Notable Gifts

Notable Gifts

Over the years, the Friends group has made significant contributions to the Art, Astronomy, and Music libraries as well as the Margaret Clapp Library. Highlights include the following purchases:

• Funding for an expert manuscript cataloger to enter bibliographic and historical information on Wellesley's early modern manuscripts into the Digital Scriptorium.

• Purchase of a previously unknown scrapbook containing over 300 architectural drawings by architect Hammat Billings, designer of Wellesley's College Hall. It contains early and unrealized interior schemes for College Hall and designs for other Wellesley-related buildings.

• Digitization of poet and sculptor Anne Whitney's travel letters

• Reprinting and on campus distribution of "The Wellesley News (04-02-1914)", edition which covered the College Hall fire; reprinted in conjunction with the College Hall fire centennial exhibit at the Davis Museum, Spring 2014

• Creation of Innovations in Reading and Scholarship Fund; providing key support for:

  • Wellesley College Book Studies Initiative

  • Dear Home: The letters of Anne Whitney, a crowdsourced transcription project

  • Mediterranean Antiquities Teaching Collection, a high-quality image collection of Wellesley owned ancient medievel artifacts

• New cutting-edge microfilm reader which scans to digital files (pdf)

• Intial funding for long-term storage solutions for wellesley-owned digital content

• High resolution imaging document camera for Special Collections

• Research drone and supporting 3D scanner, laptop computer, and portable 3D printer

• E-book readers for the study Serving Academic Library Collections on Ebook Readers.

• Opera in Video, an online collection of over 250 operas.

• Funding for Student Library Research Awards to encourage students to develop good research habits from the beginning of their Wellesley career.

• The Wellesley Index to Victorian Periodicals Online, 1965-1988 and the complementary British Periodicals Online (BPO).

• Web of Science's science and social science collections,1970-2000.

• Restoration of the antique hand press in the Book Arts Lab.

• Printing of Resonance and Response, a beautiful color catalogue to accompany the Artists' Books Conference, hosted by the Library in June 2005.

• Books selected by newly-hired, tenure track faculty as part of the Library's Collection Development Program.

• Vandercook proof press for the Book Arts Laboratory.

• Three volume set La Cappella Sistina for the Art Library.

• Portrait storage racks for Archives.

• Restoration of the Elizabeth Barrett Browning Chair in Special Collections.

• Facsimile of The Book of the Masters for the Music Library.

• Sanger Room Renovation.

• Conservation Facility.

• Limited Edition Books for the Art and Music Libraries.

• Textbooks for Newly Developing Areas of the Curriculum.

• Docuseek2 streaming documentary film database.