Bryn Mawr College Special Collections

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Bryn Mawr College Special Collections

Please join the Friends to support the Library - and like this page to keep current with events.

Bryn Mawr College Library's Special Collections takes care of the rare books, manuscripts, artwork, artifacts, and anthropological collections that belong to the College. The Friends of the Bryn Mawr College Libraries support acquisitions, exhibitions, lectures, conservation, and other library projects overseen by Special Collections.

05/28/2026

Are you going to be at Reunion? Tomorrow (Friday 5/29) from 2-4pm join us in the Seminar Room (Canaday Library 205) for Show & Tell with Special Collections! Stop by to interact with materials from across our collections and chat with Special Collections staff!

While you’re here, you can also check out some of our exhibitions! Exhibitions are listed below, but you can find out more about our current exhibitions here: https://www.brynmawr.edu/about-college/special-collections/exhibitions-events

Current exhibitions:

SAY IT! Poster Design & Graphic Messages
1912 Gallery (1st Floor Canaday Library)
Open Mon-Fri 10-4pm

Knitted, Knotted, Spun: The Textuality of Textiles
Canaday Library 2nd Floor
Open whenever Canaday is open

Voracious: Cycles of Consumption
Old Library, 1st Floor
Open whenever Old Library is open

05/15/2026

Special Collections is building a collection of cartoneras for use in classes beginning this fall. Cartoneras are small hand-made books, inexpensively produced, and distributed by non-profit publishers or social or political groups to share literature, poetry, essays, etc. Cartoneras were first produced in Argentina in the early 2000s. They usually have covers made of recycled cardboard, often decorated by hand with paintings or collage. This “traditional” form may be altered or supplemented by the small independent groups and artists who make them - recent cartoneras are sometimes reminiscent of zines, artist’s books, poetry chapbooks, or other small press or personal publications.

Our collection includes books from Argentine, Mexico, Guatemala, Cuba, Columbia, Canada, and the US.

05/06/2026

Congratulations to the winners of this year's Seymour Adelman Book Collector's competition! First prize goes to Piper Farmer '26 for "Old Weird Albion" - a collection of books about the imagined and imaginary Britain of the past. Second prize was won by Tallulah Stallvik '28 for a collection about popular rock music and musicians of the last 70 years. We loved both collections!

Read more about the contest - https://www.brynmawr.edu/inside/offices-services/library-information-technology-services/opportunities-students/seymour-adelman-book-collectors-prize. The contests is sponsored by the Friends of the Bryn Mawr College Libraries.

05/05/2026

You're invited to attend "Reading by Touch: Learning from Tactile Print" a virtual symposium on Thursday, May 14th.

Before the widespread adoption of Braille in the early twentieth century, blind and seeing readers were exposed to a variety of tactile writing systems: embossed or raised print, touch art, and tactile maps. This symposium brings together scholars, archivists and collectors to ask: how did blind communities envision their books in the past, and what can we learn from them in our present?

The symposium is completely free to attend, though registration is required.

See the full program and register: https://readingbytouch.com/

05/04/2026

UPDATE: Deadline to apply extended to Tuesday, May 12th.

Special Collections is hiring a summer graduate student assistant to help with cataloging 17th- through 21st-century rare, old, artist's books, and children's books in Special Collections. The position is part-time and open to Bryn Mawr graduate students who are interested in working with historical and cultural collections.

Find out more information about the position and apply by searching “find student jobs” on Workday, or by using this link: https://wd12.myworkday.com/brynmawr/d/inst/15$158872/9925$346.htmld

05/01/2026

Bryn Mawr College Special Collections is hiring a Collections Move Technician to support the move of more than 10,000 archeological objects this summer. Responsibilities include: supervising art movers, unpacking, inventorying, and using a collections management database.

The schedule for the position is 4 days a week from 9am – 4pm, and the position will run the months of June, July, and August 2026. The pay rate is $22/hr.

Application deadline is May 11th.

You can see full job description, qualifications, and apply using the link in our bio. http://brynmawr.wd12.myworkdayjobs.com/en-US/External

04/29/2026

Have you had a chance to see Knitted, Knotted, Spun: The Textuality of Textiles? Stop by the 2nd floor of Canaday Library to view the exhibition for yourself. Knitted, Knotted, Spun will be up through the summer, but if you aren’t around this summer, make sure to check it out before you leave campus!

Knitted, Knotted, Spun: The Textuality of Textiles
March 19, 2026 through Summer 2026
Coombe Suite Case, 2nd floor Canaday Library

What if we thought of textiles as texts? What if we gave them the same authority and legitimacy we have afforded words and documents? When we focus on the roles and work of women to understand our families and neighbors, we need a different way of “reading.” How can we discern how textiles share histories, transmit cultural knowledge, build relationships, convey our love of family and community, and express political opinions?

Textiles, as much as words — and often together with words — are witnesses to history. From them we learn how the unrelenting and predominantly female labors of raising livestock and crops, picking, shearing, carding, spinning, weaving, sewing, darning, and knitting are not simply technologies of survival. They produce wrought and embodied expressions of meaning. We create — and must read — these textile “texts” not just with our eyes, but with our hands and our hearts.

Knitted, Knotted, Spun is curated by Marianne Hansen, Allison Mills, Janelle Rebel, and Carrie Robbins in honor of the Text & Textuality symposium. We thank the Friends of the Bryn Mawr College Libraries for supporting this exhibition.

04/27/2026

Special Collections doesn’t usually give travel recommendations...

But if you’re in Düsseldorf, be sure to stop by to see Anne Truitt: Pioneer of Minimal Art, the first comprehensive European exhibition of the work of US-American artist and writer Anne Truitt (1921–2004, Bryn Mawr College alumna 1943).

Such recognition is tremendous and we’re excited to cheer from afar! 👏🏻 Bryn Mawr Special Collections is the proud home of the Anne Truitt Papers. Link to finding aid in bio.

03/25/2026

This Apple Day Special Collections joins in celebrating Constance Applebee and her legacy both at Bryn Mawr College and beyond.

Born in 1873, Applebee brought women’s field hockey to the United States, teaching hockey at women’s colleges, including Bryn Mawr, at the turn of the century. In 1904 she began working as the Director of Outdoor Sports at the college. Although she officially left the faculty in 1928, Applebee continued to coach at Bryn Mawr until the age of 97. She passed away in 1981, at the age of 107. Her papers are held in the College Archives and frequently used by an international community of researchers interested in the history of field hockey and women’s athletics.

Images:

1. Constance Applebee coaches fencing, BMC Photo archives.
2 + 3: Thank you letters in the Constance Applebee Papers, Box 1, folder 8.
4 + 5: USFHA - Constance Applebee Papers, Box 5, folder 1
6: blazer_1927 - Constance Applebee Papers, Box 2
7+8: Early correspondence with Seven Sister colleges, circa 1901. Constance Applebee Papers, Box 5, folder 5.
9: Constance Applebee photo from the Photo archives.

03/24/2026

Voracious: Cycles of Consumption will be on display March 27-May 31, 2026 in the first floor of Old Library. The exhibition is sponsored by the Graduate Group in Archaeology, Classics, and History of Art on the occasion of the 15th Biennial Symposium Consumption: From Cannibalism to Capitalism, March 27-28, 2026. In conjunction with the symposium and the exhibition’s opening, there will be tours from 6-7 pm on March 27, starting under the Great Hall staircase.

Human consumption devours all. Animals, plants, art and culture, the environment, and even our own bodies become part of the omnivorous diet of human history. Voracious: Cycles of Consumption groups artworks selected from the College’s special collections to consider the gastronomical pleasures of eating, alongside the simultaneous and subconscious pains of extracting, digesting, and depleting natural and cultural resources. By attending to these unseen impacts of our appetite, this exhibit aims to implicate the often capitalist, colonizing, and cannibalistic motivations for consumption. What happens to the cycle of consumption as resources become increasingly scarce? Is there a way out? Can we begin again?

03/17/2026

New exhibition opening this Thursday! Knitted, Knotted, Spun: The Textuality of Textiles will be in up in the Coombe Suite Case on 2nd floor Canaday Library from March 19th through the summer.

What if we thought of textiles as texts? What if we gave them the same authority and legitimacy we have afforded words and documents? When we focus on the roles and work of women to understand our families and neighbors, we need a different way of “reading.” How can we discern how textiles share histories, transmit cultural knowledge, build relationships, convey our love of family and community, and express political opinions?

Textiles, as much as words — and often together with words — are witnesses to history. From them we learn how the unrelenting and predominantly female labors of raising livestock and crops, picking, shearing, carding, spinning, weaving, sewing, darning, and knitting are not simply technologies of survival. They produce wrought and embodied expressions of meaning. We create — and must read — these textile “texts” not just with our eyes, but with our hands and our hearts.

Knitted, Knotted, Spun is curated by Marianne Hansen, Allison Mills, Janelle Rebel, and Carrie Robbins in honor of the Text & Textuality symposium. We thank the Friends of the Bryn Mawr College Libraries for supporting this exhibition.

Image credit: Dreaming It Forward. 5 Year Plan. 2024.

Address

101 N Merion Avenue
Bryn Mawr, PA
19010

Website

http://www.brynmawr.edu/library/speccoll/index.html, http://www.brynmawr.edu/library/fol.html

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