April 29 – July 5, 2013
Sterling Memorial Library Exhibits Corridor
Curated by Tyler James Griffith, MA '11 (Public Humanities), MPhil '12, PhD Candidate, History/History of Science and Medicine
Like Elihu Yale himself, Yale College was born amidst an historical "news boom" during the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. Yale's culture of student journalism is one of the oldest and most long-standing in North America. Moreover, Yale's Library system has an abundant collection of historic newspapers from all time periods: spread over its many collections are examples spanning more than four centuries and five distinct types of media. The library also tells a physical history of news, because Newspaper and Periodical Rooms have been a part of Yale as far back as its first purpose-built library structure. This exhibition investigates different facets of news history through the use of newspapers available in Yale’s Library system. It begins with the earliest examples of English-language newspapers in the seventeenth century, moves through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and concludes with an exploration of how the physical space of news-reading and news-production has evolved at Yale over time.