Ella Strong Denison Library, Scripps College

04/15/2026

Join Peter and Donna Thomas this Friday from 2:45-3:30 PM in the Holbein Room.

04/07/2026

Established in 1936, the Slocum Award for best personal library collection is a special chance for Scripps seniors to show off their books. Visit the exhibits at the end of each Spring semester! This year’s cohort marks the 90th anniversary of the award. To celebrate their achievements, participants visited The Huntington for brunch and a tour.

***

03/13/2026

Centennial Time Capsule 3: Meet Gordon Kaufmann, the English Architect who designed Scripps College.

03/06/2026

Centennial Time Capsule 2: Happy National Women’s College Day! Today, we wanted to highlight material from the Scripps College archives in celebration of 100 years of Scripps history. These photos showcase students of the past as they study in dorms, celebrate Bowling Green, and attend class in Balch Hall.

02/25/2026

Centennial Time Capsule #1: One hundred years ago this week, the world received news of the transformative donation made by Ellen Browning Scripps to create Scripps College. The Time Magazine issue of February 22nd, 1926, stated: “She gives, [and] has made giving an art.” When establishing the women’s college, she worked closely with James Blaisdell, the then-President of Pomona College, who wrote to her a year and a half a year later, “The beginning of a college has always seemed to me one of the great events of history for these institutions are immortal and the range of their influence timeless.” Today we share with you Ellen Browning Scripps’s cover image from Time Magazine, as well as Blaisdell’s four-page letter to Miss Scripps from October 1927, congratulating her on the establishment of Scripps College and crediting her as “the first to seize upon this idea of an affiliation of colleges” in Claremont, California.

WomensPhilanthropy ClaremontColleges PomonaCollege

02/12/2026

Stop by our annual Date with a Rare Book event this Saturday (2/14) from 10-12:30!

01/30/2026

Built in 1931 and designed by architect Gordon Kaufmann in the cruciform shape of a chapel featuring stylistic elements from Spanish Colonial Revival, Denison Library was the second academic building to be built on the Scripps campus. Denison was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1984.

01/21/2026

12/16/2025

Happy birthday, Jane Austen! December 16 marks the 250th anniversary of the birth of one of the world’s most beloved authors. Although she received little recognition during her lifetime, her novels are now considered iconic classics in English literature, praised for their social critique, wit, and contributions to literary realism. Her works are markedly influential to this day and inspired dozens of popular adaptations – for example, did you know the 1995 movie Clueless was based on her 1815 novel Emma? Or that Bridget Jones’ Diary, released in 2001, was based on Pride and Prejudice, which Austen published in 1813?

At Denison Library we have some excellent Austen-related items and editions of her books. “Janeites,” or fans of Austen, are welcome to visit our collections to see, for example, a Pride and Prejudice-inspired needle book sewn by Gay Ann Rogers ‘65, or a beautifully bound set of Austen’s novels from 1906 featuring color illustrations by C.E. & H.M. Brock that was donated to the library by the estate of Helen Murphy ‘42.

Cheers to 250, Jane! You don’t look a day over 249!

12/16/2025

Have a great winter break! We’ll see you again in January! 🩵❄️🩵