Rauner Special Collections Library

Stewarded by a team of specialists, Rauner Special Collections Library houses over 100,000 rare books, millions of manuscripts, and the extensive Dartmouth College Archives. The team collaborates and partners with students, faculty, staff, and the archive-curious at Dartmouth—and across the globe—to accelerate research and advance scholarship. Come and get hands on with us!

Library Search: Books, periodicals, manuscripts, or theses.
Archives and Manuscripts Search: Archival and manuscript collections.
Digital Collections and Resources: Photos or other digitized materials.
Oral History Collections: Interviews with former Dartmouth students, faculty, staff, administrators, and community members.

Not Sure Where to Begin?

Send us your questions by email!

Email: rauner.reference@dartmouth.edu
Phone: 603-646-0538

Research and Teaching Resources

Request Reference Assistance by emailing rauner.reference@dartmouth.edu
Teach with Primary Sources
Rauner Library Staff
Plan Your Visit

Opportunities for Students and Researchers

Rauner Blog Feed

Covers of The Ideal Book and The Beautiful Book

Books Beautiful

We have two books that are so different but so similar we don't know what to make of them together. The first is T. J. Cobden-Sanderson's attempt to define perfection with his The Ideal Book or Book Beautiful. Lovingly printed by Cobden-Sanderson at his Doves Press in 1900, it obsesses over the role of typography in creating a transparent window into the mind of the author through its purity of form and execution. Flip the title a bit and you get Jack Smith's infamous The Beautiful Book printed by Piero Heliczer's Dead Language Press in 1962.

NYTimes photo of Liutkus and Daly being arrested

Paying the Civil Rights Movement's First Dues

We've posted previously about Dartmouth students Johan Liutkus '65 and Roger Daly '67 and how they answered the call of Martin Luther King, Jr., for white people of goodwill in the North to rise up in indignation over the treatment of Black Americans in the South.

A gold mistletoe pattern on a green background.

Three Branches of the Golden Bough

Popular conceptions of folklore and mythology can be a funny game of telephone. In high school, for instance, you may have learned about the “hero’s journey”, a concept developed by Joseph Campbell (Dartmouth Class of 1925, non-graduate) to describe a "universal" narrative structure. It has a tendency to come up in English classes as a useful framework to apply to assigned texts, mapping well onto classics like the Odyssey. And it can be useful in that narrative context, but it’s terrible as any sort of comparative mythology.

Students looking at books in Rauner Library

Students in Rauner Library preparing items for exhibit.

Enhance learning with hands-on exploration of primary sources!

Utilize our materials to:

Access unique special collections.
Examine evidence in primary sources.
Develop skills in interpreting historical documents.

Whether you need a single session or a full term, let’s tailor the experience to fit your class.

Exhibits

All Exhibits

Triptych like image. Left hand illustration depicts older man with book in lap and quill pen in hand. Middle depicts Black man reclining in field with book. Right hand depicts woman in chains.

Reading Sentences

Now on Exhibit

April 06, 2026 - June 19, 2026

Rauner Library, Class of 1965 Galleries

Illustration of a man on a white horse blowing a long trumpet with a woman and another figure behind. Trees, hedges, and a rendering of the US capitol in background, right.

Making the Case for Suffrage

January 07, 2026 - March 13, 2026

Rauner Library, Class of 1965 Galleries

map of eastern United States with red line denoting Appalachian Trail running from Georgia to Maine

From Vision to Reality

September 15, 2025 - December 12, 2025

Rauner Library, Class of 1965 Galleries

All Exhibits

Email & Phone

Rauner Special Collections Library

rauner.reference@dartmouth.edu

603-646-0538

Address

Rauner Special Collections Library

6065 Webster Hall
Hanover, NH 03755

Our Staff

Joshua A. Lascell

Assistant Archivist for Acquisitions and Collections

Joshua.A.Lascell@dartmouth.edu

603-646-9158

Peter D. Nowell

Rare Book and Manuscript Metadata Librarian

Peter.D.Nowell@dartmouth.edu

603-646-3713

Peter works primarily with rare published resources (monographs, serials, broadsides, artists' books, scores, etc.), ancient and medieval manuscripts, two-dimensional visual resources (prints), realia, digital resources, and collections of materials. He researches bibliographic, archival, and other aspects of these resources and creates metadata using national and international standards.

Morgan R. Swan

Special Collections Librarian for Teaching and Scholarly Engagement

Morgan.R.Swan@dartmouth.edu

603-646-3189

Morgan Swan is the Special Collections Librarian for Teaching & Scholarly Engagement at Rauner Special Collections Library. He facilitates class visits to Rauner Library, supervises special collections public services, and coordinates special collections outreach efforts to the campus and community. Morgan has a PhD in English Literature from Yale University and received his Master's in Library and Information Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He grew up in Macau, China, and is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation.

Julia W. Logan

Archivist and Records Manager

Julia.W.Logan@dartmouth.edu

603-646-1829

Jay Satterfield

Head of Rauner Library Special Collections & Archives

Jay.Satterfield@dartmouth.edu

603-646-3712

Since arriving at Dartmouth in 2004, Jay has worked to integrate Special Collections into the intellectual life of the College through intensive curricular use of the collection. He is an advocate for hands on learning and creating meaningful connections between the past and the present with rare and unique materials. He is the author of “The World’s Best Books”: Taste, Culture and the Modern Library and holds a PhD in American Studies from the University of Iowa.

Scout Noffke

Reference and Administrative Specialist

scout.noffke@dartmouth.edu

Vi Welker

Assistant Archivist for Records

Vi.Welker@dartmouth.edu

603-646-1882

Vi joined Dartmouth in 2018 as the Records Analyst specializing in the examination and evaluation of systems and procedures related to the creation, processing, storing and disposition of records. She works with College departments and offices to ensure the integrity, accuracy, and safekeeping of institutional records.

Vi has a B.A. in History from Shippensburg University and a Masters in Library and Information Science from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. She earned the designation of Certified Records Analyst (CRA) in 2021.

Valen R. Werner

Historical Accountability Student Research Program Coordinator

Valen.R.Werner@dartmouth.edu

603-646-9244

Val Werner is the coordinator of the Historical Accountability Student Research Program. He was formerly the 2021-22 Edward Connery Lathem '51 Special Collections Fellow. He grew up in Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania and has been part of the Dartmouth community since 2016.

Charlie Langenbucher

Processing Specialist

Charlie.Langenbucher@dartmouth.edu

Charlie (they/them/theirs) joined Rauner Special Collections Library as a Processing Specialist in February 2022. They graduated from Brandeis University with a B.A. in 2016, and earned master's degrees in history and library science (archives management concentration) from Simmons University in 2021.

How to pronounce Charlie's name

Kent D. Randell

Assistant Archivist for Digital Collections

Kent.D.Randell@dartmouth.edu

Kellyann Wolfe

Collection Management & Outreach Assistant

Kellyann.Wolfe@dartmouth.edu

I joined Rauner in December of 2025 after 2+ years in Access Services. Very recently I worked as a freelance indexer, mostly of scholarly books; prior to that I taught Introduction to Hebrew Bible and biblical Hebrew. I live with my spouse Tim and cats Dayenu and Pip in the valley below Mt. Cardigan, where I cultivate an asparagus patch and forage wild foods. Ask me about eating milkweed!

Sarah K. Bowman

Processing Specialist

Sarah.K.Bowman@dartmouth.edu

Sophie Chadha

Edward Connery Lathem ’51 Special Collection Fellow

Sophie.Chadha@dartmouth.edu

A ’25 from Brookline, Massachusetts, Sophie studied English and neuroscience at Dartmouth and is interested in how literary and cognitive fields approach understanding thought, perception, language, memory, and development across species.

Special Collections played an integral role in her undergraduate experience: revisiting her favorite childhood stories in a ‘Victorian Children’s Literature’ course through the richly illustrated first editions at Rauner reignited a curiosity that evolved into extensive research with the archive’s holding of Rudyard Kipling’s short story collection Wee Willie Winkie: and Other Child Stories and culminated in a senior honors thesis titled, Forty Winks Later: The Dream of the Nation in the Children’s and Adult Literature of Kipling and Rushdie.

As an undergraduate assistant at Rauner during her senior year, she paged materials for classes on a range of topics she wouldn't have explored in her own coursework, from medieval bestiaries to 1920s foxtrot scores.

An aspiring educator, Sophie strives to create a learning environment that sparks students’ curiosity so they are also excited to return to Rauner Library and investigate the collections further. She is focused on creating innovative pairings of materials and active learning activities that supplement students’ analytical toolkits, making the subject(s) they study more tangible by foregrounding the essential relationships between form, content, and audience.

Sophie has designed and facilitated classes for ‘Romantic Era Literature and Frankenstein,’ ‘The Rise of the Novel,’ ‘Moby Dick,’ ‘U.S. and the World from Independence to 1865,’ and constructed sessions for visiting groups on WWI French-American correspondence and Robert Frost poetry.

Building off her passions for children’s literature and genre theory, Sophie is currently processing a previously un-cataloged collection of artworks by Victorian children’s and adult illustrators, including H.M. Brock and Hugh Thompson. She is also curating an exhibit on Transportive Literatures, which will explore escapist genres and portable literary forms to consider the impact of when and where we read on our engagement with narrative.

Ann K. Evans

Records Analyst

Ann.K.Evans@dartmouth.edu

All Rauner Special Collections Library Staff

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Not Sure Where to Begin?

Research and Teaching Resources

Opportunities for Students and Researchers

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Bring Your Class to Rauner

Bring Your Class to Rauner

Exhibits

Email & Phone

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Our Staff