Special Collections & Archives: All Digitized Collections: List

Artwork, Portraits, etc. and the Art & Artifacts Database
New items are being added to the database of Art & Artifacts as we find them. Check back to see additional material. If you are interested in supporting this work with a monetary donation, please contact Susan Brown, Library Director.

Browse Rare and Unusual Books

This collection is slowly being added to as we digitize books for researchers. It includes a 16th C. Italian bestiary and a 19th C.book on horse phrenology.

Greco-Roman Coins

This collection has been gathered by the Classics Department at Transylvania to support course work.

Rosa Bonheur Sketchbook
The Bonheur Sketchbook is an item in the Clara Peck Collection which contains studies for some of this 19th century woman artist's famous paintings. Her subjects were country and farm scenes including horses, cattle, etc.  More information on the Sketchbook is available from an article published in Transylvania Treasures, Volume 3, Number 1, page 4.  More on Bonheur from wikipedia.

Bullock Photograph Collection

This collection of photographs taken in and around Lexington and Fayette County, Kentucky, includes images of local buildings, businesses, racetracks, banks, schools, churches, and homes. Also present are photographs of the courthouse, public library, orphan asylum, jail, and Transylvania University.

J.Winston Coleman Scrapbooks

The Coleman Scrapbooks contain a wide range of historic materials and news clippings collected by J. Winston Coleman, Lexington historian. Materials included in the scrapbooks range in date from the 1700s through the 1980s and cover Lexington and Kentucky history, or anything else that struck Squire Coleman's fancy.

J. Winston Coleman Photos
This collection includes photos of the Lockett trial mob, street scenes of Lexington, and photos of hemp production.

Jane Haselden Papers
Includes letters written by Haselden to her mother during the period she attended Hamilton College and Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky (1922-1924).; a travel log of her cruise to Europe; photographs of a Transylvania University trip to Mexico (1936); and an album with photographs and news clippings from her time as professor at Murray State University and University of Kentucky.

Ladies Magazine -1792
The Transylvania Library has a copy of one of the oldest women’s magazines to be published in North America.  Dr. Bethany Packard became very excited about this and its potential impact on her students, when she learned about it in 2016.  She requested several of the articles from this be digitized for her class Women's Literature: English / Women's Studies 2144.  After seeing that the content was not available for free anywhere, BJ Gooch, Special Collections Librarian, requested that we digitize the whole volume.  Our technical services librarian made this happen and loaded it into our public software.  This is now available not only to our own students but to scholars all over the world via Worldcat, an international catalog of materials held by libraries.  It is also available here on the Transy Library website.  It is a fascinating read with interesting content that tells us a lot about the life of women in the late 1700s.  Beginning on page 189, it includes an early version of Vindication of the Rights of Woman which was published in 1792 in England.

Doris Ulmann Photographs

A collection of twenty-three photographs of Appalachian people by the WPA photographer Doris Ulmann.  She was famous for her portraits.

University Documents
Digitized copies of some of the historic documents of Transylvania.  Dates of materials range from the early 1820s through the 21st century.

Transylvania Board of Trustees Minutes 1827 - 1850

In addition to the above info, you may also want to look at University of Kentucky's ExploreUK site for Kentucky University Board of Trustees Minutes 1862-1877. These transcribed and digitized minutes are included in the University of Kentucky Board of Trustees minutes.

Transylvania Yearbooks - The Crimson
Digitized copies of the college's yearbooks.  We are actively adding content to this so check back.

Photographs of Campus Buildings

Explore images of campus from the 1900s through recent years.

Transylvania University Library. Catalogue of the Transylvania University Medical Library.
Lexington, Ky.: Transylvania University Press, 1987.

Full text of the printed catalog of our Medical collection.  This collection was bought by faculty in two major buying trips in the 1820s and in the 1830s.

Medical Theses Collection 1819-1859
The Medical Thesis Collection consists of more than 1,800 theses which were written by Transylvania medical students between 1819 and 1859.  The Medical Thesis was written at the culmination of the medical degree at Transylvania.  They are hand written in the approximate equivalent to the modern blue book. This collection has the potential to impact scholars’ understanding of medical history and is scanned and available online.

Rambler Student Newspaper
Explore the digital copies of Transylvania's student newspaper.

Rafinesque Documents on the Transylvania Botanical Garden

Documents about the creation of the Transylvania Botanical Garden in the 1820s by faculty member Constantine Rafinesque.

The Transylvanian

Student magazine focusing on writing and the arts

Transylvania Treasures Magazine
Created with the support of Dr. Charles Ambrose, Transylvania Treasures was first published in 2008 and features short articles on many of the items owned by Transylvania as well as information about some of the faculty and staff of Transylvania.

Student literary and arts magazine.