I decided to take this class not knowing that I would be working in the Saint Mary’s Rare Book Room. As someone who is a tad bit of a nerd and glutton for knowledge, I was so excited to enter the room and place my hands on pieces of Saint Mary’s history. When standing next to classmates in this small room, it became abundantly clear that the books themselves have made an impact on the world, our community, and the people who donated the books to our Rare Book Room. 

As magical as standing in the Book Room is, the process came with a few frustrations. I am not someone familiar with how libraries work and function. I had to learn on my feet the layout and organizational system of the Rare Book Room. Another frustration of this project was narrowing down the books that I wanted to select for this project. Before I finally narrowed my book(s) down, I spent days just walking up and down the aisles, touching the books, and trying to figure out just what items I would select. Additionally, narrowing down my selected books to pitch to my classmates was hard. What would they think? Would my books fit with the project? Ultimately, they did, but the road to getting there was anxiety-inducing--although I was pleasantly surprised with how everything turned out. My classmates liked my books, and I liked theirs. I was surprised by the differences and similarities we all had in our books; for the most part, many of us had two similar themes: education and women. 

I chose my item based on these two themes. I have spent a lot of time researching in the Saint Mary’s College's history and the Sisters of the Holy Cross archives, respectively. I began my journey of getting to know Sr. Madeleva Wolff when I picked up a copy of Gail Porter Mandell’s Madeleva: A Biography and read it back to front in the Summer of 2023. While pacing up and down the Rare Book Room aisles, I came across the Madeleva Collection. The Madeleva Collection consists of the books that sat on her bookshelf during her time at Saint Mary’s. The book I selected was Superior Generals, a book she co-authored. This book tells the story of Saint Mary’s College through the stories of the Superior Generals who were in charge of the Sisters of The Holy Cross throughout different time periods. I was particularly drawn to this book because I do a lot of work with the Sisters of the Holy Cross, which consists of recording them while they tell their stories. Essentially, my own project is similar to the Superior Generals book; both share and tell our history. 

I hope that the readers of this project take away the importance of books. Learning the story of a book that one picks up off a shelf allows people to understand that books have lives of their own and tell a separate story than what is on their pages. I hope people learn to interpret books by looking into who owned a book, where the book was produced, what time period the book was written in, and who the book's intended audience might have been.

I walked away from this project with the knowledge that it is inspiring how the physical book brings us closer to its original owner. For me, handling the copy of Superior Generals, which contained her handwriting and annotations, brought me closer to Sr. Madeleva; it allowed me to retrace her steps, bringing me closer to the stories themselves and the story of Sr. Madeleva Wolff.

Tess Hayes
Communication and Religious Studies and Theology Majors
Class of 2025