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Swarthmore College Outing Club records
Notifications
Held at: Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College [Contact Us]500 College Avenue, Swarthmore, Pennsylvania 19081
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
The Swarthmore Outing Club is one of Swarthmore College's oldest student groups, still active and known as "The Outsiders" as of 2015. The club plans excursions, or funds excursions planned by interested students, to do activities such as hiking, climbing, backpacking, rafting, roller-skating, and more.
The first incarnation of the Outing Club may have been in 1932, when the Girls' Athletic Association inaugurated a club by that name that planned outings for female students. It was not long before the group became co-ed.
In 1959, members of the Swarthmore Outing Club began discussing forming a student group for spelunkers, or cave explorers. The club initiated a biannual newsletter publication, The Guácharo, in May of 1960. Membership increased over the next two years and the club gained official recognition from the National Speleological Society (NSS) as Swarthmore Grotto #98 in 1961. The new recognition and growing membership allowed the club to increase its number of spelunking trips to cover the Mid-Atlantic region, including Pennsylvania, New York, Tennessee, Virginia, and West Virginia. Over time, members started to lose interest in paying the dues for NSS membership, feeling that the benefits of NSS membership did not justify the costs. The Grotto Club lost its NSS membership in 1968, and published the final edition of The Guácharo in the fall of 1965.
This collection consists of Grotto club newsletters (The Guácharo) and "Cave files" with maps, measurements and notes, and narrative descriptions of caves explored by club members.
The collection is organized into two series: "Cave files" arranged by state and Guácharo newsletters in chronological order.
Accession number SCA.2015.009
Organization
Subject
- Publisher
- Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College
- Finding Aid Author
- FHL staff
- Finding Aid Date
- 2016
- Access Restrictions
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Collection is open for research.
- Use Restrictions
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Copyright has not been assigned to Friends Historical Library. All requests for permission to publish or quote from manuscripts must be submitted in to the Director. Permission for publication is given on behalf Friends Historical Library as the owner of the physical items and is not intended to include or imply permission of the copyright holder, which must also be obtained by reader.
Collection Inventory
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