Online Archive of Bowdoin Publications

Publications by and about Bowdoin College are important resources for students of Bowdoin's history; many of these titles have been digitized and are viewable and searchable via Bowdoin's Digital Commons portal (linked below).

College Serial Publications

• The Bowdoin College Catalogue is the official publication that describes entrance and degree requirements, course offerings, scholarships, student awards and prizes, and sanctioned student organizations.
• The Bowdoin Orient, the student newspaper, began publication in 1871 and is the nation’s oldest continuously published college weekly. The Orient currently publishes in print and online.
• Report of the President, Bowdoin College (1891-2001) provides annual “state of the college” summaries issued by the Office of the President.
• Bowdoin Alumni Magazine (1927-1969), published under various titles, includes alumni updates, news of campus and alumni association events, and articles centered on Bowdoin’s history and social life. Online versions of more recent issues of the alumni magazine, Bowdoin (2002- ), are also available. Issues published between 1970 and 2002 are available in print only, in the College Archives.

Histories

• The History of Bowdoin College (1927), by Louis Clinton Hatch, is the most detailed history of the College for the period from the College’s founding in 1794 until 1927.
• A Small College in Maine (1993), by Charles Calhoun and published in conjunction with Bowdoin’s bicentenary, provides a readable, illustrated history of the College. 
• The Architecture of Bowdoin College (1988), by Patricia McGraw Anderson, is the best single resource for the architectural history of Bowdoin’s campus buildings, gates, and memorials.
• Religion at Bowdoin College: A History (1981), by Ernst Christian Helmreich, considers how people at Bowdoin have perceived religion, how they have felt religion should or should not be realized at the College, and how those views changed over the years.
• Named Professorships at Bowdoin College (1976) is a study of the named professorial chairs and other endowed funds designated directly for faculty support.
• The Legacy of James Bowdoin III (1994), was published to accompany a major year-series of exhibitions and programs at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art commemorating the bicentennial of the founding of Bowdoin College.

Biographies

• General Catalogue of Bowdoin College and the Medical School of Maine: A Biographical Record of Alumni and Officers, 1794-1950 (1950) provides a complete and comprehensive biographical record of all of Bowdoin’s students, faculty, and administrative officers from the founding of the College in 1794 through 1950.
• General Catalogue of Bowdoin College and the Medical School of Maine: A Biographical Record of Alumni and Officers, 1900-1975 (1978) provides a complete and comprehensive biographical record of all of Bowdoin’s students, faculty, and administrative officers from 1900 through 1975.
• The History of Bowdoin College: With Biographical Sketches of Its Graduates from 1806 to 1879, Inclusive (1882), by Nehemiah Cleaveland and Alpheus S. Packard, provides encyclopedic biographical sketches of Bowdoin presidents and graduates for most of the nineteenth century, along with engraved portraits for many of them.