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St. Thomas Graphics: Documenting Community

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The presentation features the rich collection of print material and records donated to the library when the St. Thomas Graphics print business closed its doors in 2008. The collection’s print materials include a wide array of funeral booklets, business publications, event program booklets, government reports, maps, posters, brochures, marketing material, and forms from the late 20th century. Records include original photographs, typeset layouts, proof copies, original artwork, correspondence, and transactional files. These resources uniquely support both family history documentation and research for local history, education, and scholarship.

With a nod to family history, the presentation features Richard and Judy Pitzl whose personal family narrative fortuitously led them from Wisconsin to the Virgin Islands in the 1970s. There they established St. Thomas Graphics and set out to meet the growing print needs of their island home. Over the next thirty-plus years, The Pitzl Family business documented all aspects of the community it served. Today, the prodigious work product of St. Thomas Graphics still bears witness to those years and will forever benefit generations of Virgin Islands researchers.

Presenter Susan Lugo highlights the significance of the printing industry, both in the Caribbean and the U.S. Virgin Islands, in documenting and preserving history and culture for research. Administrative records, leaflets, almanacs, newspapers, government documents, printing processes and innovations, and the socio-political environments in which they were created, distributed, and sometimes valued, all influence the survival of local history resources that still exist in research collections like St. Thomas Graphics.
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