Pick of the week, May 31: Strike, 1970

During Reunion/Commencement Weekend, my colleague, Music Librarian and World Music Archives Director Alec McLane, and I co-presented a WESeminar on events surrounding the last few days in April and the first few days in May 1970 at Wesleyan, which included rallies in support of the Black Panthers in New Haven, calls for a strike to … Read more

Pick of the week, Jan. 11: Broadsides from the Revoutionary War

What is a broadside?  It’s another term for a poster, but often with more words than pictures on it.  I’ve been cataloging a small stack of broadsides printed during and after the American Revolutionary War.  Here are two proclamations printed as broadsides — one from the governor of Connecticut, Jonathan Trumbull, in 1777, and a … Read more

Mutanabbi Street broadsides

Throughout history, artists and writers have commented on, protested, or memorialized events current to their time, and today’s artists continue to do the same.  Special Collections & Archives recently acquired a set of broadsides (that is, printed large single sheets of  paper, like a poster) that are part of the “Al-Mutanabbi Street Starts Here” project. … Read more

A Roman coin inspires a 15th-century Venetian printer

Wesleyan’s Special Collections & Archives owns two Roman coins from the 1st century CE. The first of these coins, a silver denarius minted in 80 CE by Emperor Titus, is connected to the early history of printing.  According to the Renaissance humanist Erasumus, an exemplar of this coin was given to the famous Venetian printer … Read more