Collections
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Archaeology and Anthropology Collections
The Archaeology and Anthropology Collections contain more than 30,000 archaeological and ethnographic objects from around the world. These objects are available to faculty for hands-on teaching in the classroom, and to students for collections-based research projects. As these collections represent thousands of years of human innovation, expression, and experience, they are relevant to a wide array of courses and majors.
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Art Collections
Wesleyan University Library holds a number of collections that support the artistic research and interests of our campus and community, most notably the Art Library and the Visual Resource Center.
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Davison Art Center
The Davison Art Center collection consists of more than 25,000 works of art on paper, including prints, photographs, drawings, paintings, as well as a small collection of three-dimensional objects. Information about these objects is searchable online by students, faculty, researchers, and the public.
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Digital Collections & WesScholar
The Digital Collections are developed, maintained, and published in support of the research and teaching needs of the campus. In addition to enriching the body of electronic scholarly resources available to researchers around the world, the Digital Lab at Olin aids in preserving original formats through the development of the library’s digital collections.
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East Asian Art & Archival Collection
The East Asian Art & Archival Collection is held in the College for East Asian Studies, and was established with an initial donation of Chinese artworks and documents from Dr. Chih Meng and Huan-Shou Meng. Since then, it has grown to include more than 300 cultural objects and 30 boxes of archival materials. Together, they span a millennia of Asian history represent cultural and artistic traditions of China, Japan, Korea, India, and Tibet.
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Government Documents Collection
Wesleyan University Library is a designated depository library for U.S. government documents. The Government Document Collection includes books, maps, posters, pamphlets, and periodicals containing information on statistical data, government operations, foreign relations, education, science and technology, among other subjects.
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Joe Webb Peoples Museum of Natural History
The Joe Webb Peoples Museum of Natural History has unique collections of fossils from localities with unusually good preservation, such as the Triassic-Jurassic fossils of the Connecticut River Valley, the amazing fish and plants from the Eocene Green River Formation (Wyoming) and Florissant (Colorado), the Paleozoic Burgess Shale with its strange life forms (British Columbia) and many Sea Lilies from Crawfordsville (Indiana). The Museum has an extensive collection of rocks and minerals, including the large and beautiful crystals from Connecticut pegmatites from the Glastonbury-Portland area, as well as meteorites. Visit our exhibits at other locations: Shelley the Glyptodon at the Science Library, Terry the Deinotherium at the Woodhead Lounge, and our Mosasaur skull in Olin Library.
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Music Library and World Music Archives
The Music Library, located on the third floor of Olin Library, holds musical scores and commercial sound recordings of both spoken word and music. The World Music Archives holds original field recordings, with significant collections of Indian, Indonesian, Japanese, and Native American music.
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Science Library
The Science Library is the divisional library for the natural and physical sciences. While serving the information needs of the entire Wesleyan community, the library’s collection is focused on materials that support the Departments of Astronomy, Biology, Chemistry, Earth & Environmental Science, Molecular Biology & Biochemistry, Mathematics and Computer Science, and Physics.
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Special Collections & Archives
Special Collections & Archives is the home of the University’s archives, local history, manuscript, and rare book collections. Collections include artists’ books and local history materials, as well as the papers of Lincoln Memorial architect Henry Bacon, avant garde musician John Cage, and biographer and popular historian William Manchester, among others.
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Resource Center FGLI Textbook Library
The FGLI Textbook Library is provided by the Resource Center to help alleviate the financial burden for first generation and/or low-income (FGLI) students to attend classes at Wesleyan. This collection can be found on the first floor of the Science Library. -
Student Thesis and Dissertation Collection
The Student Thesis and Dissertation Collection is comprised of undergraduate honors theses, M.A. theses, and Ph.D. dissertations. One archival copy of each work is held by Special Collections & Archives and digital copies are available in our online repository (honors 2007-present, graduate 2013-present). Older archival copies are digitized and added to the repository when requested.
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WSA BIPOC Browsing Collection
Led by the Wesleyan Student Assembly (WSA), and in collaboration with the Library, the Resource Center, and Wesleyan community members, this collection aims to bring greater visibility to literature and scholarship produced by or centering Black, Indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) voices.
Contact the WSA BIPOC Browsing Collection