Archives and Special Collections is accepting researchers by appointment only. Our Reading Room hours during the academic year are from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. Two business days' advance notice is requested for research appointments. To schedule an appointment, please visit the Archives' Appointment page.
College Archives collects materials from College offices, alumni, and students to preserve and provide access to the College historical record. Special Collections includes a variety of materials relating to Lake Forest, railroads, Chicago, architecture, and other topics. The Reading Room (where research appointments are held) is located in Room 004 of the Donnelley and Lee Library on the lower level.
In 1975, the College Archives was officially created as a sub-unit of the Library. In 1983, the Library opened its first Special Collections reading room and new closed stacks. By 2004, Archives and Special Collections had been consolidated into one suite including a work area, a reading room, and collections storage.
The first Archivist and Librarian for Special Collections, Arthur "Art" H. Miller (Ph.D.), joined Lake Forest College in 1972 as Library Director. In 1996 he became the Archivist, a role he served in until his retirement in 2013. Anne Thomason (MSI, MA) succeeded Arthur Miller in 2014 as the second Archivist and Librarian for Special Collections. In June 2020 her role evolved to be Associate Library Director and Head of Archives and Special Collections until June 2021. The position was vacant from July 2021 until December 2024 when the third Archivist and Librarian for Special Collections, Natalia Gutiérrez-Jones (MLIS, MA), started at the College.
to support and strengthen the pursuit of academic excellence by the students at the College,
to collect, preserve, and provide access to College permanent records for use in College business and by researchers,
and to promote a sense of community by recording the experiences and telling the story of students, faculty and staff at the College.
Metadata is the language used in the library catalog, archival finding aids, and digital collections to describe and manage resources and enable their discovery and access by researchers.
Lake Forest College’s Archives staff acknowledge the reality that our metadata and practices reflect a white supremacist and discriminatory culture. This may lead to problematic language that perpetuates past and present prejudices, especially in respect to race, Indigenous Peoples, sexuality, gender, religion, class, disability, colonialism, and Global North bias. Our descriptive practices also historically center English and other western European languages. We take responsibility for the language that describes our collections and are committed to remediating issues of outdated, inaccurate, objectifying, or disrespectful language, while acknowledging that this reparative work is ongoing.
We also acknowledge and alert researchers that collection materials may include distressing content showing harmful attitudes and/or practices inseparable from our history. We do not condone or defend the harmful attitudes and/or practices that appear in our collections, but as stewards of history we maintain collections without alteration regardless of their potential triggering content in order to promote critical thinking, academic research, and community accountability rather than contributing to harm. Furthermore, we acknowledge that historical collecting practices have also reflected harmful biases that have resulted in disproportionate representation of privileged groups often at the expense of marginalized groups thus creating gaps in representation of these marginalized groups and underrepresented groups. We are committed to addressing this skew in our collections moving forward and to repairing relationships with groups who have been harmed by an absence of representation in the archival record.
We welcome suggestions, questions, or comments about any resource or description using this anonymous form. If you prefer to email, you may contact archives@lakeforest.edu.
