Special Collections at the University of Chicago: A Brief History

Beginnings in Harper Memorial Library

In July 1953, Herman H. Fussler, the Director of the University of Chicago Library, established the Department of Special Collections to bring together a diverse and growing array of rare book, manuscript, and archival materials. These resources were central to the University of Chicago's research and teaching missions, and they had been in continuous use from the beginning of the institution's history.

Faculty and students arriving on the new campus in the fall of 1892 were able to consult rare and unique books that had come to the University of Chicago from the libraries of two nineteenth-century predecessor institutions, the Old University of Chicago and the Baptist Union Theological Seminary. They were also able to begin exploring the riches of the Berlin Collection, which was purchased by President William Raney Harper with the support of a group of donors in 1891. The Library's rare and special collections were further enhanced in the following decades by gifts received from many friends and supporters, among them Frank W. Gunsaulus, Martin A. Ryerson, Shirley Farr, Harriet Monroe, Elizabeth Day McCormick, and Harold Swift. In consultation with the University of Chicago faculty, the Library also purchased rare book and manuscript collections with research potential, and it assumed responsibility for preserving the University's historical records.

By the late 1940s, however, the organization of these collections, housed in scattered rooms in Harper Memorial Library, was no longer effectively supporting research use. To address these needs, Director Herman Fussler created the new Department of Special Collections, a single unit with consolidated staff and collections to provide faculty and students more ready and productive access to rare and unique materials in all formats. To serve as the first Curator of Special Collections, Fussler appointed Robert Rosenthal, a 27-year-old World War II Marine veteran who was in the midst of completing work on his master's degree in the Graduate Library School. The new department occupied refurbished space in the upper reaches of the West Tower of Harper Library, with a reading room and staff work areas on the sixth floor and stack space for collections on the fifth floor.

The challenges facing Robert Rosenthal and his staff were formidable. Rare books, manuscripts, and archives were accessed by a confusing variety of card catalogs, registers, and inventories, and many parts of the collections remained unprocessed. Funds for acquisitions, staff, and preservation supplies were limited, and space was at a premium. Still, essential advances were made in the early years. The strengths of the rare book collection were assessed and enhanced; manuscripts were described and given appropriate housing; the archives were expanded with the addition of significant collections of faculty papers; and a program of exhibitions and publications was launched. All of these activities were directed by Robert Rosenthal, who worked vigorously with faculty and staff to integrate the Library's collections of rare, unique, and original materials with the University of Chicago's research and teaching programs.

Growing in the Joseph Regenstein Library

When Joseph Regenstein Library was completed in 1970, the Department of Special Collections moved into the new building and was given dramatically enlarged space for its collections, services, and staff. An expansive exhibition gallery, a large glass-enclosed reading room, and a suite of seminar rooms filled elegantly appointed spaces on the first floor. On the two floors beneath, linked to the main floor by a central stairwell and electric booklift, staff worked in well-equipped offices, processing areas, and preservation and exhibition preparation rooms. Adjacent stacks provided thousands of linear feet of shelving for rare books, manuscripts, and archives.

The new space in Regenstein spurred a significant expansion of Special Collections holdings and programs. The seminar rooms and exhibition gallery supported broadened interaction with faculty teaching and research and student course work. Stack space allowed a substantial increase in the scope and subject coverage of the collections.

Important gifts, bequests, and transfers also enriched research and teaching in Special Collections. Among the most important collections received were the Joseph H. Schaffner Collection in the History of Science; the Ludwig Rosenberger Library of Judaica; the John Crerar Library rare book, manuscript, and archival collections; the Richard P. McKeon collection in philosophy, and the Louis Szathmary Family Collection of Hungarica. Significant collections of manuscripts and archival papers were also added, including those of Stephen A. Douglas, Julius Rosenwald, Eva Watson Schütze, George Herbert Mead, Amos Alonzo Stagg, Edith and Grace Abbott, Enrico Fermi, James Franck, S. Chandrasekhar, Michael Polanyi, Frank Knight, Charlotte Towle, Norman Maclean, Leo Strauss, Saul Bellow, Mircea Eliade, Mortimer Adler, John Simpson, Richard McKeon, Walter and Elizabeth Paepcke, and Ida B. Wells, among hundreds of others.

University of Chicago faculty members and students continued to make significant use of these resources. Donald Bond, Edward Rosenheim, Paolo Cherchi, Barbara Stafford, Gwin Kolb, Ellen Harris, Elissa Weaver, Rob Nelson, and Janel Mueller, among many others, drew on the holdings for their research and teaching in the humanities. The history of science collections drew faculty researchers including Allen Debus, Robert Richards, Jan Goldstein, Eugene Goldwasser, and S. Chandrasekhar. Scholars including Alan Simpson, Donald Lach, Richard Storr, William H. McNeill, Peter Novick, Donald Levine, Neil Harris, Marshall Sahlins, Andrew Abbott, and John Boyer published works based on historical research in the collections. Faculty members T. Bentley Duncan and Braxton Ross contributed their paleographic knowledge to descriptions of the medieval and Renaissance manuscripts. Many graduate students completed dissertations and books based on their investigations, Laurence Veysey, Blake Nevius, Donald Osterbrock, James Wind, and Lynn Gordon among them. And a notable group of faculty members and students researched and wrote Special Collections exhibitions and catalogues, including James Chandler, Donald Lach, William T. Hutchinson, and George Stocking.

The holdings of Special Collections have also served as an important resource for a range of visiting scholars. In recent years, researchers in fields of the humanities have included Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, Joseph Parisi, James Atlas, Florin Turcanu, Heinrich Meier, and Mary Ann Dzuback. In the social sciences, scholars drawing on the collections have included Rosalind Rosenberg, Martin Bulmer, Ron Chernow, Robin Lester, Mary Jo Deegan, Ellen Skerrett, Lela B. Costin, Jean-Michel Chapoulie, Rolf Lindner, Clifford Wilcox, Peter Ascoli, Linda O. McMurry, and Patricia A. Schechter. Among researchers in the natural and physical sciences have been Alice Kimball Smith, Jane Maienschein, Paul Berg, Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, Gregg Mitman, Roger Geiger, Robert E. Kohler, and Kameshwar C. Wali.

In 1994, support for teaching and research use was reinforced by the appointment of the first Special Collections reader services librarian. By 2002 expanded research access to the collections was reflected in a new name, the Special Collections Research Center. As Special Collections moves into its second half-century, new disciplinary fields and teaching methods, supported by ongoing advances in technology, continue to promise further potential for exploring original materials in innovative ways.

For further information about the development of the Special Collections Research Center and its programs, please contact:

• Special Collections Research Center
  University of Chicago Library
  1100 E. 57th Street
  Chicago, Illinois 60637
  SpecialCollections@lib.uchicago.edu
  Phone: (773) 702-8705
  Fax: (773) 702-3728