Students in International History of the United States (Hist 119) studying materials in Special Collections. Photo: Emily Williams
Quaker & Special Collections
Quaker & Special Collections contains Haverford College’s rare books, manuscripts, and the college archives. We seek to collect, preserve, and make available materials which serve the research and teaching needs of the Haverford community as well as the wider scholarly community.
Our world-renowned Quaker collections, which illuminate Quaker life, faith, and practice from the earliest days of the Society of Friends to the present is the highlight of the collection, while our varied collecting foci provide many opportunities for researchers. You can learn about the different locations where we record information about our collections, or choose a database to search from the drop-down menu on this page.
Today's Hours
Additional Hours InfoCampus Location
Lutnick Library, View Map
Contact
hc-special@haverford.edu
(610) 896-1161
Current Exhibits
Special Collections materials are often featured in library exhibits.
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Curated by students in Ava Shirazi's The Art of Sports: Ancient and Modern class
Entrance ramp cases and Level 2 walls, Lutnick Library
January 15 through March 15, 2025
The Art of Sports course explored the visual and poetic life of sports, ancient and modern. It brought together literature, art, history, and criticism to theorize the beauty of athletics. For a final project, students were asked to work in teams to curate a set of visual and/or verbal juxtapositions from across time and practices in order to propose questions, meanings, and significations around various sensory and affective dimensions of sports.
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Curated by Luis Rodriguez-Rincon, Assistant Professor of Spanish
Rebecca and Rick White Gallery, Lutnick Library
February 1 - July 15, 2025
This exhibit gathers together texts and images that show the genesis and spread of the architectural phenomenon of the grotto in early modern Europe. These materials help us better understand and visualize Palissy’s lost grottos through an exploration of the textual and aesthetic influences that informed his work on ceramic recreations of nature.
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Curated by Anna Smith, Anne T. and J. Morris Evans Post-Baccalaureate Fellow
Rufus Jones Study, Level 2
This exhibit explores the life of Ada Smith, one of the women who made Rufus Jones's life possible.
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Curated by Cullen Worth '27
Magill Wing cases
This exhibit explores the construction and history of the Barclay Hall dorm at Haverford.