We’re happy to announce that J’aime Wells has joined the staff of Special Collections as Executive Secretary & Research Assistant.  J’aime recently completed her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Rutgers University and brings with her experience working in the acquisitions department of Rutgers University Press.  Please welcome J’aime!

We bid a fond farewell to Joelle Bertolet who has retired this month from Special Collections as Executive Secretary & Research Assistant.  Joelle is looking forward to visiting her children and grandchildren and is preparing to enter the Peace Corps in 2007.

In July, Karl-Rainer Blumenthal begins a one-year appointment as our Digital Archives Fellow.  Karl is a 2006 graduate of Haverford College and worked in the Library and Special Collections while a student.

Special Collections staff Diana Franzusoff Peterson and John Anderies are attending WebWise 2006, a conference put on by the Institute for Museum and Library Studies, OCLC, and The Getty Trust in Los Angeles.  The conference centers on innovative approaches to resource discovery and opening our collections to users via the online environment.

Diana Franzusoff Peterson, College Archivist & Manuscripts Librarian, and John Anderies, Coordinator for Special & Digital Collections, will be attending the conference “Future Foundations: Mapping the Past – Building the Philadelphia GeoHistory Network” sponsored by the Philadelphia Area Consortium of Special Collections Libraries at the Chemical Heritage Foundation, December 2-3, 2005.

Why, after 300 years, are Benjamin Franklin’s insights and achievements still relevant to our times? Emma Lapsansky, curator of the Quaker Collection, and a panel of Franklin scholars will address this and other questions on a program on Wednesday, November 30, in The Montgomery Auditorium of the Free Library of Philadelphia.

Back to Africa : Benjamin Coates and the colonization movement in America, 1848-1880, edited by Emma Lapsansky-Werner, Professor of History and Curator of the Quaker Collection, and Margaret Hope Bacon, noted Quaker author and former Haverford Gest Fellow, has recently been published by Penn State University Press. Back to Africa, which draws on the papers of Benjamin Coates from Haverford Special Collections, has been called “essential reading for every student of black studies, abolitionism, Quaker history, and nineteenth-century reform in general.”

Benjamin Franklin : in search of a better world is the companion book of essays to accompany the Benjamin Franklin Tercentennary exhibition of the same name at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. Included in the collection of essays is one by our own Emma Lapsansky, Curator of the Quaker Collection.