Grinnell College holds a wealth of primary materials in art, cultural history, natural history, and the history of technology, to support the research and evidence-based learning of students, faculty, and the community at large. Many of these materials have been digitized to make them more readily available to users. Due to copyright restrictions, some of these digitized collections may be used only by the students, faculty, and staff of Grinnell College.
Art Collection
(over 200 items) http://cat.lib.grinnell.edu:82/screens/opacmenu.html
The Grinnell College Art Collection began with 28 etchings given in honor of Maude Little Macy (1845-1926) and $1200 raised for the purchase of art during the endowment campaign of 1908. Since then, gifts, bequests, and judicious purchases made possible by the Marie-Louise and Samuel R. Rosenthal Fund, Clinton A. Rehling estate, and Vernon E. and Amy Hamamoto Faulconer have helped to build a collection of more than 5,000 works of art on paper. The collection is distinguished by its social and political commentary by artists who have taken up pen and stylus as weapons against oppression, exploitation and human folly.
Art Image Database
(over 75,000 items) http://pdid.grinnell.edu/ (Open to students, faculty and staff of Grinnell College only; login required) and http://cat.lib.grinnell.edu:81/screens/opacmenu.html (available on-campus only)
Searchable database of digital images contained in the Kistle Image Library.
Art of the Prairie Region
(over 240 items) http://pdid.grinnell.edu/ (Open to students, faculty and staff of Grinnell College only; login required)
The Art of the Prairie Region image database was developed as a joint project between Faulconer Gallery and the Center for Prairie Studies. All works are owned by Grinnell College and are related to the Midwest and the former prairie region. Images are available for about 60% of the records.
CERA Insect Collection
(over 590 items) http://pdid.grinnell.edu/ (open to students, faculty and staff of Grinnell College only; login required)
Insects gathered by the Fall 2004 BIO368 Ecology course from the Conard Environmental Research Area, located 12 miles west of Grinnell, Iowa.
Collembola Collection
http://web.grinnell.edu/courses/bio/collembola/maintable_menu.asp
This database includes all records of Collembola which are or were in the Collection of Professor Emeritus Ken Christiansen. The records are mainly from North America but include some specimens from Mexico, Lebanon, Syria and China.
Computer Science Museum
(over 350 items) http://drupal.cs.grinnell.edu/drupal6/museum/Catalog
The Computer Science Museum includes a collection of historical, computing-related materials, gathered over the years by the computer science faculty. This collection is housed on the third floor of the Noyce Science Center, Grinnell College; and much of the collection is displayed along the corridor.
Historic Iowa Postcards
(over 3700 items) http://pdid.grinnell.edu/ (open to students, faculty and staff of Grinnell College only; login required)
Searchable database of Grinnell College Libraries' historic Iowa Postcard Collection, 1900 to the present. The bulk of the collection is from the early 20th century.
Kleinschmidt Collection of Grinnell Architecture
(over 190 items) http://pdid.grinnell.edu/ (open to students, faculty and staff of Grinnell College only; login required)
Following his retirement as Professor of French at Grinnell College, John Kleinschmidt studied the architecture, history, culture and people of Grinnell. These images are from his collection of architectural photographs documenting the history of residential and commercial properties, located in the Special Collections Department, Grinnell College Libraries.
LASR: The Liberal Arts Scholarly Repository
(over 70 items) http://www.grinnell.edu/library/collections/onlinecoll/lasr
LASR is a developing community of liberal arts institutions that share a common vision for providing access to their locally created scholarly works. This vision includes a portal that aggregates the collections, a shared repository to which member schools can contribute content, and the people who are actively developing LASR.
Musical Instrument Collection
http://finearts.grinnell.edu/instruments/index.html
The collection includes:
- World Music Instruments: Instruments from around the world, exclusive of those used for the performance of symphonic, concert band, chamber and early European music repertoires.
- Early Music Instruments: Replicas of Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque and Classical era musical instruments.
- Western Concert Music Instruments: Instruments found in the modern symphony orchestra, concert band and chamber music ensembles.
Paul Wilson Plant Image Database
(over 2000 items) http://pdid.grinnell.edu/ (open to students, faculty and staff of Grinnell College only; login required)
With Funding from the Mellon and Culpeper Foundations, this project is creating an on-line database of flowering-plant images and information, using as its nucleus a collection of over 2,000 photographic slides donated to Grinnell by its alumnus, Paul A. Wilson.
Physics Historical Museum
(over 55 items) http://pdid.grinnell.edu/ (open to students, faculty and staff of Grinnell College only; login required)
Images and descriptions of some of the many hundreds of items in the Grinnell College Physics Historical Museum. A history of the museum can be found at http://web.grinnell.edu/physics/PMuseum/History.html. Items in the museum are organized into two broad categories: those instruments used for demonstration or laboratory work in physics (Mechanics, Electricity and Magnetism, Optics, Acoustics, and X-rays) and those things which are related to physics but are not primarily intended for demonstration or laboratory exercises.
Scarlet & Black
The Scarlet & Black newspaper is published by students of Grinnell College. Beginning in 1894, it was the first college newspaper published west of the Mississippi River. Images of the S&B are available online from 2007 to date. Some older issues are also available. An index to the S&B up to 1941 is available in the card catalog of the Iowa Room. Between 1941 and 1975 indexes are bound in the volumes of the S&B which are also in the Iowa Room. An list of articles covering the years 1976 to 2000 is available in the library catalog.
Selling America on Recorded Music--Phonograph Ads
(69 items) http://pdid.grinnell.edu/ (open to students, faculty and staff of Grinnell College only; login required)
This collection of magazine advertisements dating from approximately the first third of the twentieth century illustrates the arsenal of rhetorical and visual weapons the record industry employed in nurturing Americans into adopting the new habit of listening to performances split from their context of creation and in selling their machines and discs to the public. It is evident from even this small sampling of ads that many of the tools of persuasion invented by the industry back then are still with us today--fidelity to live sound, technological innovation, convenience, freedom of choice, educational and cultural edification, affordability, endorsement by famous artists.
Turkish Mission Collection
(over 90 items) http://pdid.grinnell.edu/ (open to students, faculty and staff of Grinnell College only; login required)
Paul Emmanuel Nilson graduated from Beloit College in 1911, after which he upheld the long tradition of teaching in Tarsus, Turkey, that the college had established. Harriet Fischer Nilson graduated from Wheaton College in 1912, spent a year teaching in California, and then felt called to work in the mission field; in 1913, she was assigned to teach at the Adana girl's school. Paul and Harriet met through the education and missionary system; shortly before Paul returned to the United States to enter the seminary, he proposed to Harriet, who accepted. They were married after the end of World War I. Both continued to teach in Turkey in the cities of Tarsus, Talas, Diyarbakir, and Mardin. The Nilsons retired in 1957 and returned to the United States. This collection contains photographs taken by, or for, the Nilsons during their stay in Turkey.
Herbarium
(over 15,000 items) http://db.grinnell.edu/herbarium/search.asp
The Grinnell College Herbarium (located on the lowest floor of the Noyce Science Center) includes a collection of over 20,000 specimens of vascular plants, bryophytes, and fungi. An interactive relational database documents approximately 85% of the specimens. An 1883 gift of over 3,000 specimens from Ward's Scientific formed the nucleus of the present collection. The initial gift contained plants from around the world, and the development of international collections has continued through gifts, exchanges, and faculty and student research. The main focus of the collection is the flora of central Iowa (see http://web.grinnell.edu/individuals/eckhart/herbarium.html).
