The Rare Book & Manuscript Library
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| Country | United States |
|---|---|
| Type | Special Collections |
| Scope | Rare Books |
| Established | 1936 |
| Location | University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, Illinois |
| Branch of | The University Library |
| Collection | |
| Size | 600,000 |
| Website | library.illinois.edu/rbx illinoisrbml.tumblr.com |
The Rare Book & Manuscript Library at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (RBML) is located on the 3rd floor of the University Library. The library is one of the largestspecial collections repositories in the United States. Its collections, consisting of over half a million volumes and three kilometers of manuscript material, encompass the broad areas of literature, history, art, theology, philosophy, technology and the natural sciences, and include large collections of emblem books, writings of and works about John Milton, and authors' personal papers.
From the founding of the University Library into the twentieth century, rare materials were housed within the main stacks. Significant early acquisitions, now housed in the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, include the Richard Aron collection on German pedagogy (20,000 items), acquired in 1913; the H. A. Rattermann collection of German-American literature (7,000 items), acquired in 1915; the James Collins collection of Irish literature (over 7.000 items), acquired in 1917; the Julius Doerner collection on theology, history, and literature (50,000 items), acquired in 1918; and the Antonio Cavagna collection of Italian books and manuscripts (45,000 items), acquired in 1921. Professor Harris F. Fletcher, a member of the English faculty from 1926 to 1962, advised the library on the purchase of books by and about John Milton, often assisting during his own visits to England. In 1937, the Library decided to designate a small space on the fourth floor ("The Seventeenth Century Room") to house Fletcher's collection of approximately 5,700 volumes. In 1966, the Rare Book & Manuscript library acquired the large personal collection of Professor and Shakespeare scholar Thomas W. Baldwin, with strong holdings in Renaissance pedagogy, literature, drama, history, and politics in an attempt to collect books that Shakespeare and his contemporaries might have read in their lifetimes. As a result of these and other acquisitions, the library is a significant repository of English imprints from the 16th to 19th centuries and incunabula, including numerous items from the New Haven firm of C. A. Stonehill. The library also began collecting incunabula; by 1950, its collection of pre-1501 imprints numbered nearly 400.
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