Special Collections & Archives at Wesleyan University

I have just finished processing a collection of papers, the Shanklin Laboratory Renovation Records, detailing the various proposals to renovate Wesleyan’s Shanklin Laboratory in the 1960s and 1970s.
I repeat, proposals, not actual construction-based papers.
This subtlety in the nature of the collection is what interested me the most; though there are plenty of blueprints, work-orders, and [...]

I have recently completed processing the diary of James Oliver Longstreet, a Wesleyan alumnus from the class of 1857. The diary is a colorful historical document, providing a rare glimpse into the daily life of a Methodist college student in the middle of the 19th century. It provides insight into the political and social [...]

The following post was written by Doreen Mangels, a graduate student in the Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science. This semester Doreen was an intern in Special Collections & Archives. We are grateful for her excellent work!
I recently finished processing two series in the Music Department Records collection.  The first series includes proposals, [...]

I recently have been going through press clippings from the Middletown Press. The press clippings are just one part of a larger collection of photographs, negatives, and articles from the Middletown Press that myself and two others are going through and filing. Today, I couldn’t help but stop when I came across an envelope marked [...]

We have been adding student theses to WesScholar, our online repository of Wesleyan scholarship. We have most of the 2009 and 2008 theses, a smaller number of 2007 theses, and we’re adding earlier theses as time allows. We just added one of our all time most popular theses, The “Quails”: the History of Wesleyan University’s [...]

In 1939, the Wesleyan Alumni Council started collecting alumni memories, which included those of Wesleyan professors, pranks, the burning of North College in 1906, and the arrival of women in 1872. This collection, the Alumni Council Collection of Recollections, has been a pleasure to read. Because of the nature of these anecdotes, in this post [...]

My latest processing project is that of the Middletown Manuscript collection dating from 1668 to 1937.  The collection is made up of a variety of documents from the Middletown area with no real common theme except for the location.  The collection is not very big, but it is filled with some interesting documents, not only [...]

Please join us for a celebration of writer William Manchester’s career on Thursday, February 5 at 7pm in the Smith Reading Room in Olin Library. The event, titled “William Manchester: Portrait of a Writer,” will kick off with a talk by Leith Johnson, Project Archivist, and Jenny Miglus, Archives Assistant. They will discuss Manchester’s life [...]

The Godfrey Library in Middletown, CT, a rich center for genealogical history, recently announced that it has made three major resources on Middletown and Middlesex County history available digitally from its website. The three volumes’ titles and descriptions, from the Godfrey’s website:

Statistical Account of the County of Middlesex, in Connecticut, by David Dudley Field [...]

The following post was written by our intern Annie Benefiel, a library science student in the Simmons College library program.
As one of the earliest “town and gown” organizations at Wesleyan, the Middletown Scientific Association explored popular scientific topics from 1871 to 1968. Its membership was comprised of Wesleyan University faculty members as well as [...]