Welcome to the Clayton State University Archives
About the Archives
The University Archives acts as the official archival repository for Clayton State University. The Archives is charged with the responsibility of preserving the documentary and artifactual heritage of the University, serving as the collective memory of the institution.
University Archives
The University Archives principal collections document the activities of Clayton State University through historical, legal, fiscal, and administrative records of value to the institution. These collections also document the teaching, research, community service, and student life of the campus community. Access to these collections provide information that assist in the understanding of the institution’s origins, goals, and academic programs through historic records that document University policies, students, faculty, staff, institutional achievements, and events.
Special Collections
Special Collections encompasses groups of irreplaceable and rare items that detail aspects of the local community, along with housing collections of vintage publications. Materials include rare and signed books, the Morrow Civic Woman’s Club Collection, vintage academic textbooks, the Harold C. Bunner Papers “Letters to Home from World War II”, and the Scott Evans Collection.
Search the Archives
The finding aid acts as an inventory that describes and lists the contents of collections and information about the person, family, or organization that created the collection. Through this site, you can search and browse these finding aids for many collections available for research.
Visitors to the CSU Archives catalog may find it helpful to learn about various collections held in the Archives by selecting the “Record Group” in the navigation ribbon at the top of the page. The “Record Group” view gives you access to the Special Collections and University Archives Record Groups. By selecting a specific Record Group, you will gain access to finding aids for the collections, series, and subgroups for collections held in each Record Groups’ repository.
If you are looking for specific collection or materials, researchers can use the text boxes to filter searches by search term, record type, search field type, and date ranges. Researchers can also use the top ribbon to limit searches by Collection, Subject, Names, and Digital Materials.
- Filter by Collection: access finding aids for all collections in the Clayton State University Archives.
- Filter by Digital Material: access born-digital and digitized materials in the Clayton State Archives. Please note that many items in the Clayton State University Archives exist only as physical items and may not have digital surrogates.
- Filter by Subjects or Names: access-controlled vocabularies for topical themes and names found in the Clayton State University Archives.
Searching a Collection
The main page for a selected collection or archival material is known as the Finding Aid. The Finding Aid provides the researcher with a general overview of a collection.
- Collection Overview tab: provides contextual information about the collection, generally including provenance, scope and content, subjects, biographical information, access policies, etc.
- Collection Organization tab: describes the collection’s hierarchical organization. Hierarchies generally include a combination of series, boxes, files, or items. The right-side bar on the page outlines this same information.
For further assistance, the contact information for the Archives is located at the bottom of each finding aid’s page under Repository Details.