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  • Monsters and Machines: Caricature, Visual Satire, and the Twentieth-Century Bestiary

    Sep 12 2024 – Dec 9 2024

    “Monsters and Machines: Caricature, Visual Satire, and the Twentieth-Century Bestiary,” the Library's fall 2024 exhibition in the Milberg Gallery at Firestone Library, will focus on the use of animal and zoological motifs in visual satire between World War I and the Cold War. 

  • Credit Line, Please: Photographs by Elizabeth Menzies

    Jun 12 2024 – Apr 1 2025

    The University Archives owe a great deal of our visual evidence of Princeton University in the mid-twentieth century to local photographer, Elizabeth Menzies (1915-2003). Menzies contributed countless photographs of the Princeton campus to Princeton Alumni Weekly magazine starting in 1936, through World War II, and late into the 1960s.

  • Belle da Costa Greene at Princeton, 1901–1905

    Nov 12 2024 – Mar 1 2025

    Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950) is renowned today as the founding director of the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York, where over a 40-year period she built a collection of unparalleled quality. Key to preparing da Costa Greene for her success in the exclusive world of rare books was her position at Princeton University Library, where she launched her career.

  • Be Happy: The work of Barbara Valenza

    Nov 15 2024 – May 31 2025

    Kindness, positivity, imagination, hope, and happiness run through Barbara Valenza’s works like golden threads on a beautiful tapestry. In her illustrations and words, Valenza shared her artistic soul while also encouraging readers to embrace and express their own creativity. 

  • Powering Up the U.S. Labor Force: Women in Industry During World War II (1940-1945)

    Nov 25 2024 – Jul 1 2025

    Helen Baker developed an unparalleled collection of industrial relations material at Princeton University Library. Baker joined the Industrial Relations Section in 1930 as the Section’s first librarian and research assistant, and became the first woman to achieve the rank of associate professor at Princeton in 1948. 

News

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Bryan Winston teaches to a full class during the October 2, 2024 Digital Scholarship Foundations class.
Digital Scholarship at PUL: Building Digital Collections
The chameleon seated at the desk represents the Soviet-era bureaucrat who had, in the perestroika era of the late 1980s, become eligible as a satirical target. This is the figure of the sycophantic, opportunist bureaucrat who monitors the direction of the wind and alters their self-presentation accordingly. The text on the chameleon’s body represents slogans from different ideological pivot points in Soviet history.
Inside the Milberg Gallery: The Reptilian Deceiver
“Legends of the Delaware Indians and Picture Writing” Book cover on a blurred background
Princeton University Library curates Lenape Collection
Alessandra Faccone demonstrates her design with Joe Scanlan during a meeting of the Haptic Lab in Special Collections.
Teaching with Collections: The Lewis Center’s Haptic Lab visits Special Collections
The United States appears as a giant spider with missiles for legs. In the center of its web is the acronym for the Strategic Defense Initiative, also known as “Star Wars” – the Reagan-era, space-based, anti-missile defense program. Billed as a defense initiative, its elaborate network of military technology was viewed by the Soviets as a form of imperialist expansionism.
Inside the Milberg Gallery: The Many-Legged Menace