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Bethel University, 1983 to the present
On the city's east side, a university library holds a museum of one man's public life. Bethel University's Otis R. and Elizabeth Bowen Library, constructed in 1983 and named for Otis Bowen — Indiana's governor through the 1970s and afterward U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Reagan — houses the Otis Bowen Museum & Archives, "the repository for the materials of Gov. Otis Bowen," in the university's own words: memorabilia and artifacts of his years as governor and as Secretary, among them a copy of the Bowen bust whose original stands in the Indiana Statehouse. The museum and archives are available on an appointment basis. Beside it in the same building sit the Bethel University Archives, in the library's basement, and the Missionary Church Archives & Historical Collections, the denominational memory of the church that founded the college — the official papers of the Missionary Church and the materials of its origin and development.
None of the three is a walk-in public museum, and they are printed at anchor size accordingly: a governor's museum by appointment, and two archives that collect the records of a university and a church. Bethel stands whole in this history's Schools file and its library in the Libraries file; the museum function is what is recorded here.
Principal sources
- Bethel University, "Bowen Library" (betheluniversity.edu) — the special collections: the Otis Bowen Museum & Archives by appointment; the Bethel University Archives; the Missionary Church Archives & Historical Collections.
- Bethel University catalog (smartcatalogiq), Introduction — Bowen Library constructed 1983; the museum and archives located in the building.
- "Otis Bowen," the governor's documented account — the museum's holdings and the bust copy, the original in the Indiana Statehouse.