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!

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Manuscript title page to Historical Sketch of Dartmouth College
1876 was a critical juncture in the country’s history. 100 years after the Declaration of Independence and a mere eleven years after the Civil War, racial and regional tensions ran deep, shaping the celebrations and the future of the nation’s identity. Philadelphia’s Centennial International Exhibition of 1876, the first official world’s fair held in the United States, was at the center of these disputes. Attended by nearly one-fifth of the U.S.
We've posted in the past about the 1945 controversy over Dartmouth President Ernest Hopkins' comments regarding Jewish quotas in college admissions. This week we ran into the thoughts of one alum in particular. John Martin Mecklin, Class of 1939, became a war correspondent in Europe in the last years of World War II, and his letters make for some pretty stupendous reading.
Title page of chapbook
If you're a long-time reader of our blog, then you've heard us enthuse about books before. As we explained in a previous post, chapbooks were cheap and ephemeral publications made to fill a demand for reading material by the working class who, while increasingly literate, could not afford to purchase a book outright. Chapbooks were an important means of disseminating popular culture as well as improving literacy rates.

Exhibits

Silhouette of man with backpack and trees with map in background
Now on Exhibit
January 27, 2025 - March 17, 2025
Rauner Library, Class of 1965 Galleries
illustration of men digging up grave with corpse and tombstone in foreground and cityscape in background
September 16, 2024 - December 13, 2024
Rauner Library, Class of 1965 Galleries
Black top and bottom with yellow background overlain with a reperesentation of a stage. At right, a black hand grasps a mutlicolored 'rainbow' (red, yellow, green, black, and white)
July 08, 2024 - September 28, 2024
Rauner Library, Class of 1965 Galleries