HUMANITIES

Later writings of the Middles Ages and Renaissance are represented by about 250 manuscripts written largely on vellum in Greek, Latin, Coptic, Hebrew, Ethiopic, Armenian, and Syriac. Many are biblical texts which are complemented by important, early printed editions of the Bible tracing the history of the English text until the King James Version was adopted in 1611. There are also some 450 incunabula, or specimens of the earliest examples of printing using moveable-type, dating from 1456 to 1500.

In the 1920s the University Library acquired a large number of manuscripts written in Arabic, Turkish, and Persian from the library of Sultan Abdul Hamid. These have become the nucleus of an outstanding Islamic manuscript collection now exceeding 1100 in number and covering topics such as religion, law, history, literature, and mathematics.

Literary and Dramatic Collections
In English and American literature the Special Collections Library is particularly strong in published editions of: John Milton (some 400 volumes, many the gift of Dr. Warner G. Rice), John Dryden, Thomas Carlyle (over 500 volumes, including first editions and collected works, some manuscripts, and books about Carlyle built on the collection of Samuel Arthur Jones), Charles Dickens (including first editions of the author's major works and most of the minor ones, as well as manuscripts, playbills, and illustrations), William Faulkner (c. 1,200 volumes, the gift of Irwin T. and Shirley Holtzman), R. B. Cunninghame Graham and W. H. Hudson (including from both authors first editions, manuscripts, photographs, and association items from the collection of George Matthew Adams), Henry James, Alfred Tennyson, Anthony Trollope (the gift of John W. Watling, 58 works in first editions, 2 novels in original manuscript form, autograph letters, associated items and works about Trollope), and W. B. Yeats. In European literature there are special strengths in editions of Dante as well as Italian, Portuguese, and Spanish authors of the Renaissance.

Literary manuscripts are most strongly represented in the writings of American literary figures, including James Branch Cabell and Robert Frost, and especially in twentieth-century writers who were recipients of the University of Michigan's Jule and Avery Hopwood Awards in Creative Writing: Arthur Miller, Emery George, Marge Piercy, Nancy Willard, and others. The archives of the Hopwood Awards Committee itself are also among the collections. Among European literary works, the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne is significantly represented by more than 150 manuscripts, as well as first editions of all his books and most of the pamphlets, and photographs, based on a gift from Mr. and Mrs. Lowell Kerr.

Published editions of English drama to 1850 and American drama, chiefly of the l9th century, are bolstered by solid British and American theatre collections which also offer a variety of materials such as posters, programs and publicity photographs, as well as the working documents of productions such as promptbooks, costume and set designs, and business records. The Charles Sanders Theatre Collection is notable for its more than 15,000 British and American playbills of the 19th century, while the Ellen Van Volkenberg and Maurice Browne Collection documents these early 20th-century actors' lives and their involvement in the Chicago Little Theater, which this husband and wife team founded.

The Shakespeare Collection of more than 9,000 volumes was built on the private collections of Edward Hughes Thomson and Joseph Crosby. This collection excels in collected editions of the plays (beginning with the Second Folio), Restoration and 18th century adaptations and versions, and in Shakespeareana through the l9th century. Almost half of the Hubbard Imaginary Voyages Collection of over 3,000 volumes is devoted to editions, translations, and adaptations of Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels.

As befits a university which compiles dictionaries, the Special Collections Library holds a good collection of English language dictionaries. The Book Arts are well represented in the collection through a broad sampling of European and American presses, both early and modern, demonstrating printing, design, and binding techniques.

A number of the archival collections have been processed; the finding aids may be reviewed online at the library's finding aid website.

LABADIE COLLECTION

Established in 1911, the Labadie Collection was originally a special collection centered upon anarchist materials but now embraces a wide variety of social protest literature along with publications from the extreme political left and right. It is worldwide in scope, with special strengths in civil liberties, socialism, communism, colonialism and imperialism, free thought, American labor history through the 1930s, the I.W.W., the Spanish Civil War, sexual freedom, women's liberation, gay liberation, student protest movements, and the counterculture. Although the Labadie Collection contains over 10,000 books and 7,000 periodicals (600 currently received titles), it is equally notable for its ephemera. Most important are over 20,000 pamphlets and over 100 feet of subject vertical files, comprising principally brochures, leaflets, clippings, and reprints. Posters amount to several hundred, as do photographs, which are mostly portraits of people prominent in the anarchist movement. In addition, there are small numbers of cartoons, sheet music, buttons, bumper stickers, and armbands. There is a substantial body of anarchist correspondence and manuscript essays, as well as records of the American Committee for Protection of Foreign Born.

A number of the archival collections have been processed; the finding aids may be reviewed online at the library's finding aid website.

CHILDREN'S LITERATURE COLLECTION

While selected children’s classics, such as the first edition of Alice in Wonderland or Gulliver’s Travels, have been acquired by the Special Collections Library over the years, it is primarily in the last five years that major gifts and purchases have established a significant resource for the study of children’s literature. The Collection’s core includes over 100 shelves of editions of Gulliver’s Travels, Robinson Crusoe, and Swiss Family Robinson in the Hubbard Imaginary Voyages Collection, the work of British illustrator Arthur Rackham in the Chalat Rackham Collection, and over 6,000 picture books from the 20th century in the Lee Walp Family Juvenile Collection. These have been supplemented through recent gifts and purchase, including a gift of over 2,300 pop-up and movable books. The purchase of the Janice Dohm Collection of chapter books adds extensive holdings of fairy tales and works by Beatrix Potter, especially her Peter Rabbit. Together they number over 20,000 books, many of which describe the imaginary worlds that form a major part of children’s literature.

Archival collections that have been processed may have their finding aids reviewed online at the library's finding aid website.

TRANSPORTATION HISTORY COLLECTION

The Transportation History Collection is an important body of printed and visual materials on the history of transportation, covering both modes of transportation and the infrastructure that supports them. The 70,000 item collection includes rare books, pamphlets, photographs, brochures, prints, maps, timetables, guidebooks, engineering and architectural drawings, and manuscripts. The materials in the collection range from the 16th to the 21st centuries, with the bulk of them from the l9th and early 20th centuries. Subjects covered in the collection include ballooning and dirigibles, automobiles, roads, and highways, railroads and rolling stock, canals, bicycles, bridges, and carriages. The collection is outstanding for its in-depth coverage of many of the major aspects of modern Western transportation. Especially notable are the archives of the Lincoln Highway Association and of the Pierce-Arrow Company, and the papers of Charles Ellet, Jr. noted American Civil Engineer of the mid-nineteenth century.

The archive of the Lincoln Highway Association (1911-1940) includes over 3,000 black and white photographs which document the highway's route from New York to San Francisco. These images may be viewed on the web at the Lincoln Highway Digital Image Collection.

Full-text resources from the railroad material within the collection may be consulted at Transportation History Collection: Railroads website. A number of archival collections have been processed and their finding aids may be reviewed online at the library's finding aid website.

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY COLLECTIONS

The Special Collections Library's holdings in published books in the History of Science, especially mathematics and astronomy up to 1800, are outstanding. The editions of Euclid are particularly notable. A number of particularly noteworthy examples of the library's mathematical treatises may be found described in Rare Math Books at the University of Michigan, compiled by Bowling Green State University professor of mathematics, V. Frederick Rickey. The acquisition of books recording the history of Military Art and Science in European countries up to 1800 has been strongly supported by the Stephen Spaulding Memorial Fund.

SOCIAL SCIENCES

The Special Collections Library houses rich collections of 17th-century political tracts from the Netherlands (over 4,000 titles), France (1,150 titles), and Great Britain (1,800 titles). Its strong holdings in English local history build on similar materials in the Graduate Library stacks. Other historical collections include the Dean C. Worcester Philippine Collection which consists of his personal and official correspondence as a U. S. Philippine Commissioner and Secretary of the Interior of the Islands (1899-1915) along with his working library; the William Henry Hobbs Collection on polar expeditions; the Parsons-Rau Collection on l9th-century economics; books and pamphlets from Germany's Weimar Republic and Nazi periods in the Myers Collection; rare serials and monographs from the Oneida Community; and the writings, 1905-1960, of the noted Russian economist, Wladimir S. Woytinsky.

POWER COLLECTION FOR THE STUDY OF SCHOLARLY COMMUNICATION AND INFORMATION TRANSFER

The Power Collection consists of the papers of pioneers in the development of microphotography and computer applications in libraries. Collections of special note include the archive of the National Microfilm Association and the records of NCLIS, the National Commission on Libraries and Information Science. The records of ASIS, the American Society of Information Science, form the core of a rapidly growing history of information science collection. A number of the archival collections have been processed; the finding aids may be reviewed online at the library's finding aid website.