Information about the Special Collections Department
PLEASE NOTE: Hours for the Special
Collections Reading Room will change during Summer Semester, May 11-
August 8, 2009.
We
will be open
Monday-Thursday 10:00 A.M. to 6:00 PM, and on Friday 10:00 AM to 3:00
PM or by appointment.
For information about our services or donating
materials
to Special Collections,
please
contact Lucy
Patrick, Department Head, by email or telephone (850) 644-6167.
To schedule a class visit or instruction session in Special
Collections, please contact Bill
Modrow by email or telephone (850) 644-1967.
For information about manuscript collections, please contact Burt Altman by email or telephone (850)
645-7962. If you need course descriptions, please check with the
Division of Academic
Publications
in the Registrar's Office or call them at (850) 644-1050.
RARE BOOKS
Books may be rare for a variety of reasons: their monetary value, their cultural, historic, or artistic importance, their scarcity or physical characteristics, such as fine printing or the autograph of the author. Records for books in Special Collections can be found in the Libraries' online catalog. In addition to a general collection of rare books, Special Collections has the following notable collections:
The Julia Stover and Milton Washington Carothers Memorial Collection of Bibles and Rare Books contains many rare Bibles including a Taverner-Tyndale Bible (1511), a King James Bible (1611), a page from the Gutenberg Bible (1455), and pages from a handwritten 15th century psalter.
The Louise Richardson Herbal Collection, named for the first head of Special Collections, contains such treasures as William Turner's New Herbal (1551), Rembert Dodoens' New Herbal <1619), Pier Antonio Micheli's Nova Plantarum (1729), and Elizabeth Blackwell's Curious Herbal (1737).
A complete set of 53 works printed by William Morris at the Kelmscott Press between 1891 and 1898, including the Kelmscott Chaucer, were donated to the Libraries by Howard Storrs, book collector and former editor of the DeFuniak Herald Breeze
Holdings related to the discovery, exploration, and early settlement of the Americas are supplemented by 335 titles purchased with funds from the Tracy McGregor Foundation. Among the McGregor purchases are volumes by Bartolome de las Casas, William Bartram, Theordor de Bry, George Catlin, Jacques Le Moyne, Richard Hakluyt, and Captain James Cook.
The Napoleon and the French Revolution Collection is one of the largest in the United States. Included in this collection are a 32 volume set of Napoleon's correspondence, 38 volumes of the dispatches of Lord Wellington, numerous atlases, and hundreds of first person accounts of life in Europe between 1789 and 1821. Search the Napoleon Collection .
UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES AND PHOTO ARCHIVES
Documenting the history of the University and its predecessor institutions is an important part of the work of Special Collections. Therefore, manuscript and published materials produced by offices and departments, and photographs of events and persons on campus are collected. The papers of selected faculty and administrators, copies of dissertations and theses written here, files of news clippings and ephermeral publications, university catalogs, yearbooks, scrapbooks, and books published about the University are also housed in Special Collections. Copies of many doctoral dissertations, masters theses, and undergraduate honors papers can be found here
Manuscripts is a term used to describe letters, handwritten documents and books, and other unpublished materials collected for their historic and research value. When manuscript collections are received by the Libraries, Special Collections organizes the materials and creates a finding aid, or detailed list, to the contents of each collection. Some finding aids are available online. Many more manuscript collections have records in the Libraries' online catalog. All new collections will have electronic finding aids created as they are processed. Finding aids for older collections will be converted to electronic format as time and staffing permit. Manuscripts in Special Collections are arranged into four major categories:
One of our largest manuscript collections is the Dirac Papers.
Paul A.M. Dirac taught at Cambridge University from 1932 to 1969, then at Florida State University from 1972 until his death in 1984. Best known for his work in quantum physics, for which he received the Nobel Prize in 1933, Dirac's papers include his dissertation, scientific papers, notebooks, professional and personal correspondence, and some family papers and photographs. The finding aid to this collection is available online.
OTHER COLLECTIONS
The John MacKay Shaw Childhood in Poetry Collection is composed primarily of English and American poetry from the 19th through the early 20th centuries. Shaw, a Scottish immigrant and retired vice president of AT&T, brought his original 5,000 volume poetry collection to Florida State University in 1960. He served as curator of the collection until 1980, compiling a multi-volume detailed index to the collection published by Gale. Shaw began the collection by selecting poetry that explored the experience of childhood, but he quickly went far beyond that single topic. Authors represented include Wordsworth, Coleridge, Tennyson, Swinburne, Longfellow, Whittier, Whitman, Frost, Lewis Carroll, and Dr. Suess. The collection also includes many anonymous works, prescriptive literature, and periodicals intended to educate and uplift youth of the late 19th century.
The Florida Collection is strong on Florida history, especially the history of North Florida. In addition, there are books about the natural environment, guidebooks, government, industry, and native peoples. Book materials are supplemented by a clipping and pamphlet file.
Among Louise Richardson's legacies to Special Collections is her Night Before Christmas Collection. For many years she collected editions and parodies of the famous Clement C. Moore poem. Her family donated the collection to the Libraries after her death in 1963.
Nancy Bird was the Head of Special Collections from 1960 to 1974. The Nancy Bird Fore-Edge Paintings collection is dedicated to her memory. Fore-edge painting is a very specialized technique in which a hidden painting is visible when the gilded edge of a book is fanned. The Libraries are fortunate to own examples of both single and double fore-edge paintings.
The Robert M. Ervin, Jr., Collection consists of science fiction, fantasy, horror, and comics, and contains both primary and secondary materials. Over 1200 individual titles are represented in the collection, with most of them dating from the 1950's, 1960's, and 1970's. The collection is the gift of Mr. and Mrs. Robert M. Ervin, and is named for their son, Robert M. Ervin, Jr.
Our Scottish Collection began as a gift from John MacKay Shaw honoring his parents. The collection provides sources for research on Scotland and its influence on the southeast, especially North Florida.
The Lois Lenski Collection was donated to the Libraries by the author-illustrator in 1958. In addition to books, the collection includes original artwork, manuscripts, background materials, and scrapbooks from her works Strawberry Girl and Judy's Journey, both of which have Florida settings.
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This page was last updated on June 3, 2009. Send comments to FSU Libraries Special Collections
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