The Great Book Move to Hewes Library

50 years ago - on January 21, 1970 - the Monmouth College community moved an entire library in one day! 

Over 120,000 volumes were carried from the Carnegie Library (Poling Hall) to the college's newest facility: Hewes Library. Classes were cancelled while over 800 volunteers marched up and down the hill carrying books against negative windchill. The new library opened for business the next day! What an extraordinary accomplishment!

Visit the west lobby of Hewes Library on Tuesday, January 21st to see this slideshow, and be sure to venture to the upper level display cases (west wall) to enjoy an archival exhibit of memorabilia celebrating the history of Hewes Library. 

New Exhibits: Qur'an and Bookmaking

Hewes Library has several new exhibits to view on the main floor.

West entrance: 1788 Handwritten Qur'an


This exhibition case will rotate often to showcase materials from the Monmouth College Special Collections & Archives. Currently on display is a handwritten copy of the Qur'an donated to Monmouth College by Reverend Gulian Lansing, who also donated the college's copy of the Conopus Stone.












East entrance: "Books as Art"


Currently on display are handmade books created in Professor Stephanie Baugh's ARTD 231. Examples of accordian, coptic, and stab binding are displayed throughout the two cases. This exhibit will be available throughout the month of January.

From the Archives: The Naval Flight School

The Naval Flight School Collection was added to the Monmouth College Digital Collections and contains photographs and materials related to the US Naval Flight Preparatory School and the US Navy Academic Refresher Unit.

Student Karrah Kuykendall worked under the direction of Lynn Daw, Technical Services Librarian and Archivist, to complete her HIST 390 course preserving and digitizing the Naval Flight School Collection.

During WWII, Monmouth College served as one of seventeen institutions selected by the U.S. Navy as a Naval Flight Preparatory School. In 1944, the NFPS transitioned to a Naval Academic Refresher Unit. This collection reflects on the important role of MC in the war effort and is a unique glimpse into life on the Monmouth College campus during the war.

A large portion of the collection is the Wing Tips Newsletter, which was written by the cadets and features information on WWII, maintaining grades, and social events on Monmouth College's campus.

From the Archives: Monmouth College Dance Cards

In honor of Valentine's Day this year, we've selected several of the dance cards from the Monmouth College Archives to display in the west lobby.  Most of our examples hail from the 1950s, stop by to learn a little about their history and the social events they were part of on campus.

From the Archives: Literary Societies with Student Ryan Cameron

Senior English major, Ryan Cameron, has spent the semester working on the Literary Societies archival collection in the HIST290 Archives Practicum.  Ryan describes his work in the following post.  After reading about his experiences, please stop by the library east entrance to view his exhibit!

Ryan Cameron: “Since freshman year, I’ve been trying to get as much undergraduate experience in library and archival science as possible here at Monmouth College.  So when Professor Daw came to me with the opportunity to turn what I was doing in my HIST-290 archives class into a display here in the library, I jumped at it!

Getting to work through the Literary Society’s boxes to begin with was great fun—as an English Major, I assumed that these societies would be something like book clubs, but as it turns out, the four Monmouth College literary societies—Philadelphian, Eccritean, Amateurs des Belles Lettres, and Aletheorian—were more oratorical in nature, giving speeches written both by members of the groups and by great speakers, authors, and thinkers of the times.  In fact, Monmouth College’s four literary societies were among the most famous, and from the beginning of the College’s existence until the early 1900’s, became what the college was most known for.

The experience of putting this display together has been great—I had to work through the planning stages, often by taking pictures of the display cabinet and creating mock-ups of the shelving to see where and how things would fit together thematically.  Ultimately, once I was in front of the case placing things on shelves, it was all a lot easier than I thought it was going to be, but I think the planning stages were some of the most beneficial to me as a student of the archives.

Getting to see my work displayed every day makes me feel like I’ll have a real heads-up on my graduate school classes.  But most of all, it feels great to be able to bring to light something that once was such a prominent part of Monmouth College’s history that has somehow fallen so by the wayside.”

From the MC Archives: The Dolphin Club

From the Monmouth College Archives:

Starting in the late 1940’s, early 1950’s, the Dolphin Club was a recreational participation group involved with women’s swimming. They specialized in synchronized swimming along with water “stunts”. This was a team the women tried out for in order to measure the variety of skill. The Dolphins put on performances, sometimes collaborating with the Orchesis, a modern dance organization at Monmouth College that had been around since 1950.  Two of their performances were “Westward Ho!” in 1970, and “Splash In Color” in 1967. These photographs are from the production “Westward Ho!”