Special Collections makes available collections and items to support student learning, especially engagement with primary sources across disciplines, leveraging collections strengths in modern books, archives and manuscripts, historical liberal arts book collections of early faculty, artifacts, ephemera and equipment relating to the history of printing, publishing, and the book arts. Formats include books, fine handmade books, art and letterpress prints, archival collections, scrapbooks, diaries, slides, manuscripts, pamphlets, stereographs, photographs, textiles, maps and objects. Resources are discoverable through public web pages and catalog records and in digitized form in the College’s institutional repository Digital Commons @ Wofford College, with some selections publicly available via JSTOR. Appointments to use materials in person can be made online, and faculty may book classes and select items to use as course-integrated texts with groups of students.
Special Collections predominantly consists of several thousand books from the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries, among which are those given to the College by prominent early and founding faculty, resulting in a collection with strengths in history and historiography, classical and contemporary literature, religion and Christianity, and math and science. Other strengths include a collection of 16th and 17th century books, which serve as specimens of pre-industrial bookmaking and printing, and an extensive collection of contemporary handmade books and prints from Larkspur Press of Kentucky. Special Collections includes thousands of unique or scarce items, such as a 16th century bound manuscript Franciscan antiphonarium (or chant book), limited edition maps, manuscripts and ephemera as well as archival collections, such as scholarship and working files of faculty members in various formats (including slides, photographs, and papers), descriptions of which are accessible on public web pages and in library catalog records.
A subcollection of Special Collections is the Broadus R. Littlejohn, Jr. Collection of Manuscripts and Ephemera. The Littlejohn Collection is a multi-format collection of cultural heritage materials collected by prominent local businessman and philanthropist B.R. Littlejohn, Jr. (1925-2010), and reflects the interests of the collector, including manuscripts and ephemera concerned with the history of the South and South Carolina, the Civil War and the Confederacy, including manuscripts and archival collections created by general officers and soldiers, Civil War envelopes, single copies and complete runs of historical newspapers, and pamphlets, plus several small archival collections mostly created in the 1800s.
Contact Special Collections Librarian Luke Meagher with questions or to make an appointment to visit Special Collections.