Carolyn Williamson Nelson ’63 is a renowned contributor to the field of bibliography, primarily through her involvement in two large-scale, long-term projects undertaken under the auspices of the Wing Revision Project at Yale University Library, where she spent most of her career. The first of these projects was British Newspapers and Periodical 1641-1700: A Short-Title Catalogue, co-authored with Matthew Seccombe and published by the Modern Language Association in 1987. The second was the revision of Donald W. Wing’s foundational Short-Title Catalogue of Books. Wing reference numbers are the internationally-accepted means of identifying printed works of the period. Currently, Carolyn Nelson is compiling a first-line index of the manuscript poetry in the Osborn Collection at Yale University. She is married to Robert Nelson ’62, who is a member of Carleton’s Board of Trustees. The Nelsons also are Carleton parents: Eric ’89 and Melissa ’91.
Text of her Commencement Speech
Audio for Carolyn Williamson Nelson’s Commencement Speech and introduction by Professor Timothy Raylor