Hallå!

I have been updating the records in Blais for Special Collections’ Nordic Collection, making the information more accurate and also ensuring that the links from Blais to our online requesting system, Aeon, are working. While I have been working on this project, I have learned a little about this unique collection and its history. Special Collections has more than thirty thousand volumes on Nordic history, literature, religion, education, politics, and economics. Most of the materials are in Danish, Swedish, or German. The collection began with a donation from Waldemar Westergaard, who was a professor at Pomona and UCLA, and Special Collections has added significantly to this collection with the acquisition of the personal libraries of David Bjork and other scholars.
You can read more about the highlights of the Nordic Collection here.
And for some information on the background of the Westergaard donation, there is an interesting article by Franklin Scott in Scandinavian Studies, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Nov. 1969). If you have access to JSTOR, you can check it out here.

Welcome back, students!

Special Collections library staff are happy to see all of the students back on campus this week and particularly welcome those new to Claremont! Stop by and see us sometime– we are located on the 2nd floor of the Honnold/Mudd Library, near the North Entrance.
One of our current projects in Special Collections is going through all of the photographs we have from the Claremont Colleges, ensuring that they are properly labeled and preserved. It is fascinating to see how the buildings, faculty, and students have changed over the years. We hope you are more excited for the Fall semester than this Pomona College Dormitory Group from 1889!
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Occuprint posters

Special Collections received a limited edition portfolio of Occupy-themed materials from Occuprint, an organization dedicated to the visual culture of the Occupy movement. Our new materials include the poster issue of The Occupied Wall Street Journal (No. 4, November 2011); one signed copy of Dave Lowenstein’s spray-paint and stencil painting, “Tip of the Iceberg”; one print of Alexandra Clotfelter’s “The Beginning is Near” poster; and 31 hand silk-screened prints of posters selected from the designs displayed at occuprint.org. The Claremont Colleges Library was one of the sponsors of this project.

If you would like to come into Special Collections to see these posters, you can register as a reader and make your request online!

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“Dollar Tower”
Artist: Jeanne Verdoux (Brooklyn, NY)

Newspaper project

Jennifer and I have been working with two student staff–Jamella and Jessica–on a project to better protect and organize Special Collection’s unbound newspapers. There are two goals for this newspaper project: creating a safer storage system that meets modern preservation standards and generating a finding aid for the Online Archive of California (OAC).


We are uncovering some interesting papers as we work on this project! Below is just a small selection of our newspaper collection. Special Collections also has a large collection of Mexican newspapers and a collection called the “radical newspapers”, which is a selection of 20th century political newspapers and newsletters. We welcome enquiries by students, staff, and visitors who would like to use our newspapers!


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A notice by George Washington offering pardon to deserters, from The Freeman’s Journal: Or The North-American Intelligencer, Wednesday, February 27, 1782


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A selection from an editorial trying to contextualize the actions of the “slaves of the despot at Washington”, from The Charleston Daily Courier (of the Confederate States of America), Thursday, June 27, 1861


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One of our more unusual titles, the distinguished, “oldest bee paper in America”