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

Cover of the Fall of Valor showing a woman with a wedding ring in the foreground lookign back a man provocatively lighting another man's cigarette in the background

A Signet Classic

Okay, it is just #715 in the regular Signet series, not part of the Signet Classics, but the cover sure qualifies as a classic. We were going through some books that came to us as part of the Charles Jackson Papers and the 1949 paperback of his The Fall of Valor stopped us in our tracks. Is that cover saying what we think it says? Yep--in 1949, they had the guts to blatantly show homosexual attraction right there on the cover.

Covers to two copies of Bonaventure's commentaries on Lombard

Different, the Same, then Different Again

We have been doing some work to enhance access to our collection of 'incunabula,' the term used for books printed in the 15th century. We have around 165 of these books, and it is a fun period of book history because the printers were still figuring out this newfangled technology.

Body-Snatching and Bad Luck

In the winter of 1810, Doctor Nathan Smith wrote from Hanover to a fellow physician in Philadelphia. Smith apologized for not writing sooner to his friend and colleague, blaming the delay on a "little bad luck" back in December that had given him "great inquietude." As the founder of Dartmouth's medical school in 1797 and its only professor of medicine at the time, Smith was also the instructor of anatomy. The bad luck, it turned out, was that Smith had contracted with an untrustworthy individual to procure a fresh cadaver for the school's anatomy lectures.

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

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

From Vision to Reality

Now on Exhibit

September 15, 2025 - December 12, 2025

Rauner Library, Class of 1965 Galleries

Let the Old Traditions Fail

July 09, 2025 - September 12, 2025

Rauner Library, Class of 1965 Galleries

Colored illustration of woman in late 18th, early 19th century dress preparing food in a kitchen.

Plate to Print

March 17, 2025 - June 13, 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.

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 the Access Services team (working Friday and Saturday nights) in October 2023. I also work as a freelance indexer, mostly of scholarly books. 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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Research and Teaching Resources

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