Access to the Rare Book Collections

A few works consisting of a large number of individual items have collection-level records in the online catalog and are described at the title level in card catalogs or lists maintained in Special Collections. These include the Speculum Romanae Magnificentiae, a collection of nearly 1,000 engravings, principally from the 16th and 17th centuries, of architecture and monuments of ancient and modern Rome; the Linckesche Leihbibliothek (Lincke) Collection, a collection of approximately 15,000 volumes of popular literature, mostly German of the nineteenth century, originally part of a rental library founded in 1791 in Leipzig; the Charles Morton agency collection of American popular drama; and the Samuel N. Harper Russian Pamphlet Collection. Printed and manuscript sources for subjects such as modern poetry and theater and film studies are contained in both printed and archival collections, with access by card file or finding aid in the Center.

Selected rare book collections are also described in published guides and exhibition catalogues. Readers are encouraged to consult with a Special Collections Research Center staff member for access to partially cataloged collections.

Digitized selections from books in the Reuben T. Durret Collection on Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley and related book and manuscript collections can now be accessed through the American Memory web site at the Library of Congress. The First American West: The Ohio River Valley, 1750-1820 presents 15,000 pages of original historical material documenting the land, peoples, exploration, and transformation of the trans-Appalachian West from the mid-eighteenth to the early nineteenth century. The collection is drawn from the holdings of the University of Chicago Library and the Filson Historical Society of Louisville, Kentucky.

Overview of the Rare Book Collections

At the time of its founding in 1891, the University of Chicago acquired many works now maintained in the Special Collections Research Center. A number of the Center's current strengths can be traced back to these foundation collections, which include the theological libraries of Ernst Wilhelm Hengstenberg, the Baptist Union Theological Seminary, and the American Bible Union Collection. The 1891 purchase by William Rainey Harper of the Berlin Collection [view online Berlin Collection exhibition catalogue], the inventory of a scholarly bookshop in Berlin, established a core of rare and important historical, classical, and philological works. Special Collections holds over 350 incunabula, books printed in the West before 1501 from moveable type.

In the early decades of the twentieth century, the Library acquired several collections that strengthened holdings in American history, literature, and drama. The Reuben T. Durrett Collection on Kentucky and the Ohio River Valley and the William E. Barton Collection of Lincolniana include distinguished books as well as manuscripts and ephemera; the William Vaughn Moody Fund enabled the Library to build its early American literature collections. Among the en bloc acquisitions were collections of early American plays, published and unpublished, such as the Fred W. Atkinson Collection and the Morton Collection of American Drama. The Celia and Delia Austrian Collection, which focuses on English post-Restoration drama, continues to grow with support from an endowed fund.

Faculty research and editing projects beginning in the 1920s led to the development of in-depth rare book holdings of works by Geoffrey Chaucer, Honore de Balzac, and Oliver Goldsmith; the Linckesche Leihbibliothek (Lincke) Collection, a rental library of a nineteenth-century Leipzig bookseller and publisher, contains a wide range of German and foreign bestsellers from 1790 to 1875. The Helen and Ruth Regenstein Collection of Rare Books, established in 1975, has enabled the Library to acquire many rare and significant works of English, American, and Continental literature in outstanding condition.

The Library's rare book collections focusing on specific subjects grew steadily by gifts and purchases throughout the 20th century. Examples of collections focusing on specific subjects include the Chopin Collection, the Maurice H. Grant Collection of English Bibles, the Szathmary Family Collection of Hungarica, the Earl J. Hamilton Collection in the History of Economics, and the Richard McKeon Collection of Aristotelian texts and medieval philosophy.

The history of science and medicine has been a collecting focus since the library of Friedrich Ahlfeld, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at Marburg, was purchased in 1929; holdings in these fields were augmented by the Mortimer Frank Collection, the Morris Fishbein Collection, and the Joseph Halle Schaffner Bequest. In 1984, following the merger of the University of Chicago and the John Crerar Library, approximately 20,000 works in science, medicine, and technology were added to the Special Collections Research Center. Other named collections include the Encyclopaedia Britannica Collection of Literature for Children, especially strong in children's picture books of the interwar years; and the R.R. Donnelley & Sons Company Training Department Library, with works on the history of printing and exemplars of fine printing. The 1980 gift of the Ludwig Rosenberger Library of Judaica [view online Rosenberger Library exhibition catalogue] established the University of Chicago Library as an important center for research in the social and cultural history of the Jewish people.

The Special Collections Research Center continues to develop within these broad outlines. A recently established endowment, the Joseph and Helen Regenstein Rare Book Fund, will support the purchase of rare books of distinctive quality. Gifts and acquisitions add new primary sources on a regular basis, responding to faculty research and teaching interests and supporting scholarship at the University of Chicago and worldwide.

For further information, 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