Celebrating the Llewellyn Collection at Champlain College

Lance Llewellyn

Champlain College will honor local resident Lance Llewellyn with a public unveiling of The Llewellyn Collection at Champlain College on Monday, Sept. 16 at 5:30 p.m. Housed in Roger H. Perry Hall at 251 South Willard St., the exhibit will be open to the public and the celebration will include several talks about the collection of historic Burlington and Vermont ephemera.

The Llewellyn Collection is a non-circulating special collection administered by the Champlain College Library. An ongoing exhibit of the collection's highlights is on display in Perry Hall.

Remarks by Provost and Chief Academic Officer Robin Abramson, Senior Vice President of Finance and Administration David Provost, Champlain College Professor David Lustgarten, Fletcher Free Librarian Robert Resnik, and University of Vermont Professor Thomas Visser will be followed by a reception and collection viewing.

Lance Allan Llewellyn lives in Burlington and is a longtime friend of Champlain College. He graduated from the University of Vermont with degrees in civil engineering in 1967 and 1972 and later established engineering consulting firms in the Burlington area. His professional work is found throughout Vermont, including numerous projects on the Champlain College campus. An ardent Vermont enthusiast, he has collected Vermont memorabilia throughout much of his life. In 2010, he offered his unique collection to the College, which is dedicated to preserving the spirit and history of Burlington and the Champlain Valley.

Vermont map that is part of the Llewellyn Collection, administered by Champlain College LibraryThe Llewellyn Collection contains publications, artifacts, and ephemera related to the State of Vermont, with a focus on the City of Burlington. Assembled by local collector Lance Llewellyn, the collection consists of more than 800 books and pamphlets, 200 objects, and 100 linear feet of maps and ephemera - including more than 2,200 postcards and 80 scores of sheet music, as well as brochures, advertisements, pins and buttons, and other souvenir items.

The many postcards capturing Burlington's past will be the subject of Lustgarten's presentation. "Student Research as Community Service, The Historic Burlington Project," will be the theme of Visser's talk.

Since 2010, the Llewellyn Collection has been supported by several gifts from Dr. John W. Heisse, Jr. An online catalog is available at http://specialcollections.champlain.edu/digital-collections/

Further information may be obtained by contacting Archivist Erica Donnis at edonnis@champlain.edu.

The event is free to the public, but seating is limited. To confirm a seat, please RSVP to Mandy Boyers at mboyers@champlain.edu or call (802) 651-5837.


Founded in 1878, Champlain College is a small, not-for-profit, private college in Burlington, Vermont, with additional campuses in Montreal, Canada, and Dublin, Ireland. Champlain offers a traditional undergraduate experience from its beautiful campus overlooking Lake Champlain and over 90 residential undergraduate and online undergraduate and graduate degree programs and certificates. Champlain's distinctive career-driven approach to higher education embodies the notion that true learning occurs when information and experience come together to create knowledge. Champlain College is included in the Princeton Review's The Best 384 Colleges: 2019 Edition. For the fourth year in a row, Champlain was named a "Most Innovative School" in the North by U.S. News & World Report's 2019 "America's Best Colleges,” and a “Best Value School” and is ranked in the top 100 “Regional Universities of the North” and in the top 25 for “Best Undergraduate Teaching.” Champlain is also featured in the Fiske Guide to Colleges for 2019 as one of the "best and most interesting schools" in the United States, Canada and Great Britain and is a 2019 College of Distinction. For more information, visit champlain.edu.