In Special Collections and College Archives, we collect and preserve a wide variety of materials including books, pamphlets, maps, posters, sheet music, published materials, letters, diaries, scrapbooks, manuscript materials, photographs, oral histories, sound and video recordings, artifacts, and artwork. These materials are used to support the Gettysburg College community and beyond through research guidance, instruction, and collections management. In addition to the collections featured here, we care for Civil War Era primary sources such as artifacts, diaries, letters, documents, broadsides, and more.
Collections
GettDigital
GettDigital is the online portal to the digital collections created by Musselman Library's Special Collections and College Archives and offered through AM Quartex. These digital primary sources include a wide variety of material types and subjects including 20th century experiences of war, the Civil War Era, 19th and 20th century visual culture, and Gettysburg College history and publications.
Browse GettDigital Collections
Manuscript Collections
Special Collections and College Archives contains many manuscript collections, vertical file manuscripts, and college records. Many of these collections are not currently digitized. Finding aids can be viewed via ArchivesSpace.
Gettysburgian Archives
The Gettysburgian is the official newspaper of Gettysburg College. Scans of print issues from 1897-2010 are available online via Veridian Software.
Internet Archive
The Internet Archive provides online access to the Course Catalog of Gettysburg College, 1837-2006 as well as selected volumes from Special Collections and College Archives rare book collection.
Archive-It
Using the Archive-It tool, Gettysburg College captures web content created by and of curricular interest to the campus community. Content includes the College website, blogs, and social media.
Book Collections
Special Collections and College Archives preserves books as artifacts and each volume helps us illustrate the history of reading across cultures and centuries. We care for approximately 25,000 unique and rare editions of titles from all publishing eras. Books may come to us for various reasons. They may be: first editions - significant to the history of the College - examples of fine, decorative bindings - signed by the authors or illustrators - or are just plain cool! Most of our titles can be found in MUSCAT Plus.
Asian Art
Encompassing about 2,000 objects from the Shang dynasty (1700 B.C.) through the mid‑20th century, this teaching collection showcases the diversity of Asian material culture—everyday writing tools, clothing, ritual vessels, altar screens, and more—crafted from porcelain, jade, bronze, lacquer, silk, wood, and other media. While strongest in Chinese works, it also represents Japan, Korea, Java, India, and Central Asia and can be explored by material categories such as bamboo, cloisonné, glass, ivory, metal, and ceramics.
Donors
- Dr. Frank H. Kramer ’14 (principal bequest)
- Judith & Arthur Hart Burling
- Akiko Bowers (in memory of John Z. Bowers ’33)
- Rev. Glen H. Bowersox ’42
- Esther Cessna
- Chao Ming Chen
- Harold C. Cooper ’63
- Mr. & Mrs. Chester North Frazier
- Paul L. Frey ’36
- John H. Hampshire
- Edith Keely
- Georgeanna Knisely ’54
- James Shin Matsushita ’23
- Dr. & Mrs. Frank W. Parker
- William E. ’16 & Lillian Patrick
- Price Rogers
- Timothy Schmitt ’63
- Mrs. George H. Schwartz
- Rev. Malcolm ’36 & Janet Moyer Shutters ’39
- General C. A. Willoughby ’14
- Chan Wing
- Dr. Jeremiah Zimmerman ’73
Oral Histories
The oral history collection at Gettysburg College consists of transcripts (and, in some cases, sound recordings) of interviews documenting Gettysburg College, World War II, the Vietnam War, and the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Gettysburg.
Map Collections
Musselman Library’s Special Collections preserve several distinctive map resources, including the John H. W. Stuckenberg Map Collection—featuring three seventeenth‑century atlases and more than 500 individual sheets from the 16th–19th centuries by renowned cartographers such as Willem Janszoon Blaeu, Matthäus Seutter, and Tobias Conrad Lotter; Gettysburg’s 1924 Sanborn Fire Insurance Map, issued in 17 numbered sheets (sheet 14 is missing) that detail the town’s residential, commercial, and industrial structures and may be consulted on campus only; and the 1834 Atlas Classica, a finely printed series depicting the geography of the classical world.