Week 2: Haverford College Library

The repository that I have chosen to focus on is the Haverford College Libraries, specifically their Quaker and Special Collections. When planning a visit to this archive, there are some important things to plan out beforehand. The archive is located inside Lutnick Library on the Haverford College campus, so be prepared to be surrounded by students. If you have questions prior to your visit, it is recommended that you reach out to the archive via their email at hc-special@haverford.edu or by phone at (610) 896-1161. The archive is open Monday through Friday from 9am to 5pm. Most collections from the archive are free for research use, and if you are perusing the archive online, they can be easily downloaded. Laptops and photography are encouraged for research use, but it is asked that cameras and phones be silenced while in the archive. Researchers are allowed to request copies of up to 500 pages each year free of charge, and using personal cameras and cell phones for reference copies is also permitted freely. Personal belongings such as coats, purses, briefcases, pens, food, and water bottles must be stored in lockers provided by the archive. One final note is that researchers are limited to the use of one box and one folder at a time in order to ensure that materials are kept in the order they were received. 

For searching the archive’s collection, the library uses Tripod for their online catalog. Here, you can search all of the library’s records for rare books, ephemera, and manuscripts held by Quaker and Special Collections. Tripod also includes circulating Quaker materials, such as scholarly monographs. For online access, it is recommended that you use TriCollege Libraries Digital Collections, which includes a variety of the archive’s materials such as Quaker journals and diaries, Quaker broadsides, images of Quaker meeting houses, materials related to Quakers and slavery, records of the Friendly Association for Regaining and Preserving Peace with the Indians by Pacific Measures, the Cope-Evans family papers, and more. 

For me, the main reason for picking this archive is that it offers a large amount of collections that focus on Indigenous peoples, something that I have been looking for as part of my research of Indigenous perspectives and alliances around the time of the Revolutionary War. A strength of this particular collection is that it highlights Native perspectives through copies of Native created documents and speeches from the 18th and 19th centuries. The repository largely emphasizes the collection of Quaker-related material, but because of Quaker and Indigenous Peoples consistent level of interaction, the archive has access to numerous Native collections as well. The repository is generally characterized as a collection of Quaker history in the Philadelphia area, thus the name Quaker and Special Collections, and it is significant because, whether intentionally or not, it highlights the high levels of Native interaction and influence in the Philadelphia area for centuries. Overall, I would highly recommend this collection.