Delbarton Yesterday

YesterdayDelbarton

By Kent Manno, Delbarton Archivist

Delbarton Archives: A Look into the Past

is article reintroduces ‘Delbarton Yesterday’ to Delbarton Today. Until his death in 2018, former Delbarton Archivist Fr. Benet Caffrey was a reliable source of interesting articles and photos. Now, the role of Delbarton Archivist is assumed by longtime faculty member Kent Manno who intends to continue Fr. Benet’s tradition.

an institution’s archivist is charged with the job of caring for and promoting its archival collection. is responsibility includes the acquisition, organization, cataloging, processing, care and accessibility of institutional archives.

anks to the opening in april 2021 of St. benedict Hall, which includes a dedicated archives hub in the building’s lower level, the Delbarton School archives will once again become an integral part of our school community.

e mission of the Delbarton archives is to appraise, collect, organize, describe, preserve and make available Schoolrelated records of permanent administrative, legal, fiscal and historical value in order to support the School’s educational mission. is support is provided to the administration and faculty, to other support departments within the School, to students in the form of educational opportunities in the archives and to outside researchers as a means of promoting the academic and historical reputation of the School.

Our Archives are the institutional memory of Delbarton School.

as part of its overall mission, the archives will continue to serve an extended community. alumni maintain old ties and build new ones with the School through ready access to the materials which document their connections. e archives refresh their knowledge about the history and mission of a place perceived by many as a significant factor in their development. e archives are also important as a constant resource, relatively unchanging in the midst of constant change, that are accessible to anyone with the desire to affirm their memories. In the quest to capture our institutional history, we rely on textual accounts, and visual and material artifacts. Clearly, institutional details can be too mundane to describe in words. Fortunately, photographs can capture otherwise lost information of our ‘visual culture’ for future generations. e abundance of historical visual data is limited only by the amount of data a human archivist can manually process.

It is my intention that the Delbarton archives will continue to add value to our community by increasing our understanding and appreciation of our past. Delbarton has some great stories to share!

Photos courtesy of Delbarton Archives