The Quiet Keepers of History
A Look Inside TCU's Special Collections
He grew up hearing that his grandfather was the composer of TCU's alma mater.
But it wasn't until Dan Shepherd found himself in Fort Worth covering the killing of Atatiana Jefferson by a Fort Worth police officer that he understood the unique role his grandfather, Glen Canfield played in TCU's history.
Shepherd found his family's legacy preserved in the quiet halls of Texas Christian University’s Special Collections archives.
“He was pretty much there at the infancy of the campus,” said Shepard when discussing his grandfather's time at TCU.
The discovery connected him to the university in a way he had never expected. What started as reporting on tragedy became an encounter with family legacy.
That sense of connection is exactly what TCU’s Special Collections hopes to preserve. Tucked inside the university library system, the archives house hundreds of thousands of historical materials documenting the University, Fort Worth, and broader global histories.
"You go in the archives and get an immediate sense of the university’s history. You also get a sense of gratitude knowing that you’ve got a family member that was a part of that."
The Archives
The mission statement for TCU’s archives is “to collect, preserve, and provide access to historical materials for the campus community and the public, ” said Mary Saffel, director of the special collections.
But beyond preserving materials, special collections serve as a place for research and a memory bank for the university community.
Mary Safell's Office nameplate located in Special Collections. (Photo by Lea Caldwell/TCU 360)
Mary Safell's Office nameplate located in Special Collections. (Photo by Lea Caldwell/TCU 360)
“I kind of lead the department,” said Saffel, who has been with special collections since 2013 and was present for a lot of the library's architectural and cultural changes, especially within her own department.
“When I first started, the library had not been renovated,” said Saffel. “I think I worked for maybe six months in our old space, and that old space really could not accommodate large classes. It was very small.”
“When we underwent the renovation, that was a huge change.”
Saffel describes the newly designed spaced made it possible to host large classes, visiting researchers,and events.
After the renovation, TCU’s archives were more active and took on a bigger role within the library.
Photo by Ethelea Caldwell/ TCU 360
Photo by Ethelea Caldwell/ TCU 360
“We keep records of changes that have happened,” said Saffel, explaining that they even kept records of the Special Collections as it experienced the renovations. “We call it the archives of the archive.”
TCU’s Special Collections was not always a place of historical preservation. Its origins track back to a single donation that transformed the university’s ability to preserve rare historical materials. In the 1950s, William Luther Lewis, a wealthy Chicago businessman began a rare book collection.
“When he passed away, that collection came to TCU,” said Saffel.
This collection would form the solid foundation that would lead to thousands of volumes of unique archives.
Issues within the archives
Preserving history comes with physical, and digital limitations that visitors may never notice at first glance. Despite housing thousands of historical materials, TCU’s Special Collections occupies a relatively small space, forcing archivists to carefully organize and maximize nearly every square foot available.
“Unfortunately, our entire library is understaffed,” said Allison Kirschner, a senior archivist. “We are getting things done as best we can, with what we have.”
The university's effort to attain Research 1 status, will likely effect the libray.
“So, institutions that are similar to us that have R1 status have library staff that's like twice as big as ours,” said Kirschner. She explained that these R1 peer institutions tend to have 15 to 20 people in their archives department.
“We have 6 people,” Kirschner said.
Technology Issues
On top of facing the pressures of understaffing, TCU’s Special Collections has recently been running into technology issues while transitioning its digital archives to a new server to accommodate the overcapacity of its digital repository.
“A digital repository is basically just a database of all the images that's accessed through a website interface,” said Kirschner. “From the user’s end, it's just a website where they can see the images we scan.”
The archives face mounting technological pressures as more people expect historical materials to be instantly available online. "A lot of people are like ‘well why don’t you just scan everything? Um, and I wish we could,” said Kirschner.
The reality, she explained, is far more complicated.
The department’s original digital repository has expanded dramatically over the last decade, growing from roughly 10,000 digitized items to over 40,000. Those numbers only represent a fraction of the archives’ full collection. Every scanned photograph, document and yearbook page requires enormous amounts of digital storage, which is both tedious and expensive to maintain.
The department has been navigating a difficult transition between digital repository platforms, a process further complicated by limited staffing.
For years, the archives relied on an open-source system managed largely by one staff member with specialized technical knowledge, but when the employee left, the position was never replaced.
Without a dedicated technical staff, the archives struggle to maintain and update the repository while also handling daily archival responsibilities. “We have a huge backlog,” said Kirschner.
The archives are now moving toward a new platform called Specto, which Kirschner hopes will improve accessibility and preservation with the university library catalog.
Preserving TCU's history
Despite the technological strain and growing backlog, TCU’s archivists prioritize preserving TCU’s history beyond just storing old documents. The archives often become a place where students, faculty and researchers try to understand the university’s identity, especially during moments of political tension.
Inside the archives, shelves of yearbooks provide a visual of university life stretching back decades. “We have all of the yearbooks, we have all of the skiffs, we have all of the catalogs,” said Saffel.
“If somebody was looking for stuff on a student organization, in the past they would have had to flip through page after page,” Kirschner said. “Now they can just search the word in the PDF and find where it is.”
Still, Kirschner said digital access can never fully replace seeing historical materials in person. She explained that while digitization of materials improves accessibility, physical artifacts often carry a different emotional weight.
That connection of tangible history is part of why archivists like Kirschner and Saffel believe Special Collections matters, especially for students who may not realize how much of TCU’s history is preserved there.
Saffel mentioned the use of the archives during 2020, when conversations surrounding race, history, and campus conversations intensified nationally and at TCU. Students and researchers turned to the archives to better understand the university’s past, including its history of segregation on campus and the actions of some of TCU’s founders.
“They don't come in with an agenda. They don't really care, you know, your point of view or what side that you're on. Their whole job is just preserving the history and making sure people have an understanding of that,” said Shephard.
“We would never have a policy to hide things from the public,” the director said. “The administration of the university was also very supportive and said, ‘let people look at anything they need to look at.’”
“History isn’t burdensome, but it can shed light on things that you then have to have a conversation about.”
In the middle of preserving its history, TCU’s Special Collections also face the burden of gaps in information in some of its archives.
Unlike public universities or government archives that are legally required to preserve certain records, TCU’s Special Collections operates under a private institution separate from these legal requirements.
As a result, Kirschner explains, "We only have what we’re given.”
The law that requires public universities to house specific documents in their archives is the Records Retention Schedule. At schools like Texas Tech, records retention schedules legally require departments to preserve certain documents for specific periods of time before transferring them to university archives.
At TCU, this process becomes far less predictable.
Instead, archivists rely largely on people voluntarily bringing in historical documents. Important artifacts can often sit forgotten in office closets or storage rooms for decades before anyone considers donating them.
For special collections staff, this reality has turned outreach into a critical part of the job. Archivists regularly contact departments, faculty and organizations across campus to encourage them to preserve records before they are lost.
In many ways, the responsibility of preserving TCU’s history does not belong solely to the archivists inside Special Collections. Every student, professor, administrator and alumni member who chooses to save photographs, documents, stories, or records becomes part of that preservation process.
While much of the archive centers around TCU’s institutional history, the collections extend far beyond the university itself. They are also responsible for preserving materials connected to Texas and even global history, focusing on the broader evolution of human communication and recordkeeping.
The broader mission is represented by the oldest artifacts currently held inside the archives: two prehistoric cuneiform tablets dating back to roughly 3000 B.C. from ancient Sumeria.
The tablets were recently acquired to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the Mary Couts Burnett Library in 2025.
Photo Credit: Ethelea Caldwell
Photo Credit: Ethelea Caldwell
“Cuneiform is really the first form of writing that we know of,” said Saffel, “Having those, we are able to show what the purpose of early writing was.”
The tablets themselves are believed to function similarly to receipts or documentation of purchases thousands of years ago. Alongside them are small cylindrical seals used almost like signatures, which, when rolled across clay, are used to identify individuals and verify records.
The artifacts connect modern recordkeeping to the earliest moments humans began documenting, and now sit alongside TCU yearbooks and student newspapers, creating a collection that spans thousands of years of preserved human history.
A Musical Tradition
Dan Shepard spent years reporting other people’s stories, but amongst the many archives at TCU’s special collections, he found pieces of his own.
The TCU Alma Mater was a student-composed piece written by Glenn O. Canfield, Shephard's grandfather, in 1928 as the result of a student music competition.
The song is played at the end of special and athletic events, and its tune will ring through the campus at the top of every hour.
Walking through the archives, surrounded by preserved materials, he described feeling both awe and gratitude knowing his family had contributed to a tradition still deeply connected to campus life today.
“You really get a sense of, okay, this is serious,” he said. “This is really a big part of TCU’s history.”
The experience surprised him not only because of what he learned about his grandfather, Glenn Canfield, but because he realized how central the alma mater still remains within TCU culture. “It was really kind of cool to find out that I had a family that was a part of that,” said Shepard.
For Shepard, the discovery carried an emotional weight because of his relationship with his grandfather growing up. “We would try to go see them as much as we could,” Shepard said. “I’d say we were relatively close.”
Even with such a significant history, Shepard said TCU was rarely a major topic in the conversations he had with his grandfather growing up. He knew his grandfather had attended the university and later became a minister, but never fully understood the extent of his connection to TCU.
Photo Credit: Ethelea Caldwell
Photo Credit: Ethelea Caldwell
Importance of the Archives
For Dan Shepard, the archives unexpectedly reconnected him to his grandfather’s legacy through the alma mater. For students, the archives became a place to better understand the university’s past during moments of national and campus tension. For archivists themselves, the collections represent an ongoing responsibility to preserve history honestly and completely for future generations.
Behind every building on campus, every cultural change, and even music tradition, there is an archive in the Special Collections not only preserving its history but telling our story. Archives are about people, and it's our job to help preserve these histories, learn from them, and grow.
Photo Credit: Ethelea Caldwell
Photo Credit: Ethelea Caldwell
"I think it's an eye-opener for people if they ever get a chance to experience it,” said Shepherd when discussing the archives. “And I hope people do, because it really is a chance to learn about yourself, learn about history, learn about something.”
“I hope that people can find something in their community that they get excited about the history of, to have an understanding of what an archivist can do, what a historian can do, and what a journalist can do, because all of those together provide a baseline of information that people can rely on.”
Built with Shorthand