the library's work to archive the architectural history of South Carolina. This was the third in a series of presentations by library staff highlighting aspects of the library's collections as part of the anniversary celebrations.
Bilderback focused on the works of multiple well-known South Carolina architectural firms whose drawings and other papers are part of the library's visual materials collection, including Lafaye, Lafaye & Associates; Lyles, Bissett, Carlilse & Wolff; G. Thomas Harmon; and Robert E. Marvin.
While Bilderback focused in this presentation on the architectural aspects of the visual materials collection, she also noted that the collection includes various other resources.
"We have the architectural records, we have the photographs, we have original artwork which includes portraits, oil paintings, water colors and things like that," Bilderback said. "We have lithographs, engravings, postcards..."
Bilderback spoke in her address of projects by past USC students that utilized the architectural archives, and she also clarified that while the collections are currently off-site in order to accommodate renovations to the library, they are still available to the public, including students.
"Our collections are available," she said. "As with everything in our library right now nothing is on-site, so a lot of the material is described in the online catalog so, especially the photographs and the postcards, so they can find things that way. For the other materials [the public] need to contact me to get together and maybe talk about what they're looking for and then make arrangements to figure out the best way for them to use those materials."