Archives and Rare Books

Joseph Nash McDowell, the St. Louis legend

Dr. Joseph Nash McDowell, featured in the portrait below, was born in Lexington, Kentucky in 1805 and he received a medical degree from Transylvania University in 1825. Prior to moving to St. Louis in 1839 with the intention of founding his own medical school, McDowell served as an anatomy professor at the Jefferson Medical College in  [Read more]

Archives and Rare Books

Wonderfully weird 2022 calendars from 1898 originals now available

The wonderfully weird Antikamnia calendars, published between 1897 and 1901 by the Antikamnia Chemical Company of St. Louis, feature colorful skeletons in humorous or whimsical scenes. This year, we are re-printing the 1898 calendar from Becker Library’s archival collections in the form of a 2022 calendar. The reproduction comes from the 1898 calendar because the  [Read more]

Archives and Rare Books

Online puzzles from the Archives and Rare Books Division

As part of our ongoing effort to bring our collections to you virtually as we all practice social distancing, we’ve created a series of online puzzles featuring images from Becker Library’s archival and rare book collections. See the images and links to their puzzles below. Helpful tips: Select your puzzle from the options below –  [Read more]

Announcements, Archives and Rare Books

Introducing #FridaysWithBecker

For more than a year now, Becker Library has hosted First Fridays @ Becker, a monthly Archives and Rare Books Division open house featuring items from its amazing collections. This has allowed our staff to do one of their favorite things – show people neat stuff.    While in-person First Friday monthly events are canceled  [Read more]

Archives and Rare Books

Introducing the new Becker Archives Database

Becker Medical Library has released an enhanced database to help users explore and discover our archival collections. The new Becker Archives Database includes over 18,000 digital images from our visual collections. The new database allows users to browse and keyword search across all of our archival collections, then filter search results by date, subject, language,  [Read more]

Archives and Rare Books

Thomas Jefferson’s Lenses

The Becker Archives holds a letter written by President Thomas Jefferson. This handwritten letter concerning Jefferson’s spectacles was given to Dr. Eugene Opie, dean of Washington University School of Medicine, in 1915. The letter was generously donated by William K. Bixby, was a frequent benefactor and long-time supporter of Washington University. Jefferson’s letter, dated Dec.  [Read more]

Archives and Rare Books

Robert E. Shank Papers available online via Industry Documents Library partnership

Becker Library is pleased to announce a partnership with the University of California San Francisco’s Industry Documents Library to provide online access to the Robert E. Shank Papers. Over 100,000 pages from Becker Library Archives’ Robert E. Shank Papers were digitized for this project. The files are included as part of the Food Industry Documents  [Read more]

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