New Manuscripts Finding Aids, December 2024
The Manuscripts Department has been hard at work making historic hand-written materials available for research. Check out sixteen new finding aids published this past December!
New Graphics Finding Aids: 2024
The past year has been an incredibly busy time for the Clements Library’s Graphics Division, with over 80 new finding aids having been created for a variety of collections that can now be requested for use in the reading room. Let’s take a look at a few highlights!
An Accidental Trailblazer: the Marion E. Grusky Rucker Collection
Lee Rucker Keiser writes about her mother, Marion E. Grusky Rucker, a World War II veteran, teacher, and beloved family member. Read about Marion’s service in the U.S. Navy, teaching abroad, and Lee’s decision to donate her mother’s papers to the William L. Clements Library.
Rewards of Merit
Remember those attendance awards in elementary school? Recognition of student achievement is nothing new. Graduate student assistant Annika Dekker writes about Rewards of Merit, awards given to students or young people to recognize and congratulate them on an achievement, usually academic. These awards started in the 1600s, and have continued today. Learn more about the Rewards of Merit housed here at the Clements Library!
2025-2026 William L. Clements Library Research Fellowships: Apply By January 15th!
The William L. Clements Library offers funded research fellowships for graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, independent researchers, creative artists, and undergraduates who wish to visit the library’s world-class collections of early Americana. Any project that would benefit from in-person access to the Clements Library archives is eligible for consideration, and subjects can include Native American history and culture, the history of science, ephemera, and so much more!
New Manuscript Finding Aids: Summer 2024
Explore these 25 new finding aids published in the summer of 2024. The collection continues to grow in exciting ways, ranging from a visually rich archive of an inventor advertising and selling his wares to the case notes kept by a woman advocating for the care of children in Washington, D.C. Should anything prove relevant to your interests, don’t hesitate to plan a research visit or contact us to learn more.
Commercial Cartography
Buried within a small, leather-bound memorandum book that’s part of the Hudson’s Bay Company materials at the William L. Clements Library lies a two-page map, charted circa 1779 by John Thomas of London, depicting a consequential but nonexistent waterway connecting Lake Superior with Hudson’s Bay. The search for this fictitious waterway led to the aggressive expansion of the HBC. Read on to learn more.
New Manuscript Finding Aids: Spring 2024
The William L. Clements Library’s collections continue to grow, helping researchers and students study the rich and diverse American past. The collections described below touch on a wide range of topics, including spiritualism, crime, children and education, business, military and international affairs, and book trades and print culture. This includes the diary of Achsa W. Sprague, Etna Bittenbender’s case statements, and various drawings and penmanship books from the 1800s. Read more to see what catches your interest!
Panting After History
Laramy Fellow Johnathon Beecher Field recounts his visit to the Clements last fall for research for his book, The Objects of Settler Innocence. In this book, he argues that “a constellation of physical objects… work to obscure the realities of settler colonialism for its present-day beneficiaries.” This includes settler kitsch – “the ubiquitous renderings of the Anglo-Indigenous encounter as something that is impossible to take seriously.”