Special Collections & College Archives

Starting May 22 and throughout summer 2023, our Reading Room will be open by appointment, Monday – Thursday, 9:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Consultations with staff are also available via Zoom or Google Meet. Please contact us directly with any research questions, concerns, or comments at archives@lafayette.edu.

We are excited to work with all Lafayette faculty, and look forward to helping students achieve hands-on experience with archival records, rare printed materials, manuscripts, artists' books, photographs, and other media held across Special Collections & College Archives. To schedule a class session, please contact us at archives@lafayette.edu.

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Digital Collections & Exhibits

To enhance access to their rich and varied collections, Special Collections & College 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.

Web Exhibits & Resources

Special Collections & College Archives content is available through online exhibits and websites.

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Student Fellowships

Students are invited to apply for one-semester, or summer fellowship with the Lafayette libraries’ Special Collections & College Archives. Through sustained focus on bibliographic or archival material, the activity will focus on experiential projects with original historical sources held in Skillman Library.

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College Archives Digital Resources

Explore the history of Lafayette College through a variety of online resources.

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 conception by the citizens of Easton in 1824 to the present day and preserves the administrative records, audio visual materials, photographs, and objects associated with the institution.

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 20, 2023

Queer Pasts, Queer Futures: The Lafayette Queer Archives Project

Centered on the voices of Lafayette’s LGBTQ+ alumni, faculty, and staff, the Queer Archives project (QAP) is a collaborative undertaking of the College…

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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