Woodstock College Archives
Collection
Identifier: WTL-19761101
Access to the Archives is governed by the Maryland Province and is subject to all Library and Special Collections policies and procedures in addition to the specific guidelines below. These guidelines are a summary of access policies -- the Archives may include materials that fall outside the scope of these general guidelines. For information on access to specific materials, please contact the Special Collections staff.
Guidelines:
1. All Archives materials dated or bearing solely on events occurring before January 1, 1940, shall be open for review unless otherwise restricted, subject to Library policies and procedures.
2. All unpublished Archives materials dated or bearing solely on events occurring on or after January 1, 1940, shall be open for review upon request subject to a decision by the Provincial or someone designated by the Provincial.
3. Researchers may quote from the materials.
4. Researchers may take their own photographs of the material for scholarly and research purposes. Allowing photographs is not an authorization to publish or to deposit the material in another library or archive.
5. Written permission from the Maryland Province is required for the publication of substantive portions of any material or publication-quality reproductions of any material.
6. Material not yet processed is not available to researchers; permission will not be granted to access any unprocessed material.
7. Audiovisual, microfilm and other material in the Archives, the original of which is held in another archive, may be consulted and transcribed only. Written permission from the archive holding the original material is required for any duplication, reproduction, or publication of that material.
8. Use the Permission Request Form to request permission (i) to access any restricted processed material or (ii) to publish reproductions or quote substantive portions of the material. Send the completed form by email to the Booth Family Center for Special Collections (speccoll@georgetown.edu).
Woodstock College was founded in 1869 in the township of Woodstock, MD. The college served the Maryland Province of Jesuits, and later the Maryland-New York Province, as the scholasticate for Jesuits under formation. During its tenure (1869-1974), it was the intellectual center of American Jesuit scholarship, with theologians such as John Courtney Murray, Gustave Weigel, Avery Dulles, Joseph Fitzmyer, and Walter Burkhardt counted among its ranks. It was also a hub of Jesuit information, with a printing press and publications, such as the Woodstock Letters, that served to communicate Jesuit activity amongst the society.
Due to generational changes within the society stemming from Vatican II, and a move towards city involvement, Woodstock relocated to New York City from 1970 to 1974. The college closed its doors at the end of this period, as the American Assistancy chose to consolidate its scholasticates, closing a number of other such institutions. With the closure of that incarnation, the Woodstock Library and archives were moved to Georgetown University, Washington, DC, to serve as the research resource for the newly established Woodstock Theological Center, a think tank that continued the legacy of Woodstock until its closure in 2013.
300 Linear Feet
English
The titles for each resource are taken from a card catalog developed while Woodstock College was located in Maryland (a scheme used in other East Coast Jesuit archives). Each resource begins with a classification of the form: Roman numeral, cap letter, hyphen, Arabic decimal number, small letter, and then includes within the title whatever titular information was offered on each resource paper card. (e.g., IIB-3.4c: Provincial conference - 1894). For each resource, the box and file number(s) of a later storing of the collection are entered under AT's Instances type and label. Thus one alphanumeric entry might have two or more folders, as in IA-3.1a is now boxed in folders 4 through 7. The collection remains topically organized according to its original alphanumerical/title scheme; its resources are retrievable by the box - folder listings. Also there are some shelf list entries with no corresponding resource among the box - folders and some folders with proper alphanumeric titles that are lacking shelf-list cards. In either case the discrepancy will be cited in the resource title within brackets.
Part of the Woodstock Theological Center Library Archives Repository