The Richardson-Sloane Special Collections Center is pleased to be working with the Contemporary Club to make its papers more readily available to the public for research.
Since the autumn of 1896, the members of the Contemporary Club have gathered in Davenport, as their chosen name would suggest, “for the purpose of studying and discussing topics of timely interest.” The first series of papers read before the Club (1896-1897) was printed so that they “should be preserved in a more permanent shape” in a limited edition of 100 copies. They were originally published one by one in The Weekly Outlook, a local periodical “devoted to home and outing life, literature, art, music and the drama,” published by Club member Charles Eugene Banks. Below is the first published essay written by one of the Club’s founders, The Very Reverend Hamilton Schulyer.
The library has always had copies of the Contemporary Club’s published papers (SC 374.3 CONTE) on its shelves, including the first leather-bound volume of papers read during the initial eight “seasons” of club meetings.
The Club continued to publish its papers in print through the 2018-2019 season. A copy of each volume was donated to Special Collections, and staff here maintained a print index to the papers.
In the years following the pandemic, members of the Club approached us for help in publishing the papers online. An agreement was reached whereby the Club would digitize the historical papers and we would post the pdf files on a research guide provided by the library’s LibGuides service.
Together we have made good progress since the spring of 2024. We have digitized and uploaded most of the papers from the 1970s to the present. Much more to go, but we are dedicated! Click here to see the names of the Contemporary Club members and the topics they addressed, decade by decade, as well as a new and improved online index.
(posted by Katie)
