Resources in the Mills College Collection

By Rebecca Leung

Of the more than 30 archival collections housed in the F. W. Olin Library’s Special Collections, one of the most used is the Mills College Collection. Popular with students, staff, faculty, community members, and outside research, this archive of Mills College is made up of approximately 625 linear feet and provides a broad picture of the college over its more-than-100 years of existence.

Research requests can vary greatly, from someone trying to track down information on a 19th century alumna to a music scholar researching a composer from the Center for Contemporary Music, and any other question one can imagine. The following are some of the first access points for research in the Mills College Collection.

Mills College Catalog

The Mills College Catalog is useful in many ways. Alumni applying for graduate school often use old catalogs, which contain course descriptions, tuition information, academic calendars, lists of faculty members, and general information about the college. Up until 1942, the catalog even contained registers listing the student names. The catalogs are available in hard copy both in Special Collections and in the circulating collection at F. W. Olin Library; however, the catalogs became infinitely more accessible when they were digitized, and they are now available online through HathiTrust (1891 through 1959, discontinuous) and the Northeastern Digital Repository Service (1891 through 1959 and 2000-2021).

Mills Publication Index

The Mills Publication Index lists articles from Mills publications, such as the Mills Quarterly, the alumnae magazine; the Mills College Weekly, the student newspaper also known as The Campanil and The Mills Stream; and more. This resource is useful for searching subject keywords or people. Search results yield an article title, author, volume, issue, and year of publication. Though these materials have not been systematically digitized, even a simple list of article titles can indicate a direction for further research. A full run of these publications can be found in the Special Collections, with additional copies in the circulating collection.

Record Group 0 — History of the College

Record Group 0 contains subject files on the college’s history, including student activism. It also contains the Biography Files, a collection of 82 boxes with folders on individuals who have been affiliated with Mills. The Biography Files have been described as a “mini archives” and contain correspondence, publications, news clippings, and event flyers. Small but mighty, these folders can be a crucial source of information.

These resources are only the beginning of the wealth of information in the Mills College Collection. Other helpful resources include the Building Files, which consist of files about buildings and campus grounds; the Faculty Index, listing Mills College faculty and their dates of employment; and the Photograph Files, containing more 12,000 photographs, including the Mills College Historical Photographs, available in the Online Archive of California.