Van Pelt collection offers look into history

Crowning the Van Pelt Library, the Department of Special Collections remains an obscure yet vitally important addition to the University's academic resources. Anyone, from students and faculty to independent researchers and scholars around the world, can leaf through such rare treasures as the early printed editions of Walt Whitman's poetry or the manuscripts of former University Professor John Mauchly, one of the co-developers of ENIAC, the first electronic digital computer. Currently under the direction of Michael Ryan, Special Collections formed shortly after World War II at a time when many libraries were beginning to take rare and valuable collections out of general circulation. "[Rare book departments] developed out of the book collecting community," Ryan explained. "It was still the dominant mode of collecting if you had money and wanted status." Since WWII, however, Ryan said libraries simply began the collections as "custodial operations," merely for the purpose of storage. When collecting art became more popular than collecting books, curators felt obliged to preserve and display rare and valuable books. The hardwood floors and display cases lining Van Pelt's sixth floor -- where the collections are housed -- give the library a museum-like atmosphere, serving as a charming contrast to the linoleum and metal bookcase stacks on lower floors. Hosting eight exhibits per year, the library features the collections of donors as well as books and manuscripts on loan from other libraries. Relying mostly on the "kindness of strangers" for funds and acquisitions of books and manuscripts, the library works with one of the smallest budgets among the rare book collection libraries in the Ivy League, according to Ryan. Despite these financial limitations, Ryan and his colleagues are working to procure new additions to the library's collections and are planning to renovate the library in an effort to add seminar rooms. A recent acquisition that Ryan called "mind-boggling" includes a collection of 15th century cookbooks and some 3,000 "salesman sample books" from the 19th century. These items were used by publishers to publicize forthcoming books, encouraging subscribers to buy such works as Frederick Douglass' memoirs. "This will knock your socks off," Ryan asserted. "There is nothing else like [this collection] in the world." Another recent endeavor features a collaboration between Special Collections and English Professor Rebecca Bushnell. With hopes of making Van Pelt's Furness Memorial Library accessible to the world, Bushnell and Ryan are submitting a grant proposal to the National Endowment for the Humanities to scan nearly 15,000 pages worth of material into a World Wide Web site. The site will provide links to help decipher Old English text and pronunciation as well as artistic interpretations of Shakespeare characters throughout the centuries. The library houses one of the best Shakespeare collections in any university library in the United States.