Pick of the week, Sept. 6: Happy 40th anniversary, CFA!

As you may be aware by now, the CFA is celebrating its 40th anniversary this academic year. We worked with Pamela Tatge, Andy Chatfield, and John Elmore to provide a wide range of images from the SC&A collections that will be used to mark the occasion. Forty will be displayed in an online exhibition, Celebrating … Read more

Pick of the week, Aug. 30: Digitizing Pictures of Middletown and Wesleyan

The following was written by archives intern Owen Thompson: As part of my ongoing internship in SC&A, I recently digitized and made available in WesScholar an unusual book for Wesleyan’s Adopt a Book program. The volume, Pictures of Middletown and Wesleyan, was adopted by library staff and friends in honor of former Assistant University Archivist … Read more

Pick of the week, Aug. 23: The Atomic Age Opens

How did people really feel about nuclear weapons back in 1945, just after the first bombs had been dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki?  Here’s one way to find out: The Atomic Age Opens (New York: Pocket Books, Inc., 1945) gives a view into the public mindset in 1945, and some of the questions that were … Read more

Pick of the week, Aug. 16: Sea weeds from Bermuda

Who knew that you could find actual plant specimens in Special Collections & Archives?  It’s true, we own several books of pressed plants, including this book of pressed sea vegetation from Bermuda. Bermuda 1890 was handmade out of blue-green paper, with hand-painted oceanfront scenes on the front and back covers.  Inside, 45 different specimens of … Read more

Pick of the week, Aug. 9: Prof. Woodrow Wilson, 1889

Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States from 1913 to 1921, taught history and political economy at Wesleyan from 1888 to 1890. This photograph shows the 1889-1890 Wesleyan faculty. Prof. Wilson is sitting in the front row, third from left, holding a top hat. Before Wesleyan, he taught at Bryn Mawr, where he felt “overworked, … Read more

Pick of the week, August 2: Poetry and woodcuts

Here’s one of our newly-cataloged artists’ books: Everyone Sang, by Siegfried Sassoon, with woodcuts by Terry Schupbach-Gordon (Tobaccoville, N.C.: Catbird Press, 2009). Siegfried Sasson is best known as a poet of World War I, along with Robert Graves and Wilfred Owens.  He wrote this short poem called “Everyone Sings” in celebration of the end of … Read more

Pick of the week, July 26: Account of a Voyage in 1805

Here’s a newly-cataloged book in our collection: Account of a voyage to the western coast of Africa, performed by His Majesty’s sloop Favourite, in the 1805, being a journal of the events which happened to that vessel… By F. B. Spilsbury (London: R. Phillips, 1807).  Several of the engravings in the book show that the … Read more

Pick of the week, June 28: Civil rights leader John Lewis visits Wesleyan, 1998

Over the decades, hundreds of distinguished guest lecturers and visitors have shared their wisdom with Wesleyan. One of them was civil rights leader and U.S. Congressman John Lewis, who came to campus in April 1998. Rep. Lewis began his career at the height of the civil rights movement in 1963, and among his numerous activities, … Read more