About Our Collections
The Archives currently holds about 2,000 linear feet of collections. These collections represent a wide variety of unpublished materials from both Lawrence and Milwaukee-Downer College, including the papers of Lawrence presidents; records from University offices and departments; papers of faculty and alumni; and a number of scrapbooks, photographs, and artifacts. The Archives also houses collections of published materials such as yearbooks, student newspapers, and other campus publications. Collections date back as far as the founding of Lawrence in the mid-1840s, and new materials are continually acquired.
Milwaukee-Downer College Collections
Milwaukee-Downer College merged with Lawrence College to form Lawrence University in 1964. A large collection of Milwaukee-Downer’s records is owned by the Wisconsin Historical Society and held at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Archives. A full description of these materials is in ArCat, the WHS Archives catalog. The collection of Milwaukee-Downer materials held at the Lawrence Archives is largely unprocessed but still accessible for research use. Please contact the archivist for more information.
Our collections database contains descriptions (including box and folder inventories) of collections held in the Archives. The site is a work in progress; not all collections are yet indexed here.
Digital Collections
Some digitized content from Archives' collections (selected photographs, letters, and other papers) is available to browse and search through our collections database. Oral histories with alumni and emeriti faculty and staff, faculty award citations, a selection of student yearbooks, and a large segment of our student newspaper, The Lawrentian, are available through our institutional repository.
