These collections include the private or professional papers of individuals, accumulated in the course of their careers, such as Kenneth Starr's files as judge on the U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, or corporate records accumulated by organizations such as the American Mathematical Society, the Warren Baptist Church, the Rhode Island Writer's Guild, and the Corliss Steam Engine Company. In addition, there are artificial groupings put together by individual collectors or by the Library's own staff, which formed the Rhode Island Manuscripts and Emile Zola collections from scratch.
Although some collections are acquired by purchase, in recent years most have come by gift or bequest. Occasionally someone writes or calls the Library with an offer to donate or sell materials. On rare occasions, an individual may even show up with an unexpected gift in hand. There is usually advance notice of bequests, the most important recent one being the papers of Emily Dickinson's family.
In the case of the Gorham Company, manufacturers of silver for 150 years, however, the acquisitions process became a rescue mission. Two weeks before Gorham began vacating its 35 acre plant in the Elmwood section of Providence, the Library received a phone call offering Brown all the files and records on the site. The Special Collections Department was willing to take everything offered, much of which would otherwise have been trashed. The result was a heavily-used collection whose market value has been appraised in excess of one million dollars.
The acquisitions process is usually more routine. Contacts are made, dealers' catalogues are read, leads offered by friendly researchers are pursued. For example, the publishers of those small presses and literary magazines for which the Library has standing orders for the Harris Collection were asked to donate their archival records. As a result, the Library has received several donations and made several purchases, notably of the records of the Unicorn Press.
In recent years the articles, class notes, and obituary sections of the Brown Alumni Monthly have been consulted, and solicitations made on this basis have led to donations of manuscripts and other materials of research value - an example being the papers of The Official Preppy Handbook author, Lisa Birnbach '78.
Alumni contacted in this way are often honored or surprised that such interest is taken in their work or that of their loved ones. They assume, for example, that the Library looks for items of great individual value. One donor, accordingly, confessed to feeling "terribly presumptuous" in sending her research files. But, as a curator recently wrote to another donor, "...the Library will be here long after you and I are gone...". Researchers will be grateful that someone had the foresight to preserve these pieces of our times.