At the end of this semester I will bid a fond farewell to Shelby Balmer, my very first student employee. But before she graduates, she has a blog post to share about her time in Special Collections and Archives. Take it away, Shelby!

A photo of Shelby Balmer

My name is Shelby Balmer, and I am a Senior Religious Studies major with minors in Classical Studies and Politics and International Affairs. I began working in Special Collections & Archives in Fall 2022 under the lovely and wonderful Alayna Veasey and never looked back!

Photos of the 1567 edition of The Iliad. Text: A lot of the time the oldest, rarest, or coolest books are the most unassuming! This is our oldest copy of The Iliad by Homer (1567). I read it for class this semester and loved hunting around for different editions!

My time in Special Collections & Archives has been marked with change. I was the first student employee to work under Alayna, and whenever I describe my job, I always joke that the only surety is that there is no standard day in SCA. The last three years have been a masterclass in project and information management, communicating complicated systems and logistics, and the handling and preservation of rare books and artifacts. I shifted our American literature collection from room 631 into the SCA stacks, turning a packed storage room into an open office space. I helped establish our new basement storage in Wilson 1, inventoried everything from trophies to microfilm, and so much more. I have touched books older than this country, read materials I did not even realize existed, explored jobs and roles that most students never encounter, and somehow through it all I still have to sing the alphabet song when I’m reshelving.

Photos of the 1502 edition of Dante's Divine Comedy. Text: We use carbon copy pull slips to keep track of materials even though they never leave SCA! This was my first time ever pulling a book for myself! One of our most prized books, a 1502 copy of Dante's Divine Comedy and a personal favorite of mine!

One of the main joys about working in SCA is the level of access you get to precious materials. I am always amazed by the privilege of being able to handle texts and items predating everything around me. Our books are older than the people who handle them, the building they live in, even the university they belong to. The Special Collections & Archives staff has always supported and encouraged students to take advantage of the resources around them. On one of my very first shifts, Alayna stopped me in the middle of reshelving when I mentioned that a book looked interesting. She said, “Take a second to look at it – most people will never even know we have this!”

Throughout this blog post I have included just a few of my favorite items in our collection. The ability to wander the restricted stacks and discover and enjoy anything that catches my eye is by far my favorite of the SCA student employee perks!

Photos of the June 1972 edition of The Wake Forest Magazine. Text: My very first Special Collections find! I had a poster made to hang in my dorm room!
An unexpected benefit of my job has been serving as an unofficial ambassador for how much material Special Collections & Archives has in relation to student organizations and Wake Forest records. I have found myself advertising collections in classrooms and telling my professors about manuscripts or university records that relate to their material. I have directed students to SCA for everything from the blueprints for our campus sidewalks to the Strings Society documents. Until I worked here, I never understood how applicable artifact collections could be to everyday projects. This year I worked within my role in Student Government with our president Hannah Elluru to incorporate photographs from SCA into Founder’s Day materials.

Wake Forest is a small campus, but really what makes it feel like home is the ability to connect everything, and I have loved bringing Special Collections & Archives with me wherever I go.