Walking into the north entrance of Booth Library, students will be thrust into Eastern’s past.

Just past the first doors of Booth Library’s north entrance and into the Marvin Foyer, glass display cases hold the stories and artifacts that have built what is now Eastern history.

The displays are part of the “Building Memories: Creating a Campus Community” exhibit, which was created by the History Museum Exhibits class as part of the Historical Administration program and runs until Aug. 26.

Students of the yearlong class began the process of creating the exhibit by discussing possible topics and then developing the “Big Idea,” said history professor Rick Riccio, who taught the class.

The “Building Memories” theme for this year’s exhibit was chosen by the students to illustrate how experiences today are constantly forming people’s impressions of college.

The student wanted to “make current students realize that building memories, creating a campus community is not just something that happened in the past but is continually created over and over again with each incoming class,” Riccio said.

During Fall 2011, the 10 students planned, researched and designed how they would approach the project. In Spring 2012, the students gathered all their research, built and installed the exhibit.

To research Eastern’s past, students interviewed numerous faculty, staff and former students to gain an insight of the personal experiences and recollections of members of the campus community.

The artifacts students used for the exhibit came largely from the Eastern archives, Riccio said.

One of the artifacts uncovered during the student’s research, a uniform donated by former University Library Director Mary Booth, surprised archivist Robert Hillman.

The uniform is black and red and has several red crosses, and Hillman assumed the uniform came from Booth’s service as a Red Cross nurse in World War I.

“I had always assumed that these uniforms parts came from her service in the Red Cross because they have red crosses on them,” he said.

However, by researching online, the History Museum Exhibits students found that Booth’s father was a member of the Knight’s Templar and that the uniform was a uniform used in the society’s activities.

President William Perry provided his own contribution to the exhibit.

When Perry first became president of Eastern in 2007, he donated a cornerstone inscribed with “1928” to the Eastern Archives. He received the relic from a local man.

Hillman said the man unburied the cornerstone from beneath a pile of items in his backyard.

With research, Hillman said the cornerstone was found to have been part of a ticket booth at the entrance of a football field that used to sit where Weller and McKinney halls now stand.

Along with physical objects, the exhibit also has videos of Eastern faculty discussing various aspects of Eastern’s history, as well as quick response codes students can scan with their smartphones to get more information.

Hillman said he hope students will learn from the exhibit about the power of their own experiences on campus and how they shape what will someday be Eastern’s past.

“The main purpose of (the exhibit) is to show how memories were formed and how everybody who has a connection to Eastern has their own memories of it,” he said. “Everyone has their own personal story, and everybody’s view of it is slightly different.”

Tim Deters can be reached at 581-2812 or tadeters@eiu.edu