Library Overview

Besides the Papyrus Collection highlighted in this volume, the Special Collections Library at the University of Michigan contains rare books in a wide variety of subjects, as well as early books and manuscripts, deep subject collections in various formats, and personal, organizational, and literary archives. The Labadie Collection is one of the world's strongest collections focusing on anarchism and other radical social movements; it covers the period from 1848 to the present day through books, serials, pamphlets, manuscripts, and ephemera, including such diverse topics as free thought, socialism, pre-1930 labor unions, civil rights, campus unrest, peace movements, and transgender issues. The Hubbard Collection of some 3,000 volumes is one of the world's largest gatherings of editions, adaptations, and spin-offs of Robinson Crusoe and Gulliver's Travels. Other notable literary collections include Shakespeare (ca. 9,000 pre-1900 volumes), Swinburne (books and manuscripts), Dickens and Trollope (published in parts), Faulkner, Frost, archives of post-beat poets (Anne Waldman, Marge Piercy), Hopwood Award materials, and archives of Detroit small presses focusing on African-American literature. Of great rarity is a collection of 1,200 pre-20th-century Islamic manuscripts featuring outstanding specimens of calligraphy and important legal and scientific texts. The Transportation History Collection includes some 70,000 items on canals, bridges, roads, bicycles, carriages, automobiles, and railroads, with special strengths in pictorial material. Several archival and photograph collections relate to the history of American governance of the Philippines in the period 1890 to 1930 and are complemented by additional materials in the Michigan Historical Collections at the Bentley Library. The William L. Clements Library holds manuscript and print collections of great importance for the study of the Northwest Territory and the American Revolution. There are also rich materials in the Music Library with one of the largest collections of 19th-century American sheet music in the United States and the Taubman Medical Library.

University of Michigan Library
Special Collections Library
7th Floor, Hatcher Graduate Library
University of Michigan
Ann Arbor, Michigan 48109-1205
http://www.lib.umich.edu/spec-coll/
special.collections@umich.edu
(734) 764-9377 (t)
(734) 764-9368 (f)