Ms. Peanut

I think this is a first. We just scanned a 74-year-old peanut in a dress. It's part of the University Archives Scrapbooks Collection, which we're digitizing this year.

Scrapbooks are always interesting candidates for scanning. They're an incredible source of social history and can provide a wealth of information about the way their "keepers" lived. In this case, the scrapbook in question was created by the State Normal and Industrial College Class of 1917. There are notes, clippings, photographs, and lots of random (and hard to identify) things made out of crepe paper and streamers.

Scrapbooks are also something of a logistical nightmare, alas. They tend to be extremely fragile--at best--and many are literally crumbling in our hands as we try to find the most gentle method of reproducing them. Documents are pasted onto other documents: folded, stacked, and inserted into envelopes. Every day brings a new challenge and we'll be writing about some of them in this space.

I thought the peanut deserved its very own post, though.

Update: That should read "a 94-year-old peanut" rather than "a 74-year-old peanut." In my younger days, I used to be able to add...