The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library is the rare book library and literary archive of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of the largest buildings in the world dedicated to rare books and manuscripts and is one of the largest collections of such texts. Established by a gift of the Beinecke family and given its own financial endowment, the library is financially independent from the university and is co-governed by the University Library and Yale Corporation.
Ephemera are transitory creations which are not meant to be retained or preserved. Its etymological origins extends to Ancient Greece, with the common definition of the word being: "the minor transient documents of everyday life". Ambiguous in nature, various interpretations of ephemera and related items have been contended, including menus, newspapers, postcards, posters, sheet music, stickers, and valentines.
The National Library of Australia (NLA), formerly the Commonwealth National Library and Commonwealth Parliament Library, is the largest reference library in Australia, responsible under the terms of the National Library Act 1960 for "maintaining and developing a national collection of library material, including a comprehensive collection of library material relating to Australia and the Australian people", thus functioning as a national library. It is located in Parkes, Canberra, ACT.
The Wellcome Library is a free library and Museum based in central London. It was developed from the collection formed by Sir Henry Wellcome (1853–1936), whose personal wealth allowed him to create one of the most ambitious collections of the 20th century. Henry Wellcome's interest was the history of medicine in a broad sense and included subjects such as alchemy or witchcraft, but also anthropology and ethnography. Since Henry Wellcome's death in 1936, the Wellcome Trust has been responsible for maintaining the Library's collection and funding its acquisitions. The library is free and open to the public.
The University of Michigan Library is the academic library system of the University of Michigan. The university's 38 constituent and affiliated libraries together make it the second largest research library by number of volumes in the United States.
The Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan, originating from the collection of radical ephemera built by Detroit Anarchist Jo Labadie, is recognized as one of the world's most complete collections of materials documenting the history of anarchism and other radical movements from the 19th century to the present.
The Royal Library of Belgium is the national library of Belgium. The library has a history that goes back to the age of the Dukes of Burgundy. In the second half of the 20th century, a new building was constructed on the Mont des Arts/Kunstberg in central Brussels, near the Central Station. The library owns several collections of historical importance, like the Library of the Dukes of Burgundy, and is the depository for all books ever published in Belgium or abroad by Belgian authors.
The Historical Society of Pennsylvania is a historic research facility headquartered on Locust Street in Center City Philadelphia. It is a repository for millions of historic items ranging across rare books, scholarly monographs, family chronicles, maps, press reports and varied ephemera, reaching back almost 300 years, and accessible on the society’s website.
Avery Architectural and Fine Arts Library, the world's largest architecture library, is located in Avery Hall on the Morningside Heights campus of Columbia University in New York City. Serving Columbia's Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation and the Department of Art History and Archaeology, Avery Library collects books and periodicals in architecture, historic preservation, art history, painting, sculpting, graphic arts, decorative arts, city planning, real estate, and archaeology, as well as archival materials primarily documenting 19th- and 20th-century American architects and architecture. The architectural, fine arts, Ware, and archival collections are non-circulating. The Avery-LC Collection, primarily newer print books, does circulate.
New York University's Fales Library and Special Collections is located on the third floor of the Elmer Holmes Bobst Library at 70 Washington Square South between LaGuardia Place and the Schwartz Plaza, in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of Manhattan, New York City. It houses nearly 200,000 volumes, and 10,000 feet (3,000 m) of archive and manuscript materials. It contains the Fales Collection of rare books and manuscripts in English and American literature, the Downtown Collection, the Food and Cookery Collection, and the general Special Collections from the NYU Libraries.
The John Carter Brown Library is an independently funded research library of history and the humanities on the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island. The library's rare book, manuscript, and map collections encompass a variety of topics related to the history of European exploration and colonization of the New World until circa 1825. The library was the first independent private library placed within the context of a university campus in the United States.
Lawrence M. Lande, OC was a writer, bibliophile, bibliographer, and collector of books and manuscripts.
The L. Tom Perry Special Collections is the special collections department of Brigham Young University (BYU)'s Harold B. Lee Library in Provo, Utah. Founded in 1957 with 1,000 books and 50 manuscript collections, as of 2016 the Library's special collections contained over 300,000 books, 11,000 manuscript collections, and over 2.5 million photographs, among many other rare and unique research materials. Since its inception, the special collections have been housed in numerous places including the crawl space of a university building and a wholesale grocery warehouse. Since 2016, the special collections have been located on the first floor of the Harold B. Lee Library and is considered to hold "the finest collection of rare books in the Intermountain West and the second finest Mormon collection in existence".
The Rare Book & Manuscript Library is principal repository for special collections of Columbia University. Located in New York City on the university's Morningside Heights campus, its collections span more than 4,000 years, from early Mesopotamia to the present day, and span a variety of formats: cuneiform tablets, papyri, and ostraca, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, early printed books, works of art, posters, photographs, realia, sound and moving image recordings, and born-digital archives. Areas of collecting emphasis include American history, Russian and East European émigré history and culture, Columbia University history, comics and cartoons, philanthropy and social reform, the history of mathematics, human rights advocacy, Hebraica and Judaica, Latino arts and activism, literature and publishing, medieval and Renaissance manuscripts, oral history, performing arts, and printing history and the book arts.
The Lilly Library, located on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana, is an important rare book and manuscript library in the United States. At its dedication on October 3, 1960, the library contained a collection of 20,000 books, 17,000 manuscripts, more than fifty oil paintings, and 300 prints. Currently, the Lilly Library has 8.5 million manuscripts, 450,000 books, 60,000 comic books, 16,000 mini books, 35,000 puzzles, and 150,000 sheets of music.
The Waynesboro Historical Society, Incorporated is an historical society founded in 1963 and based in Waynesboro, Pennsylvania. The Society's headquarters are housed in the Oller House. The society works for the preservation of landmarks and structures in the Waynesboro area and holds regular meetings, open to the public, which feature speakers on topics of local interest.
Randolph Greenfield Adams was an American librarian and historian, director of the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for 28 years.
Janice Longone was an American food historian, Curator of American Culinary History at Special Collections, Hatcher Library, University of Michigan. Julia Child, James Beard, and New York Times food editor Craig Claiborne were all early fans of Longone's out-of-print cookbook collection. Their enthusiasm prompted her to create The Wine and Food Library in 1972, which offers books by mail order or private appointment and remains one of the most important antiquarian culinary resources in the world.
William Lawrence Clements (1861–1934) was an American businessman and collector of historical works; founder, and donor to the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. In addition, Clements donated more than twenty-million-dollars throughout his life to the University, oversaw a successful business career in the manufacturing and banking industry, and served as a regent of the University of Michigan for twenty-four years.
Howard Henry Peckham, was a professor and historian and an authority on colonial and early American history who published a number of works on those subjects. His academic career encompassed a wide variety of involvements in educational institutions and various historical societies. Peckham played a fundamental role in establishing professional academic standards for the management of historical manuscripts and historical society work in the 20th century that have endured to this day. He was a founding member of the Society of American Archivists and the Director of the William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan. Peckham and his associate, Lloyd A. Brown, were the first historians to publish the American Revolutionary War journals of Henry Dearborn, in 1939, making them available to the general public for the first time. He is also noted for establishing more accurate numbers of American Revolutionary War deaths, which were much greater than previously assumed.
