About the Encyclopedia Trinitiana

(June 15, 2022)

The goal of Encyclopedia Trinitiana is to highlight events, places and people within the long history of the college, and to provide a platform for exploring Trinity through many different lenses. Our hope is that this project will continue past the Bicentennial celebration of 2023 and serve as a community-built archive for students of the history of Trinity College.

Encyclopedia Trinitiana began in Spring 2022 as a collaborative project between archivists, instructional technologists, and librarians within Library and Information Technology Services. The project was inspired by a combination of many factors, including:

• A need to gather information and knowledge about Trinity places, events and people from an extensive range of sources to a central knowledge platform for the upcoming bicentennial celebration starting in May 2023.

• A recognition that Trinity’s history is still incomplete and selective. While there are several valuable contributions to the College’s history, such as the books by Weaver (1967) and Knapp & Knapp (2000), these volumes by nature of the print publishing model leave out many voices and events that are vital to fully understanding the college’s history. Wiki technology offers an opportunity to be more inclusive in the story we tell about the college’s legacy.

• A desire to create a living project that will evolve beyond the original creators, utilizing a digital platform that is dynamic, iterative, communal, and intuitive.

In this first phase of the project, we made a deliberate attempt to focus on events, places, and concepts, not people. There are many incredible people associated with Trinity College, including notable alumni and faculty, but we felt that deciding which persons merit an individual entry was best left for a future committee or phase of the project. However, undisputed notable people are included during this round, such as Presidents of the College, honorary degree recipients and well-known figures from the College’s past.

Each entry lists references at the bottom of the page for additional information and perusal. Two of the most frequently cited sources are books written about Trinity College: Trinity College in the Twentieth Century by Peter J. Knapp and Anne H. Knapp (2000); and History of Trinity College by Glenn Weaver (1967). Additional sources include the Trinity student newspaper, The Tripod, Trinity Trustees minutes, the Trinity Tablet and the Hartford Courant. Images that appear on the site are scans of originals, whenever possible.

We highly recommended using tags to explore the site, such as the following:

places, events, people, presidents, lgbtq, women, alumni, bipoc, students, faculty, academics, athletics, traditions, organizations

We hope that you enjoy using this site as much as we have enjoyed putting it together! If you have suggestions for new content or edits of existing content, feel free to email us at library-feedback@trincoll.edu. We would like to also acknowledge our inspiration for this project, Brown University’s Encyclopedia Brunoniana.

• Christina Bleyer – Assistant Vice President for Libraries and Distinctive Collections
• Eric Stoykovich, College Archivist and Manuscript Librarian
• Amy Harrell, Educational Technology Librarian
• Amanda Matava, Digital Archivist
• Jeff Liszka, Arts & Humanities Librarian
• Cheryl Cape, Senior Instructional Designer

• Barbara Sternal, Bicentennial Processing Archivist, Watkinson Library
• Amy FitzGerald, Processing Archivist, Watkinson Library

Sammi Bray 2025

Savannah Brooks 2026

Emma Markowski 2025

Sara Lako 2024

Mya K. White 2025

Julia Kiernan (Bard College)

Cheryl Cape, Senior Instructional Designer, Raether Library and IT Services

David Chappell, Network and Systems Programmer, Raether Library and IT Services

Amy Harrell, Educational Technology Librarian, Raether Library and IT Services

Amanda Matava, Digital Archivist, Raether Library and IT Services

Jeff Liszka, Arts & Humanities Librarian, Raether Library and IT Services

Eric Stoykovich, College Archivist and Manuscript Librarian, Raether Library and IT Services

The Encyclopedia Trinitiana is dedicated to the memory of Peter J. Knapp, Class of 1965 and Trinity's College Archivist (1972-2013).