Friends Collection and College Archives: Home

Friends Collection Hours and Policies

We are open for research by appointment to students, faculty, and staff of Earlham College, ESR, and Bethany. For more information, see the Archives' "Services and Policies During COVID-19" tab.

We are allowing members of the Earlham campus community to place holds on items in our circulating collection. Please see the "Services and Policies During COVID-19" tab for more information on this.

Please see the "Services and Policies During COVID-19" tab for information on our available services.

Welcome to the Earlham Friends Collection and College Archives.  The Friends Collection includes the college's books and periodicals on Quakerism, manuscripts related to Friends, and Earlham College historical materials. We have one of the four or five largest Quaker Collections in the world, with more than 13,000 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.

Search across our finding aids (inventories) for manuscript collections both college related and Quaker related, as well as an index of Indiana Yearly Meeting Minutes

The majority of our collections have not been digitized. Individual items -- documents, photographs, etc. -- usually cannot be viewed online. We do accept digitization requests, but fees may apply.

Search Finding Aids:

You can Search Finding Aids to find research materials in our archival collections. 

Note: we recently migrated to a new archives management system called ArchivesSpace. All of our finding aids transferred from our old site, but we are still doing clean-up related to the migration. We are aware of the problems and working to fix the issues quickly. If you need help finding something, please let us know.

Earlham Library Catalog

Do you have a question for our staff?

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Thomas Hamm
Quaker Scholar in Residence

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