Postcards from a Pandemic

It’s been just over a year since the University Archives first asked for your experiences related to COVID-19. Thank you to all those who responded – we’ve been slowly adding all the submissions to our Digital Collections! We have a new project aimed at the whole Wesleyan community to learn what this year has been like. … Read more

Beyond Repair: Examining Brokenness in Musical Instruments

Musical instruments are designed to be played: to be hit, struck, blown, and handled by humans in a variety of ways. Over time, this repeated interaction in combination with environmental conditions can have a tangible effect. Just as with any physical object, an instrument’s material – whether wood, metal, animal skin, or other – wears down, weakens, and breaks over time. Sometimes these issues can be fixed, but in other cases the instrument is beyond repair.

DAC Collection Highlight: William Henry Fox Talbot’s Lace

William Henry Fox Talbot, Lace, ca. 1845. This image of lace is an example of a calotype, an early photographic technique. William Henry Fox Talbot, the author of this work, invented the calotype in 1841 as a competing medium to the daguerreotype, another early photographic technique, in which an image imprinted on thin metal. To … Read more

Center for Research Libraries Membership

Wesleyan is now a member of the Center for Research Libraries, an international consortium focused on unique primary source materials in both physical and digital form, encompassing the humanities, sciences, and social sciences.

Access Resources Beyond Our Collections

As a founding member of the Connecticut/Trinity/Wesleyan consortium in the late 1980s, the Wesleyan Library has long believed in and relied upon the power of consortia and relationships with other institutions both to strengthen and extend the resources available for research and teaching.

Financial Times Now Available

Starting this January, the Library has added campus-wide access to the Financial Times. Using your Wesleyan username and password, you can now sign-in to the Financial Times using both their website and tablet/phone apps.

Commemorating 30 Years of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA)

This month marks thirty years since the passage of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, also known as NAGPRA. NAGPRA is a federal law that protects Native American graves and funerary objects. It also provides a process by which museums and agencies must repatriate Native American human remains, funerary objects, and certain categories of cultural objects to lineal descendants, Native American tribes, and Native Hawaiian Organizations.

Panel Discussion on Repatriation and NAGPRA – Nov 12th 4:30-6PM

On November 16, 1990, Congress passed the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). This important human rights legislation aimed to restore dignity and respect to the ancestral human remains and cultural objects being held in museum collections, and provided a process for their repatriation to culturally affiliated tribes, lineal descendants, and Native Hawaiian … Read more

Utagawa Yoshitora, Woman in a Blue Kimono Holding Child Looking at Peonies, 19th Century

I have always been astonished at the beautiful, colorful Ukiyo-e prints in the Davison Art Center’s collection. Ukiyo-e prints, or “pictures from the floating world,” were produced during the Edo Period in Japan (1603–1868 CE). Utagawa Yoshitora (1798–1861) worked during the late Edo Period and is known for his vivid imagination and his eclectic depictions … Read more