In August of 2024, just in time to share the book with Carol Neel’s First Year Foundations class “The Animal-Human Boundary” (also known informally, by us at least, as “beasts and monsters”), Special Collections purchased a 1678 book on unicorns:

Bartholin, Thomas (1616-1680). De Unicornu Observationes Novae. Amsterdam: H. Wetstenius, 1678.

This is the first illustrated edition (a version without pictures was published in 1645), so even if, like most people in 1678 (and today), you don’t read Latin, you can still enjoy this book. We thank the seller, Paul M. Dowling of Liber Antiqus, for providing these images.

The Edward Worth Library in Dublin, Ireland, provides a useful overview of unicorn theory here, and Google Books has digitized versions both the 1645 and 1678 editions.

Special Collections recently purchased a “Colorado Homesteaders” photograph album containing this intriguing image dated 1924.

The photo is labeled “practiseing” (practicing) and shows two women kissing.

We don’t know their names or anything about them. We don’t know who labeled the photo. We have so many questions. This is what it is to study LGBTQ+ / gay / lesbian / queer history / herstory / theirstory / ourstory.

The album is not yet cataloged, but researchers are welcome to view it in Special Collections — just ask for the “Colorado Homesteaders” album.

Tutt Library received an exciting new acquisition today, the “Ark of the Covenant,”

an important Christian Judeo-Christian relic worthy of research by Top Men. Who? Top Men. Here’s a video of the new acquisition being stored in the Special Collections vault.

We are sorry to inform researchers, however, that pipe smoking is against Special Collections policy. Even top men will be asked not to smoke in the reading room.

In December of 2021, Special Collections received a charming and unusual donation from Edward P. Bentley of Greenville, Michigan: a painting by Edith Bramhall, beloved Political Science professor at Colorado College from 1920 to 1946.

The painting, “Chickens,” was likely painted between 1946 and 1960; it has Bramhall’s address during that time, 116 East San Rafael, on the reverse side. It may have been a view from her home, with Pikes Peak in the background. That part of campus looks very different now, so we can’t be sure.

Robert Loevy’s Colorado College Reader (2012) contains two chapters on Bramhall, the first woman to make a career of teaching at CC. (Women served on the CC faculty before 1920, but none for longer than a few years). Bramhall is considered the founder of ” modern” Political Science at the college, and the department’s top prize for majors is named for her.

An undated document in the Archives (CC Information File Faculty – Bio – Bramhall, Edith) contains this anonymous anecdote: “She showed me some of her oil paintings of the region. Among them was a very good painting of Pikes Peak and the surrounding mountains, apparently done early in spring and early in the morning. It had a nice feeling of freshness about it. Pointing to it, Miss Bramhall recalled that she arose one morning and looked out at the mountains and decided that they would not look like that for long and that if she wanted to capture the right spring feeling she had better get to it at once. ‘So I just skipped classes,’ she said, ‘and I took my paints and things and went off to the hills to paint.'”

We thank Edward P. Bentley very much for this gift, including the specially-made frame. The painting is now part of the IDEA / Campus Collection and hangs in room 218, Tutt Library.

In October of 2021, CC Special Collections acquired a first edition of John Okada’s No-No Boy. The 1957 novel, a staple of Asian American literature, tells the story of Ichiro Yamada, a man who answers “no” to the two so-called “loyalty” questions in a 1943 questionnaire for Japanese Americans: “Are you willing to serve in the armed forces of the United States on combat duty wherever ordered?” and “Will you swear unqualified allegiance to the United States of America and faithfully defend the United States from any or all attack by foreign or domestic forces, and forswear any form of allegiance or obedience to the Japanese emperor, to any other foreign government, power or organization?”

We’re especially excited to have the book here at CC because it connects with our collections on Camp Amache and also because it’s the first edition of a title with a complex and fraught publishing history — see “Dispute Arises Over ‘No-No Boy’” in the New York Times.

UPDATE September 2023: Colorado Senator Michael Bennet visited Special Collections in April of 2023 to view this book and research the history of Japanese American incarceration. In September, this article appeared in the CC alumni magazine, with input from CC faculty Aline Lo and Brandon Shimoda.

Look at this fantastic one-of-a-kind scroll-book by Mary Chenoweth that we just got as a gift from Eve Tilley!

Just look at it!

The pencil is there to show scale. The text of the scroll reads:

Toot all a bored 1997 coal more and more coal hemanaigs [?] trunk line heavy poof down-n-out short list slate pleez run on time oil books books ABC lift cracker barrels Xercise off hours without spectacles bug footloose accordion to Sante Fe NM lake of [eye]’s? well worn out past hurts rent a car only five more or maybe seven american eagle oops Rocky Mountains either way just decide cross country advertisers end

Reverse: Mary Chenoweth June 1997 for Trudie Gregory all aboard

We recently acquired a photograph album showing a large farming and ranching family in Estes Park, Colorado, ca. 1905-1915. We know the names of three brothers: Stuart, Gordon, and Charles Mace. Also pictured in the album are the wives and children of the Maces.

People from 100 years ago … they’re just like us!

They go for horsey rides!

They like cute bunnies!

When they take a bath in a bucket, they get their picture taken!

They … oh, no. Don’t do THAT…

Hat tip to Us Magazine’s Stars: They’re Just Like Us

We invite you to enjoy a new mini-exhibition in the display case in the garden level of Tutt Library: Ten Great Reads from the Feminist Lesbian Sci-Fi Boom of the 1970s: Sandra Gail Lambert Picks Her Favorites from an Unsung Genre.

Read Lambert’s article here: https://lithub.com/10-great-reads-from-the-feminist-lesbian-sci-fi-boom-of-the-1970s/

The Colorado College library now has every book mentioned in this article. Some have truly fantastic pulp paperback covers. Here’s an example:

The Colorado College LGBT Oral History Project is now up and running in Digital CC!

The project includes audio recordings of interviews with lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and allied Colorado College faculty, staff, and alumni, along with Colorado Springs community participants. The interviews were done between January 2011 and May 2012. The founding director of the project was Andrew Wallace, CC class of 2012.

Participants in the project include, in alphabetical order, Rob Adkisson (CC class of 1992), Nate Bower (CC Chemistry faculty 1977-2017), Bruce Coriell (CC Chaplain 1988-2016), Mike Edmonds (CC Dean of Students 1991-present), Heinz Geppert (CC German faculty 1991-2013, Karl Jeffries (CC class of 1991), Bruce Loeffler (CC Geology faculty 1977-1999), Eva McGeehan (co-founder of the Colorado Springs chapter of PFLAG), Ginger Morgan (CC staff 1987-2012), and Frank Mosher (CC class of 1969; CC staff 1987-present).

Subjects including: coming out, Out and About (this Colorado College organization, founded 1985, became the LGBT Alliance), Amendment 2, homophobia, discrimination, HIV and AIDS, gay rights, same-sex marriage, and the 1991 founding of the Colorado Springs chapter of PFLAG (Parents, Families, and Friends of Lesbians and Gays).

We hope eventually to offer transcriptions of the interviews. Please contact Jessy Randall (jrandall@coloradocollege.edu) if you’d like to volunteer to transcribe.

ADDENDUM, 2023: see also the LGBTQ+ Oral History Project of 2022-2023.