History, 1954 - 2006

The Miami Valley School Collection contains the administrative, academic, and community history of the Miami Valley School. It would be most useful to someone interested in the history and practices of this particular school. A selection of materials from the collection are digitized and available online through the Campus Online Repository (CORE Scholar) at http://corescholar.libraries.wright.edu/special_ms358/. The collection is divided into six series.

Series I, History and Administrative, includes documents related to administration, policymaking, and operation at the school. It includes history materials, early brochures and an oral history project focusing on the founding of MVS. Other materials in the collection include administrative minutes and memos, Board of Trustees files, faculty minutes and memos, correspondence, faculty handbook, statistics and evaluations, parents' association minutes, student directories, and information about school construction projects. Use of the Administrative series is restricted because it contains some sensitive personal information about students and former students, such as grades, behavior issues, and home addresses.

Series II, Development Office, includes items related to school fundraising and special events, such as: the school's auction fundraiser, Annual Fund drive, annual reports, anniversary celebrations, endowments, and memorial celebrations. This series also includes information relating to Mazza, a collection of artwork at the Miami Valley School.

Series III, Academics, contains items related to the school's academic curriculum and programs. These items include: student handbooks, courses of study, course descriptions, Immersion intensive study programs, summer reading lists, summer camp, and academic awards nights. This series also includes items related to commencement, such as thank-you booklets, commencement programs and videos, and graduation speeches.

Series IV, Publications, contains works published by or about the Miami Valley School, usually by MVS staff or students. This series is divided into 5 subseries. Subseries IV-A: Yearbooks, consists of school yearbooks (usually titled Successions), with available volumes dating between 1971 and 2023 (with some small gaps). Subseries IV-B: Newsletters (1964-2019), includes a variety of newsletters, newspapers, or magazines, developed by MVS staff and students, to share MVS-related news. Newsletters produced by adults (MVS faculty and/or staff), and usually directed at parents, alumni, or other community members, include The Bulletin (1980-2008) and The MVS Magazine, among other titles. One section includes classroom newsletters from all teachers for the entire 2006-2007 academic year. This section also includes what appears to be an internal staff newsletter Community Concinnities (2007-2013). The main student newspaper is Phloem and Xylem (1973-2018), as well as The Miami Valley Commonweal (1966), The Sapling (1993), and Around the Horn (2019). Subseries IV-C: Literary and Art Publications (1977-2012) is subdivided between Upper School publications (Aesthesia, Moire, Spume, etc.) and Lower School publications (Leisure Literature, MVS Writes Again, Many Voices Sounding, Magnesia, etc.). Subseries IV-D: Cookbooks, includes holiday and international cookbooks (1985-1987), as well as Bread and Roses (2015), which has mainly recipes and herbal information, as well as some articles. Subseries IV-E: MVS History Publications (1992-2004), consists of publications documenting the history of MVS, such as: The Miami Valley School: 1956-2003, A Retrospective by Barbara Cleary and On the MVS Woods by William H. King.

Series V, Scrapbooks, includes numbered scrapbooks dating from 1959-1995, as well as a series of scrapbooks called "MVS in the News," covering the years from 1985-1997. These scrapbooks consisted mainly of newspaper clippings, which have been photocopied onto acid-free archival copy paper and placed in folders.

Series VI, Audiovisual, contains photographs (and some negatives), most of which are unlabeled. The photographs existed in two distinct groups upon donation to the archives, so those two groupings have been maintained and reflected in their arrangement: by subject or by year. Any photo CDs were separated and stored in the electronic archive. The bulk of photographs in both groups seem to be from the late 1980s through 2008. This collection also contains promotional videos, complimentary television news clips, commencement videos and two DVDs.

The first group of photographs is organized according to broad subject headings. These photographs were all mixed up, in no particular order, when they came to the archives, so they were arranged by subjects, such as academics, student life, sports, special events, and student organizations. This first group also included several negatives, which have been filed with them. It is believed that these photographs came from the development office.

The second group of photographs is organized according to year. These photographs came to the archives neatly arranged in photo albums, with the year clearly marked on the album. The original order has been maintained as nearly as possible-that is, the order in which they were placed into the albums. They are not in order by subject. It is believed that these photographs came from the yearbook staff, because many of them contain traces of the stickers used to designate page number and placement for yearbook layout. There were no negatives in this group.