Ephemera in Special Collections & Archives: Curiosities Belonging to the Missionary Lyceum

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This grim entry in Wesleyan’s Alumni Record, published in 1883, offers a sad glimpse into the tangled web of Wesleyan’s early connections with Africa.  Read in context with the Missionary Lyceum logbook (“Curiosities belonging to the Missionary Lyceum”) pictured above, inventories from the Archaeology & Anthropology Collection, correspondence in President Willbur Fisk’s Papers, and other sources, we can piece together a network of personal relationships and events that likely led to Wesleyan’s holding one of the largest groups of pre-1850 cultural objects from Monrovia, Liberia, in an American collection.

Ephemera in Special Collections & Archives: The Joseph W. Reed and George Creeger Collection of Human Likenesses

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Cartes-de-visite, such as this clever little pastiche from the prominent New York studio of C.D. Fredricks, became commonplace in the U.S. in the period just before the Civil War.  Here, the giant photographed head of an anonymous man sits atop a pint-sized caricature of his body, the angle of his spindly legs echoing his spectacular handlebar moustache.

Ephemera in Special Collections & Archives: Star of the North, or The Comet of 1861

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This graphically arresting envelope depicts President Abraham Lincoln as the Great Comet of 1861, which could be seen with the naked eye throughout the summer in much of the United States.  The anonymous illustrator has combined several visual elements to create greater meanings: the white stars on a blue background representing both the heavens and … Read more

Center for Research Libraries Membership

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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

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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

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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)

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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.