Celebrating Research: A Guide to Rare and Special Collections from the Membership of the Association of Research Libraries was recently released to coincide with the organization’s 75th anniversary. The publication is co-edited by Samuel Streit, Brown University’s Director for Special Collections, who also contributed an overview of the University’s Special Collections. In addition to Streit’s extensive contributions, curator Peter Harrington wrote a profile of the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection and Ben Tyler, Digital Imaging Specialist, oversaw the design of the page. Housed at the John Hay Library, the Anne S.K. Brown Military Collection is the foremost collection in the United States on the history and iconography of soldiers and soldiering.
Streit shared responsibility for editing Celebrating Research with Phillip N. Cronenwett, Special Collections Librarian Emeritus, Dartmouth College Library, and Kevin Osborn, Research & Design Ltd. Specific collections of distinction are drawn from 148 member libraries. Among them are the Collection of Rare Maps of the Tokugawa Era from the University of British Columbia Library. The Water Resources Archive from the Colorado State Universities Library, The Emily Dickinson Collection from Harvard University’s Houghton Library, the Orson Welles Collection from Indiana University Bloomington’s Lilly Library, and the Cervantes Collection from Texas A& M University’s Cushing Memorial Library. Each profile tells the story of the collection and provides fascinating insight into how each was acquired, maintained, and developed.