Special Collections & Archives at Wesleyan University

SC&A likes to give you a heads up when there’s a collection that’s ready for use. We have a good one for you—a collection of 19th century photographs. The Joseph W. Reed and George Creeger Collection of Human Likenesses, 1840-1900, is just about ready for you to use. English Department faculty members Joe Reed and [...]

With continuing interest in the “first experiment in coeducation” at Wesleyan, it seems timely to point out some of the resources available.  Wait, didn’t you know Wesleyan was coed for forty years between 1872 and 1912? You may want to look into this yourself. Special Collections & Archives, and Olin Library at large, have some [...]

The other day, I discovered a mystery in Special Collections: an extremely skimpy catalog record for a book in our collection.  All it said about this book was: Bible.  N.T. [for New Testament].  French [Nouveau testament] [S.l. : S.n., not after 1762.] 665 p. ; 19 cm. Title page missing. What does all that mean? [...]

Archivists review the historic materials to put them into a level of order and to describe the content so others may use them.  Occasionally, we’ll see something that gives one pause. I have been working on family papers that include nineteenth and twentieth century correspondence. Various family members made contributions to their fields such as [...]

As part of Andrea Benefiel’s work on the Collection on Legal Change (CLC) earlier this year, she created an online finding aid for the Arthur T. Vanderbilt Political, Profession, and Judicial Papers. The papers document the illustrious career of Vanderbilt, a Wesleyan alumnus from the class of 1910. Vanderbilt had a long career in private [...]

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 [...]

We started a new school year this week. The weather has been hot but the leaves are starting to turn, which always reminds me of research! Fall is the time when our senior thesis writers conduct most of their archival research, and we always have a number of other students who research Wesleyan and local [...]

Next time you wonder when a Wesleyan building was constructed, or who this Davison guy was, or just how the Douglas Cannon came to be the unofficial Wesleyan mascot, stop by Special Collections & Archives and take a look at our Vertical Files. These are subject files where we keep clippings, memos, reports, notes, and [...]