• Friends Collection Home
• Guide to Using the Archives
• Hours

 

Friends Collection and College Archives

We want to welcome our new Library Director and Coordinator of Information Services, Scott Silverman! Click here to see a picture of Scott with renowned physicist Herman White.

• Guide to Using the Archives
• Hours
• Staff
• Earlham Digital Archives
• College Archives Holdings
• Manuscript Collections
• Indiana Yearly Meeting Archives
• Western Yearly Meeting Archives
• Digital Quaker Collection
• Plowshares Digital Archive for Peace Studies
• American Friend Obituary Index:
  1894-1960
• Josiah Parker Papers:
  A Digital Exhibit
• Genealogy at Earlham
• Policies
• Reproduction Fees
• Links

The Arthur and Kathleen Postle Archives and Friends Collection are named for the late Arthur Postle and his wife, Kathleen, the latter the donor who served the college for many years as a member of the faculty.

The Friends Collection is one of the four or five largest in the world, with more than 12,000 books and nearly as many pamphlets, some going back to the 17th Century when the Society of Friends was founded. These works are supplemented with an extensive collection of Quaker genealogical materials. Personal diaries, letters, and detailed records of monthly and yearly meetings reveal the lives of thousands of Quaker men and women. Documents and Earlham's rare book collection are preserved under climate-controlled conditions. Some of these date back to the Middle Ages, and many are too fragile or rare to be housed on the open shelves. The Friends Collection draws hundreds of scholars and genealogists to Lilly Library annually. In addition to assisting these visitors, College Archivist and Curator, Thomas D. Hamm, answers nearly 400 inquiring letters each year.

The College Archives keeps alive the institutional memory of Earlham. In its spacious new quarters, the Archives preserves all the material that is judged to be of historical significance for Earlham and Earlhamites.

The many files include official records; collections of publications, such as the College's first printed catalog of 1858; Opinion Board papers dating back to its founding in 1948, and complete runs of the campus newspapers since 1873. The collection includes such interesting and diverse objects as the ink well used by Earlham's first president, Barnabas Hobbs. Chairs used in the Archives today are the same ones used when the student dining hall opened in 1847.

-- The image of George Fox on this page is taken from Quaker Reflections to Light the Future: A Collection of Pictures (Philadelphia: Religous Education Committee Friends General Conference, 1967).