Coe College May Fete, 1923.
Coe College Cosmos: Six Students Were Graduated At Coe’s First Commencement
Coe College Cosmos, 1920s
Filed under Archives
Class Day Exercises 1909
Coe College Class Day Exercises in front of Old Main, 1909.
Filed under Archives
Even though we’re not supposed to talk about it, Cat Widder found the Fight Club squirrel!
Fight Club is a book about a man finding an outlet in punching people–leading up to a dramatic twist end!
Coe College Cosmos: Final Exams 1949
“The English Department has decided on a very small exam: 32 essay questions. Each essay counts 3.125 points”
“The Philosophy Department has only one question: Discuss fully all phases of mankind 10000 B.C. to the present.”
“–just conjugate each verb we’ve had so far, in all tenses, and write a history of the World War in French.”
“Hold on here. Let’s give this lad a practical exam. He needs your subjects like he needs a hole in the head!”
Coe College Cosmos, January 19, 1949.
~Sara Pitcher, Archives Assistant.
He’s not so ghostly now since Annabeth Hampton has found the Phantom of the Opera squirrel.
The Phantom of the Opera tells a tale of love, mystery, and deceit .. in an opera house! With Opera!
Filed under Cool New Stuff, Library Collections, random information
Primary Resources: Coe Archive’s Collections
Founder’s Papers (1851-1881), LeRoy Weld Diaries (1894-1955), Western College Collection (1857-1906) , and the Paul Engle Papers (1927-1991) all have two things in common. They are collections housed in the George T. Henry College Archives , and they are featured on the archive’s Primary Resources Pinterest page. A sampling of what the archives hold, each of these collections has an on-line finding aid that can be accessed anywhere, and for anyone near Coe College (or looking for a destination for a road trip) primary resources that can be viewed, held and scrutinized outside of the digital world.
Check out more of the archives collections in the left hand column on its Collections page.
~Sara Pitcher, Archives Assistant
Filed under Archives, Primary Source
The cool, the pretty, and the snarky in the Shirer Collection
I have been working in the George T. Henry Archives in the basement of Stewart Memorial Library for most of this spring semester, wading through and re-organizing just one box of William Shirer correspondence from the 1960s (hey, it has 19 folders!). And let me tell you, that box was a treasure trove of cool letters, pretty handwriting, and plenty of snarky things.
William Shirer is a notable Coe alum, well-known among the history folk for his monumental work The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, published in late 1960. He wrote mountains of letters and received a ridiculous amount of fan mail praising him and his book, all of which I think I’ve touched at least half a dozen times. So I’d like to share with you some of the more memorable pieces of correspondence in the 1960s box, and maybe you’ll come down and wade through the collection yourself one day to see what snark and praise you can find.
Here are two letters from the collection written to Shirer. So many of the handwritten letters in the collection are just gorgeous to look at, it doesn’t really even matter what they say!
Just one example of Shirer’s snark. Can’t everyone tell the different between Swedish and Norwegian?!
One of my absolute favorites, in which Shirer compares 1960s NYC mail delivery to 1930s Afghanistan… unfavorably. Plus, “Whiz-bang society”? You can’t beat that.
One of the coolest letterheads. How cool would it be to have letters that say, “from the Inner Sanctum of Stewart Memorial Library, Coe College”?
These are just four examples of the pretty letters, snarky letters, and cool letterheads that can be found throughout the Shirer collection and the George T. Henry archives as a whole. Come down, check it out, and maybe even find something to research in the meantime! ~Kristine
Filed under Archives, Student Workers
Super Study Days
Whenever my friends and I have a big project to work on, we’ll commandeer a study room all day for Super Study Days. It helps us focus to be in the library and away from any noise or other distractions. We get a lot accomplished since we have such easy access to books, computers, and (thank goodness) the printer. The library sometimes also provides a nice curfew; since they kick us out at 1 AM, we know it’s time to go to sleep. ~Angela
Filed under General, Library Facilities, Library Hours, Research, Student Workers
Primary Resources: Electronic Literature Organization
The ELO strives “to facilitate and promote the writing, publishing, and reading of literature in electronic media.“ It is not a traditional primary resource, but in the 21st century where primary resources are no longer limited to hand written letters, paper documents, and physical objects the “Electronic Literature Organization” is one attempt to capture the intellectual output occurring in the ephemeral digital landscape.
“Electronic literature is born-digital literary art that exploits, as its muse and medium, the transmedia possibilities of the digital. It is, according to the Electronic Literature Organization (ELO), “work with an important literary aspect that takes advantage of the capabilities and contexts provided by the stand-alone or networked computer.””
Check out their directory of electronic literature containing hypertext, flash, and interactive elements, for a peek at one of trails literature is blazing in the 21st century.
This is one of the resources pinned to the archive’s “Primary Resources” Pinterest board.
~Sara Pitcher, Archives Assistant
Filed under Archives, Primary Source
