The Hood Special Collections and Archive holds materials from most of our presidents, offices around campus, student groups, faculty and alumni. Although these materials do not represent all of the papers generated by a single person or office, they provide exciting and informative glimpses into Hood College from its beginnings to the present. Also in the archive are Hood publications, a photograph and film collection and several special book collections. The book collections include books owned and used by the Woman’s College of Frederick (Hood before the name change) and the Frederick Female Seminary, and a juvenile special collection of older books. Also in the archive are books related to Hood College, Frederick County and the surrounding region, the Civil War, the Reformed Church and travel in the United States.
The Hood Special Collections and Archive has existed in some form from the very early days of the College. Special collections were known maintained by the Joseph Henry Apple librarians. The papers and artifacts that now make up the archive were gathered together and held in the basement of the Joseph Henry Apple Library, in what an area called “the cage.” Apparently this really was a caged off area where old records and artifacts were kept; if students worked on projects that pertained to Hood history, they had to dig amongst the boxes piled in the cage. This was neither good for the documents or the students so, when the new library was planned, a group of faculty and staff interested in preserving Hood’s historic materials advocated for and received a dedicated archive space in the Beneficial-Hodson Library. Prior to the Apple Library, the papers were either maintained in individual offices or in the small library located in Alumnae Hall.
It should be noted that the JFK Assassination Archive is another archive on campus and not related to the Hood Special Collections and Archive. It holds several private collections of government documents and other public records related to the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and Senator Robert F. Kennedy. Most of the documents are digitally scanned and available at the Harold Weisberg Archive website, which is owned and maintained by Hood College.
