From 360° Asheville School Views Magazine, Winter 2022
Asheville School’s archivist is in many ways the official keeper of the school’s memories. “I’ve been in this profession long enough to see it move from a paper and physical item environment to a digital one,” says Diana Sanderson, who catalogs and maintains more than a century of Asheville School materials. “The largest collection is photographs—from 1900 to the present. Those photos range from prints and slides to digital files.”
Among the collections, some of her favorite items include twenty-six scrapbooks created by students from 1903 to 1925, and a trove of letters from James and Willie Lee Hollandsworth during World War II. “My favorite rare item is the original 1906 musical score of ‘The Courier,’ an operetta composed by Mary Close Robinson, the music teacher at the school from 1905-08,” she says. “The photos from the play are priceless.”
Students, faculty, staff, and alumni are welcome to see for themselves. “As long as I’m here in the archives, everyone is welcome to visit,” she says. “It’s good to contact me first with a description of what you’re interested in researching. That gives me time to find relevant materials so that you can maximize your research time. And you can drop in any time if that doesn’t matter. I can pull materials pretty quickly.”