A new book Sweet Briar College (Arcadia Publishing, 2015) is a photographic account of the campus from its days as a southern plantation to the present day when it is a college for women. Many of the 200 photographs in the collection are from the college’s archives and have never been published before.
The book is authored by Lynn Rainville, a research professor and director of the Tusculum Institute at Sweet Briar College, and Lisa Johnson, a former librarian at the college who is now director of library services at Eckerd College in Florida. The authors are donating part of the funds raised from the sale of the book to the college “to ensure another 115 years of educating women.”
The book project was in the works last spring when the board of trustees voted to close the institution. Fundraising by an alumni group saved the college from closing its doors. Professor Rainville said, “I wanted to do something to promote Sweet Briar’s unique history and to ensure that if, God forbid, it closed, that people would be interested in preserving her history, both physical – historical buildings, photographs, and artifacts – and immaterial – stories and traditions.”