Rare Books and Manuscripts

The rare book collections at Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections comprise tens of thousands of items, among them over 50 incunables, or titles printed between the invention of moveable type in western Europe and the year 1501. The library also holds hundreds of almanacs from many countries, dating as far back as 1487, with a great many of them forming the William D. and Helen M. Chase Collection of Books on Chronology, Time Reckoning, Calendars, Almanacs, and the Observance of Calendar Events. Other significant rare book collections include the Ray Stannard Baker Bee Collection and the Marilee E. Thomas & Robert C. Thomas Science and Related Subjects Collection.

Manuscript collections include the Chamberlain Warren Samaritan Collection, which contains sacred texts related to the Samaritan religious group in the form of scrolls, codices, and a fragment of a marble inscription. The Murray & Hong also holds dozens of handwritten cookbooks from Europe and the Americas, early veterinary manuscripts, and works by the famed Argentinian author Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986). We have numerous examples of medieval manuscripts, including Books of Hours, a breviary, an antiphonal, and dozens of fragments suitable for research and teaching. Manuscript facsimiles make up a significant portion of the collection of materials on the history of the book, which also contains works on printing, illustrating, and bookbinding.

For more information, please contact Tad Boehmer, Rare Books Curator.