Mission
The Rose Archives contributes to the Drake Library Mission and Vision. More specifically, the Rose Archives exists to collect, preserve, and make findable information and artifacts that tell the story of the State University of New York at Brockport and its predecessor schools, from inception through the present day.
Location
The Rose Archives is housed on the ground floor of the Drake Memorial Library on the campus of SUNY Brockport, 350 New Campus Drive, Brockport, NY 14420.
Collections
- University Archives - Digital and physical records, photographs, ephemera, and multimedia materials documenting the history of the university, its departments and schools.
- Brockport Theses - Master’s theses written by graduate students of SUNY Brockport
- Cornell Collection – Autographed copies of books, mostly by visiting authors at Writers Forum events.
- Edwards Collection - Scarce or rare monographic works published in the United States before 1866 or published elsewhere before 1801 or part of a limited edition or has value as an artifact (e.g., example of a binding, printing, or illustrations, typographic style, etc.), even if not scarce or scarce and extremely expensive to replace.
- Holmes Collection - Books written by Mary Jane Holmes, a nationally famous 19th century Brockport author.
- Local History Collection - Focuses on western Monroe County, NY (village of Brockport, towns of Chili, Clarkson, Gates, Hamlin, Parma, Ogden, Sweden, and Wheatland), plus Orleans and Genesee counties (including Batavia, Holley, etc.). Much of the local history collection is in the circulating part of the library, and the most rare or fragile items in the Rose Archives for restricted access.
- Writers Forum video and audio collection – These recordings preserve the events held by the long running English Department lecture and discussion series started in 1967. The collection contains more than 400 interviews, readings, and discussions of writers’ craft with major contemporary authors.
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Manuscript Collections
- The D.S. Morgan Collection: business papers of the D.S. Morgan Company, a local reaper manufacturer from Brockport. A finding guide, detailing what the collection contains, is available.
- The Sutphin Civil War Papers: a collection, from a locally organized regiment, of quartermaster reports and correspondence during the war regarding horses and supplies needed by the company, as well as correspondence with veterans and their families after the war regarding pensions and reunions. A finding aid is available. This collection is fragile and requires special handling.
- The Grade Collection: children’s books hand-written and illustrated by Brockport students for a Children’s Literature course taught by Arnold Grade, English professor, in the 1970’s. Some are becoming fragile as the glue holding cut-out page elements is drying out.
History of the University Archive Collection
The earliest origin of today’s University Archive collection is with the catalogs, meeting minutes, and correspondence held in the principal’s office of the Brockport Normal School in the 1930’s. These materials stemmed from the school’s predecessor, Brockport Collegiate Institute. At some point these materials became housed in the college library, perhaps after the move from the old Normal building into Hartwell Hall when the school became a State Teacher’s College in 1942. From Hartwell, the library and the archives moved to Rakov and then to the current Drake Memorial Library building, opened in 1974.
In about 1980, an Archives Committee was formed that reviewed the state of archives. In their report, the collections were scattered among several departments of the library, and their methods of arrangement varied. Later in the 1980s, the materials were gathered in an area on the ground floor of the library, near where they currently reside.
In 1990, the new serials librarian and part time archivist took on the monumental task of rearranging the existing materials into one cohesive collection organized into Record Groups, Subgroups, and Series, utilizing archival standards of the time. This arrangement schema is how we find items in the collection today.
A ribbon ceremony in 2010 celebrated an expanded space for the archives so it could contain both a reading room area and a processing area. Then in 2014, this valuable resource was rededicated as The Rose Archives, in honor of a generous donor. In 2024-25, new online finding aids for each of the record groups are being created to increase the online searchability of the extensive collection’s physical and digital resources.
Contact
If you are interested in visiting the archives for research, please read our Reading Room Guidelines. To make an appointment to visit or to ask a question, the Rose Archives can be contacted using email archives@brockport.edu.