Confidential Disposition Day will be December 1st, 2021. All records must be collected by noon, Tuesday November 30th (details below). To support a more sustainable campus and to promote better business workflows, Williams Office of Finance and the records management program (Special Collections, Libraries) sponsor a confidential disposition (shred)… Continue reading »
To celebrate the bond between SAB and Duke, the Special Collections has created a playlist titled Friendship Heights, a nod to their friendship and the northwest neighborhood in D.C. The playlist is composed of Duke Ellington records that appear in the rich Sterling A. Brown record collection. Continue reading »
The library seeks an enthusiastic, user-centered educator to join our Research Services team as Data Science Librarian. In this newly-created position, you will design and implement data literacy services for undergraduate students, support data-intensive courses, and contribute to the development of the college's Data Science program. As liaison librarian, you will also guide students and faculty on library research methods, teach instruction sessions and develop library collections. For full role details and to apply, visit https://staff-careers.williams.edu/ Continue reading »
Coming in the Fall: When Williams reopens to visitors, the Chapin Library will return to displaying a selection of our material behind protective glass. Few books are created with this kind of interaction in mind, but what can we learn from close looking at a distance? Continue reading »
Again this year the Chapin Library at Williams College and the Williamstown Theatre Festival are presenting a video program as our annual reading of the Declaration of Independence and related documents. We have also asked members of the community: “What… Continue reading »
This Juneteenth we are preparing for our annual reading of the Declaration of Independence and Frederick Douglass's speech "What to a Slave is the 4th of July?." We are kicking off this season of critical examination of our Founding Documents on Juneteenth, a day that invites us to reflect on US history and how our "inalienable rights" have been accessible to the populace over time. Continue reading »
Two lovely, anonymous graphite drawings in the Chapin Library’s collection, likely done by the same artist, come to us from the earlier years of the American Civil War. Each depicts, with an uncommon degree of skill and subtlety, a Virginian manor, one readily identifiable and still standing, the other… Continue reading »
Joseph and Udo Keppler were the father–son powerhouse of satirical cartooning in 19th- and early-20th-century America. Joseph, the elder, was an Austrian immigrant who cut his teeth on mid-century cartooning for mostly German-language publications in St. Louis and New York City. His legacy as one of the 19th century’s… Continue reading »
C.J. Grant was a British satirist with Radical sympathies, whose political engravings saw success in the 1830s. Typically taking a hostile stance against the policies (and often the persons) of more conservative Whig and Tory politicians, Grant’s prints championed working class suffrage and political reform. In a rare wood-engraved… Continue reading »
Peter Simple, author of The Simple Jography; or, How to Know the Earth and Why It Spins, was a character created by Oliver Herford, a British-born American humorist whose popularity peaked around the turn of the 20th century, and of whose works the Chapin Library has a substantial collection. Continue reading »