Past Library Exhibit

March-September 2018, Special Collections Library Established in 1873, the rich beginning of Vanderbilt University can be understood through letters from its founders, on display in the Special Collections Library. Correspondence between Cornelius Vanderbilt and Bishop Holland N. McTyeire highlight some of the earliest plans for the campus, from the… Read More

February-June 2018 From George Washington to Barack Obama, America’s past commanders in chief have provided domestic and international leadership during world wars, political unrest and the struggle for basic human rights. Their personal lives have been shaped by great joy and heartbreak, deep-rooted conflict and public scrutiny. Along the… Read More

December 2017-May 2018 The library’s distinctive collections are areas of particular strength that set Vanderbilt apart from other research libraries. These include items of great rarity, historic value, and even one-of-a-kind treasures. These collections stimulate teaching and scholarship, draw up memories, and inspire new knowledge. In this exhibition, highlights… Read More

December 6, 2017-September 2018, Divinity Library Often called the cradle of civilization, the ancient Near East witnessed the emergence of remarkable cultures from the fourth through the first millennia BCE. From those cultures surfaced novel systems of writing that addressed the range of lived experience, artistic and literary expression,… Read More

This exhibition will be curated by a cohort of Buchanan Library Fellows and their librarian mentors. The J. León Helguera Collection of Colombiana is a unique resource housed by the Vanderbilt University Library. The Collection is comprised of thousands of pamphlets, newspapers, books, and broadsides from 19th-century Colombia. Over the past… Read More

Everyone knows what a book is. But what do gutters, fore-edges, diapers, running heads, and pilcrows have to do with books? In this course, the students learned interesting and amusing stories behind useful, though specialized terms in the history of communication from medieval manuscripts to digital publishing. Along the way, students learned… Read More

August 2017-February 2018 From 16th century alchemical treatises to 20th-century breakthroughs saving millions of lives, this exhibition explores the evolving roles of medicine and healers and how these changes affect the way we live and work today. Early modern distilling manuals, botanical prints, and handwritten cookbooks tell the… Read More

This exhibition will be curated by a cohort of Buchanan Library Fellows and their librarian mentors. The pamphlets, broadsides, newspapers and programas in the J. León Helguera Collection form one of Vanderbilt’s most significant special collections and one of the most important Colombian collections worldwide. The Helguera collection provides special insights into the… Read More

May-December 2017 Population movements have been a continuous part of Latin American history and remain instrumental in shaping the region to this day. The exhibition, created by the students in the course “Interdisciplinary Research Methods in Latin American Studies,” demonstrates the various motives that impelled explorers, scientists, conquerors, entrepreneurs,… Read More

May-December 2017 From the birth of the United States to modern times, many living on American soil migrated across the country either by force or seeking better opportunities. This exhibition explores three of these narratives: the long removal of Native Americans from ancestral lands, Tennesseans migrating to Texas, and… Read More