Today is Constitution Day, a federal observance of the initial signing of the Constitution of the United States on September 17, 1787 in Philadelphia. The Constitution is an often cited source during debates and protests, and attempts at interpretation are plentiful. While there may never be a consensus as to how we avail ourselves to … Read more
WesScholar, a permanent home for the innovative work of our community, including student theses and dissertations and faculty scholarly and creative outputs, is an essential piece of the library’s support for scholarly communications. Over the past year, the Library and ITS worked to update and improve WesScholar, and move it to a new locally supported … Read more
Library staff have implemented a new online course reserve system to support this fall’s diversity of teaching modalities and need for digital-only reserve materials. The system provides easy access on any device to text and audio visual course resources (including library e-content, web-content and faculty-uploaded material) through Moodle, a direct link in a syllabus, or … Read more
Transporting very large, yet delicate, objects is a never-ending challenge for museums and art installers, and, it turns out, a continuing point of fascination for consumers of print media. The cover page for the March 25, 1876, The Illustrated Christian Weekly ran a cover illustration depicting the in-progress installation of an enormous basking shark in … Read more
Unless you are preparing for a career in biology, “Don’t cut yourself on the shark teeth” is not something you expect to hear from your professors during class. But this is a liberal arts university, where (as you probably know by now) anything is possible. It is where shark teeth work alongside primary source documents … Read more
Have you been affected by racism? Have you participated in Black Lives Matter activism? Have you worked against systemic racism in other ways? These stories are often not well-documented in university archives. Wesleyan’s Special Collections & Archives seeks to improve this gap in the historical record. To help center Black experiences in our collections, we … Read more
We, the staff of the Wesleyan University Library and Collections, are devastated by the deaths of George Floyd, Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks and so many other people of color who were victims of police brutality. We deeply believe that Black Lives Matter. We understand that eliminating the systemic racism that pervades our society … Read more
Welcome to summer! Despite Henry James’ observation regarding summer afternoons¹, we know summer can often be a very busy and productive time for many faculty and students. With this in mind, the majority of library services are available online even while our buildings and collections remain closed. Whether you are teaching this summer or preparing … Read more
The Wesleyan community has responded in wide, inspiring ways to the COVID-19 pandemic. It is rare that we know what will become a historic moment while it’s occurring, but it’s clear that we are all living and making history right now. As an archivist, I am always interested in recording these efforts so that they … Read more
Wesleyan subscribes to LibKey Nomad, a browser extension that can help you locate the full text of articles when you are viewing a citation in a scholarly database or publisher’s site. When full text can be found in Wesleyan’s subscribed resources, PubMed, or other full-text sites that Wesleyan has access to, a Download PDF or … Read more
