Special Collections & College Archives

Special Collections & College Archives is home to Lafayette's rare book and manuscript collections and the historical records of the College. The department offers an array of classroom instruction opportunities, exhibitions, and public programs. Visit us in our beautiful reading room on the second floor of the library.

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Rare Books

Lafayette's rare book holdings of some 15,000 volumes include incunabula—among them the magnificent Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493—and other early imprints reflecting the development of printing during the hand-press period (ca. 1450-1800).

Manuscripts, Art & Artifacts

The College houses nearly one hundred manuscript, art, and artifact collections of national scope. Holdings relate to the Marquis de Lafayette; Lafayette College faculty and alumni; and American artists, politicians, and businesses of note.

College Archives

The College Archives documents the history of Lafayette College from its founding in 1824 to the present day by preserving the administrative records, audio visual materials, photographs, and objects associated with the institution.

Digital Collections

To enhance access to their rich and varied collections, Special Collections & Archives have digitized hundreds of historical photographs, pamphlets, manuscripts, books, and other rare and unique materials. The majority of these collections are freely available online for public access.

Queer Archives Project Digital Humanities Site

The QAP digital humanities project is a timeline-based Scalar site shaped around the dynamic interface among oral history interviews, related archival materials and emergent scholarship and research. Structured through themes generated by the oral histories, the digital humanities project offers an innovative, multi-dimensional platform from which to learn about Queer history, conduct scholarship, and share research. Lafayette students are working side by side with faculty, digital scholarship services specialists and archivists to conceptualize, develop and create the site.

Welcome: Queer Past, Queer Futures...

Available for streaming...

Lafayette College Football Films: 1960-62

Exhibits

Jan 31, 2020

Rapped in Black: The Founding of the Association of Black Collegians

In July of 1963, U.S. President John F. Kennedy appealed to college and university board presidents to extend equal educational opportunities to the nation’s…

Jan 31, 2020

Strike! Lafayette Student Activism in 1970

Fifty years ago this May and two weeks before final exams, approximately one-third of Lafayette College students coordinated a strike in protest of the…

Jan 31, 2020

Lafayette Student Traditions

Student traditions at Lafayette College from the 19th and 20th centuries are featured in Skillman Library’s Simon Room this fall. Class rivalries, dramatic…

Lafayette College partners with Archive-It to collect, preserve, and provide access to our institutional web presence through the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine, a digital archive of the World Wide Web.

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