New York Public Library The New York Public Library maintains the world's largest collection of tobacciana.

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Libraries' Surprising Special Collections

Tucked away in libraries across the country are unexpected archives and world-class treasures

  • By Kristin Ohlson
  • Smithsonian.com, March 01, 2009

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    I walk through an arched marble doorway and into one of the loveliest rooms I've seen anywhere. Designed to look like a Renaissance Library, the John Griswold White Reading Room offers sweeping views of Lake Erie and downtown Cleveland, as well as a dazzling abundance of venerable books and objects. A lawyer and scholar who died in 1928, White was one of the library's greatest benefactors and his prodigious collections fill this room.

    White was a progressive thinker who insisted that these collections be available to the public. I've come to look at his chess collection—donated upon his death and still growing through his endowment. It's possibly the world's largest collection—tied only with the Hague—with well over 30,000 books about chess and checkers, newspaper columns, letters from chess masters, treatises on the game—including twelfth-century Arabic manuscripts and more than 50 Indian treatises—tournament records, handbooks, a wide range of literary works that have substantial mention of chess, thousands of chess pieces, and more. Much more, including the death mask of American chess queen Gisela Khan Gresser and a grumpy, hand-scrawled note from American-born Bobby Fischer, the 11th World Chess Champion.

    Researchers from around the world use these materials to document and analyze the history of the game, but I—a Clevelander for more than 30 years—have never visited this room until now. I've since discovered that many other libraries around the country hold odd and unique collections, of which patrons wandering the circulating stacks are largely unaware.

    Here are seven more surprising collections, lurking in public or university libraries around the country.

    • Among its many collections, the Boston Public Library has what it believes is the largest collection of fore-edge painted books in any public library. These books feature a painting along the fore-edge (opposite the spine) of the book that can only be seen when the pages are subtly fanned—when the book is closed, gold leaf on the outside edge of the pages hides the image. The technique originated with Samuel Mearne, royal bookbinder to Charles II from 1660-1683, and the artists usually embellished already printed books of literature with scenes that corresponded to the content. The Boston collection includes books from the late 1700's to the mid-1800s. They were donated in 1941 by banker Albert Wiggins.

    • The University of Utah's J. Willard Marriott Library in Salt Lake City has America's largest collection of Arabic papyrus, parchment and paper documents, with 770 on papyrus and more than 1,300 on paper. A large part of the collection—acquired and then donated by Professor Asiz Suriyal Atiya, founder of the school's Middle East Library and Middle East Center—dates from the pre-Ottoman period and offers an unparalleled look at the cultural, political, literary and religious life of the Arab world during the first few centuries of Islam. Especially interesting: a rare example of early Islamic legal work, giving scholars a glimpse of the academic culture in which the first Muslim jurists worked, and tax receipts from Islamic Egypt in the 11th and 12th centuries that offer insight into the relatively favorable legal status of women at that time.

    • At the University of Delaware in Newark, a special space is allotted to the villains of print: forgers, hoaxers and other literary frauds. Donor Frank W. Tober bequeathed a vast collection of books, manuscripts and other materials to the library, which received them in 1995; however, the heart of his personal library was his collection on literary forgery. It includes material regarding nearly every major forgery from antiquity to such recent cases as Clifford Irving, who tried to scam the literary world with a faux autobiography of Howard Hughes in 1972. The Tober Collection has extensive materials on famous forgers such as Thomas Chatterton, an 18th century teenager who wrote poems that he claimed were lost works of a 15th century monk, AND 19th-century forgers Thomas J. Wise and H. BuxtonForman, who used their knowledge of the printing process to forge and offer for sale 50 pieces of British poetry and literature. THERE ARE ALSO secondary historical, critical, and reference material on forgery from all periods, as well as material on imaginary voyages, counterfeiting, forensics, and the technology of forgery detection.

    • The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has the nation's largest collection of nurse romance novels, more than 400 volumes in which nurses are the central character. The collection was donated in 2005 by artist, photographer, and former UWM art professor Leslie Bellavance, who started collecting them as part of her own research on popular-culture presentations of nurses. The novels were written for both young and adult readers from the 1950s to the 1970s, often reflecting stereotypes about nurses and women in general. The Nurse Romance collection augments the library's American Nursing History Collection.

    • The New York Public Library maintains the world's largest collection of tobacciana, materials related in some way to tobacco's history, use, and mystique. Donor George Arents came from a Virginia family that was one of the founders of the American Tobacco Company, and he himself patented and manufactured cigarette- and cigar-rolling machines. Presented to the library in 1944, the Arents Collection now includes 12,000 books; sheet music, drawings and prints with a tobacco theme; posters, labels and stickers; letters from such luminaries as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson; a wooden cigar-store Indian, and an early cigarette vending machine. The books range from literary works like Thomas Nash's Pierce Penilesss (1592) to early medical books advocating tobacco as a cure for various diseases and ailments. Among the collection's 125,000 cigarette cards is the 1910 Honus Wagner card, which was distributed with Sweet Caporal cigarettes until Wagner pulled it from circulation because he didn't want children to buy tobacco to get his cards.

    • The Saint Paul Public Library holds the nation's largest World War I print aviation collection, donated by Korean War Army Air Corp bombsight and autopilot mechanic Don Severson, now a retired physician. Severson has donated nearly 500 volumes, including one signed by Eddie Rickenbacker, the top-scoring American ace of the first World War; signed copies of early aviation biographies; and rare publications from the US and abroad on early aviation and wartime. Most material of this nature is not available outside of private and military libraries.

    • Finally, Florida Atlantic University has a collection you can listen to: the Judaica Sound Archive was launched in 2002 by library volunteer Nathan Tinanoff, who feared the library's small sample of recordings might be dispersed and lost. Since he founded and became director of the archive, the collection has burgeoned to 60,000 recordings from the early 20th century to the present, thanks to the donations of individuals and organizations around the world. The archive includes all types of Judaic music—Sephardic, Yiddish, liturgical theater and more—and music by Jewish performers, composers and conductors, as well as a strong collection of cantorial music. 7,000 songs are accessible through the archive's website, including 153 cantorial albums.

    I walk through an arched marble doorway and into one of the loveliest rooms I've seen anywhere. Designed to look like a Renaissance Library, the John Griswold White Reading Room offers sweeping views of Lake Erie and downtown Cleveland, as well as a dazzling abundance of venerable books and objects. A lawyer and scholar who died in 1928, White was one of the library's greatest benefactors and his prodigious collections fill this room.

    White was a progressive thinker who insisted that these collections be available to the public. I've come to look at his chess collection—donated upon his death and still growing through his endowment. It's possibly the world's largest collection—tied only with the Hague—with well over 30,000 books about chess and checkers, newspaper columns, letters from chess masters, treatises on the game—including twelfth-century Arabic manuscripts and more than 50 Indian treatises—tournament records, handbooks, a wide range of literary works that have substantial mention of chess, thousands of chess pieces, and more. Much more, including the death mask of American chess queen Gisela Khan Gresser and a grumpy, hand-scrawled note from American-born Bobby Fischer, the 11th World Chess Champion.

    Researchers from around the world use these materials to document and analyze the history of the game, but I—a Clevelander for more than 30 years—have never visited this room until now. I've since discovered that many other libraries around the country hold odd and unique collections, of which patrons wandering the circulating stacks are largely unaware.

    Here are seven more surprising collections, lurking in public or university libraries around the country.

    • Among its many collections, the Boston Public Library has what it believes is the largest collection of fore-edge painted books in any public library. These books feature a painting along the fore-edge (opposite the spine) of the book that can only be seen when the pages are subtly fanned—when the book is closed, gold leaf on the outside edge of the pages hides the image. The technique originated with Samuel Mearne, royal bookbinder to Charles II from 1660-1683, and the artists usually embellished already printed books of literature with scenes that corresponded to the content. The Boston collection includes books from the late 1700's to the mid-1800s. They were donated in 1941 by banker Albert Wiggins.

    • The University of Utah's J. Willard Marriott Library in Salt Lake City has America's largest collection of Arabic papyrus, parchment and paper documents, with 770 on papyrus and more than 1,300 on paper. A large part of the collection—acquired and then donated by Professor Asiz Suriyal Atiya, founder of the school's Middle East Library and Middle East Center—dates from the pre-Ottoman period and offers an unparalleled look at the cultural, political, literary and religious life of the Arab world during the first few centuries of Islam. Especially interesting: a rare example of early Islamic legal work, giving scholars a glimpse of the academic culture in which the first Muslim jurists worked, and tax receipts from Islamic Egypt in the 11th and 12th centuries that offer insight into the relatively favorable legal status of women at that time.

    • At the University of Delaware in Newark, a special space is allotted to the villains of print: forgers, hoaxers and other literary frauds. Donor Frank W. Tober bequeathed a vast collection of books, manuscripts and other materials to the library, which received them in 1995; however, the heart of his personal library was his collection on literary forgery. It includes material regarding nearly every major forgery from antiquity to such recent cases as Clifford Irving, who tried to scam the literary world with a faux autobiography of Howard Hughes in 1972. The Tober Collection has extensive materials on famous forgers such as Thomas Chatterton, an 18th century teenager who wrote poems that he claimed were lost works of a 15th century monk, AND 19th-century forgers Thomas J. Wise and H. BuxtonForman, who used their knowledge of the printing process to forge and offer for sale 50 pieces of British poetry and literature. THERE ARE ALSO secondary historical, critical, and reference material on forgery from all periods, as well as material on imaginary voyages, counterfeiting, forensics, and the technology of forgery detection.

    • The University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee has the nation's largest collection of nurse romance novels, more than 400 volumes in which nurses are the central character. The collection was donated in 2005 by artist, photographer, and former UWM art professor Leslie Bellavance, who started collecting them as part of her own research on popular-culture presentations of nurses. The novels were written for both young and adult readers from the 1950s to the 1970s, often reflecting stereotypes about nurses and women in general. The Nurse Romance collection augments the library's American Nursing History Collection.

    • The New York Public Library maintains the world's largest collection of tobacciana, materials related in some way to tobacco's history, use, and mystique. Donor George Arents came from a Virginia family that was one of the founders of the American Tobacco Company, and he himself patented and manufactured cigarette- and cigar-rolling machines. Presented to the library in 1944, the Arents Collection now includes 12,000 books; sheet music, drawings and prints with a tobacco theme; posters, labels and stickers; letters from such luminaries as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson; a wooden cigar-store Indian, and an early cigarette vending machine. The books range from literary works like Thomas Nash's Pierce Penilesss (1592) to early medical books advocating tobacco as a cure for various diseases and ailments. Among the collection's 125,000 cigarette cards is the 1910 Honus Wagner card, which was distributed with Sweet Caporal cigarettes until Wagner pulled it from circulation because he didn't want children to buy tobacco to get his cards.

    • The Saint Paul Public Library holds the nation's largest World War I print aviation collection, donated by Korean War Army Air Corp bombsight and autopilot mechanic Don Severson, now a retired physician. Severson has donated nearly 500 volumes, including one signed by Eddie Rickenbacker, the top-scoring American ace of the first World War; signed copies of early aviation biographies; and rare publications from the US and abroad on early aviation and wartime. Most material of this nature is not available outside of private and military libraries.

    • Finally, Florida Atlantic University has a collection you can listen to: the Judaica Sound Archive was launched in 2002 by library volunteer Nathan Tinanoff, who feared the library's small sample of recordings might be dispersed and lost. Since he founded and became director of the archive, the collection has burgeoned to 60,000 recordings from the early 20th century to the present, thanks to the donations of individuals and organizations around the world. The archive includes all types of Judaic music—Sephardic, Yiddish, liturgical theater and more—and music by Jewish performers, composers and conductors, as well as a strong collection of cantorial music. 7,000 songs are accessible through the archive's website, including 153 cantorial albums.


     
    Comments

    What a wonderful piece. I think our next family trip will involve library-tripping!

    Posted by Amber Nasrulla on March 4,2009 | 07:15AM

    Quite an eye opener! Having spent almost as much time playing chess as studying in high school I'll have to visit the White room one day. I wonder if we can see these books brig fanned on video, maybe YouTube ;)

    Posted by Michael on March 4,2009 | 09:18AM

    Excellent article! So interesting to learn about fore-edge painting and a new word: tobacciana.

    Posted by Eugenia Kim on March 4,2009 | 01:13PM

    and what with the lax security -- hey! I got an idea!

    Posted by schemes on March 5,2009 | 08:53AM

    What a delightful article. A Question arises: where does one go to find a listing of such collections? Is there an index to library special collections? How did you happen to come across these?

    Posted by Lyman M. Lauver on March 6,2009 | 10:42AM

    I'm not sure if I'm supposed to answer reader questions here, but since you asked: there is no index that I know of. This article required a lot of legwork, calling and emailing libraries all over the country to find out about their special collections. And really, this list represents just a tiny sampling. If you want to find out about the special collections at a certain library, I suggest either going to their website or calling them. If there's something that interests you in particular, I guess you'd google that thing along with library and "special collection" and then be prepared to wade through dozens or maybe hundreds of hits.

    Posted by Kristin Ohlson on March 6,2009 | 11:45AM

    What a fascinating article. We here in Cedar Rapids Ia lost all of our information about our city and over 165,000 books last June 08 from the flood that went over the banks of the Cedar River. There was over 32 Feet of flood water that went up to the Top of the windows and about 6 feet of water that entered into the book, magazine and computer area. The childrens section was on second floor. This is the worst flood we ever had and the most library materials that has ever been destroyed for a public library in the United States. Read more about it on our local newspapers website about the flood at www.gazetteonline.com The library is now out at Westdale Mall in Cedar Rapids. They are trying to figure out what to do for the future. You can also type up the "Cedar Rapids Public Library" for information.

    Posted by wally on March 6,2009 | 03:20PM

    Great article. Cleveland here I come!

    Posted by Dan Kauffman on March 7,2009 | 12:59PM

    Cleveland Public Library has a Fine Arts & Special Collections blog that posts profiles about items in the collection at http://www.cpl.org/finearts/ By subscribing to the RSS feed, one will get updates when a new posting appears. Other special materials include folktales, orientalia, trade catalogs, a large collection of Rubaiyats and much more !

    Posted by Pam Eyerdam on March 7,2009 | 03:01PM

    Brought to mind the small Emanuel Einstein Library in my home town in NJ, Pompton Lakes. Built using stones from an English Tudor manor, it has long been the focal point for information of the history of this area's northern NJ Pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary past. I remember the Baby Care clinic during the Depression years. The book collection was definitely a large part of my life as well.Tnanks for the pleasant memories

    Posted by margy nurik on March 7,2009 | 04:58PM

    What about the Matzene Art Collection at the public library in PONCA CITY,OKLAHOMA? A collection of Oriental and Western art.

    Posted by Frankie on March 9,2009 | 08:25AM

    There is too a guide to special collections. It was first written by William Ash and he is still the lead author:

    Subject collections : a guide to special book collections and subject emphases as reported by university, college, public, and special libraries and museums in the United States and Canada / compiled by Lee Ash and William G. Miller, with the collaboration of Barry Scott, Kathleen Vickery, and Beverly McDonough.
    Edition 7th ed., rev. and enl.
    Imprint New Providence, NJ : R.R. Bowker Co., c1993.

    David Hunter
    Music Librarian
    University of Texas at Austin

    Posted by David Hunter on March 9,2009 | 10:30AM

    Thanks, David! I wish I'd known about it before. None of the librarians I spoke with mentioned it.

    Posted by Kristin Ohlson on March 9,2009 | 11:56AM

    I am curious about the Saint Paul Public Library collection. I am a high school librarian and I work with a lot of history students. When I clicked on the Saint Paul Public Library Link, there was no collection of the type you mentioned listed on the page. I also searched the library website and nothing was found relating to World War 2 print aviation collections. I was just curious as to where I might be able to find more information on this collection? Thanks! All of the other collections are quite interesting!

    Posted by Ana on March 11,2009 | 01:03PM

    The Fine Arts & Special Collections dept of the Cleveland Public Library posts profiles on its blog - these profiles relate to many aspects of the collection. The Library celebrates its 140th Anniversary this year!

    Blog at http://www.cpl.org/finearts/

    Digital image collection at http://cplorg.cdmhost.com/ includes historic photos from Main Library, branches, book mobile, etc.

    Posted by Pamela Eyerdam on March 13,2009 | 10:23AM

    @Ana:

    I am a librarian at the St. Paul Public Library. Here is some information about the Severson Collection:

    http://www.sppl.org/news/2007/world-war-i-aviation-book-collection.pdf

    The books are in the catalog, unlike some special collections, so if you search for "World War" and "aviation" they will come up. They have "Severson" as part of the location. They are located in the Nicholson room on the 2nd Floor.

    Posted by andrea herman on March 13,2009 | 02:21PM

    Florida Atlantic University Libraries as a great collection.

    Posted by Z. McCarthy on March 16,2009 | 09:28AM

    In response to the question about listings of library special collections, a librarian at the University of Idaho has compiled a comprehensive list: http://www.uiweb.uidaho.edu/special-collections/Other.Repositories.html

    Posted by Roger on March 27,2009 | 07:13AM

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