The year 2000 provided the Brown University Library with a convenient opportunity to take stock of its history and look to its future. The traditions of support for the University’s curricular and research functions were reaffirmed as the University itself built upon its long and distinguished legacy. But as the University attempted to balance its past, present, and future in the light of rapid change, so too did the library deliberate as to the most effective methods of developing and providing access to its collections and services. The library was confronted by competing budgetary demands and the dilemmas presented by the tension between print and electronic text and data; the constraints posed by the preservation of historically important collections and the imperative to make them available both physically and digitally; and the fundamental rationale for the existence of a research library in a world increasingly dominated by easy computer access to vast quantities of information.
The new century brought into sharp focus the fact that technology and electronically packaged collections were homogenizing even major academic research libraries. As they sought to distinguish themselves from their peers, more fortunate libraries were able to turn to their special collections as a major factor that afforded them uniqueness and eminence. Such was the case at Brown. The generations of donors to Special Collections and the sustained interest and support of the Brown community — University and library administrations, faculty, students, and alumni/ae — all had contributed to making the John Hay Library one of Brown’s most significant resources in support of its mission of teaching and scholarship.
Yoken Collection.
Yoken Collection.
Khrushchev Photograph Album.In accordance with the acknowledgement of the centrality of Special Collections to the University’s mission, the established practice continued of augmenting the John Hay’s traditional strengths while expanding its scope into complementary areas that documented the contemporary world. Among the collections that best illustrated this dual focus was the Yoken Collection, a gift/purchase that arrived annually throughout the century’s first decade and beyond. Assembled by Mel B. Yoken, MAT 1961, the extraordinary collection of manuscripts, books, and ephemera in reality consists of some 4,000 smaller collections constructed around specific individuals from the worlds of literature, politics and public affairs, academe, and the lively arts. While its historical components had been built through purchase, the vast majority of the collection’s more recent material was obtained over a period of 40 years through direct solicitations from Mel Yoken himself, solicitations that often resulted in close personal friendships. As a result, many components of the Yoken Collection provide unrivalled insight into the lives, personalities, and creative impulses of a great many of the most remarkable individuals of the contemporary world. Varying in size from one letter to lengthy series of correspondence lasting decades, the collection’s greatest strengths lie in the fields of American, British, and French literature, although its numerous other segments present rich research opportunities as well.
The John Hay Library’s holdings in modern history were further enhanced in the early years of the decade by the gift of the papers of Sergei Khrushchev, Senior Fellow at Brown’s Watson Institute for International Studies. Pertaining to his own career and that of his father, the Khrushchev papers provide an excellent overview of the official life of Nikita Khrushchev and a fascinating glimpse into the private life of the family. The Nikita Khrushchev materials include transcripts of dictated reminiscences, photograph albums of official visits both within and outside the Soviet Union, even home movies. Also included are books, articles, clippings, and taped interviews documenting Sergei Khrushchev’s career as author, public speaker, and biographer of his father.
Alison Palmer Papers.
Feminist Theory Papers.
Feminist Theory Papers.Women had long occupied a prominent place in Brown’s Special Collections, but not until the advent of the feminist movement was there a conscious effort to identify, highlight, and enhance materials pertaining to women in the many varied collections of the John Hay Library. The single greatest impetus in this regard was the establishment in 1988 of the Christine Dunlap Farnham Archives, a joint effort of the John Hay Library and the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women. Among the first achievements of this collaboration was the publication of a research guide that focused on resources about women at the John Hay. In addition, with staff funded by the Pembroke Center, the John Hay’s collections on women were substantially augmented through an oral history project focusing on alumnae and through a campaign to solicit the personal papers and archives of alumnae and prominent Rhode Island women.
The relationship between the John Hay and the Pembroke Center continued throughout the 1990s and into the new century. Indeed, the relationship with the Center was a major force in stimulating the library to acquire complementary collections that concentrated on women, perhaps the most notable example being the purchase of the Feminist Press Archive in 1996 as a component of its effort to document the history of the publishing industry. A more recent collaboration between the John Hay and the Pembroke Center was the establishment in 2002 of the Feminist Theory Papers project, the intention being to document the contributions of feminist scholars in many fields to cutting-edge research in the human sciences. The first collection obtained through the project was the papers of Naomi Schor, a Brown faculty member from 1978–1989, and an authority on French literature and French feminist theory. Joining the Schor papers after 2002 were the Elaine Marks Papers, the Louise Tilley Papers, the Anne Fausto-Sterling Papers and the Teresa Brennan Papers. To date, no fewer than ninety-six prominent scholars in the field of feminist theory have signed letters of intent designating Brown as the future recipient of their papers.
Doctor Bob's coffee pot.
Marty Mann.
Edwin Abbott Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions (London: Seeley & Co., 1884).Contemporary social issues and problems continued to be a primary area of collection expansion in the first decade of the century, with new donations of archival collections devoted to community and grass roots organizing efforts in the areas of education at the pre-college level; voting rights; welfare rights and housing discrimination; and the rights of the disabled. The most substantial body of material concerned with societal topics was a group of collections dealing with alcohol and addiction, established through the efforts of David C. Lewis, M. D., Class of 1957. Dr. Lewis, who in 1982 founded Brown’s Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies, believed that the history of alcohol abuse and its treatment was vital to a complete understanding of questions surrounding the public perception of alcoholism. Consequently, Dr. Lewis was instrumental in securing major collections for the John Hay Library, by both donation and purchase, beginning in 1995 with the Chester H. Kirk Collection of Alcohol and Alcoholics Anonymous. From that time to the present, primarily through the efforts of Dr. Lewis, the library has acquired many related collections, among the most prominent being the Robert Holbrook Smith (“Dr. Bob”) Collection, the personal archive of one of the founders of Alcoholics Anonymous; the Ernest Kurtz Collection on Alcoholism; the Rutgers Anti-Saloon League Collection, consisting of over 15,000 temperance items, many aimed at non-English speaking immigrants; and the Archives of the National Council on Alcohol and Drug Dependency and its founder, Marty Mann, the first woman participant in Alcoholics Anonymous and a pioneer in the movement to view alcoholism as a disease rather than a moral failing.
A series of major acquisitions since 2005 have added new dimensions and greater depth to several of the John Hay Library’s long established collecting strengths. In 2006, Professor of Mathematics Thomas F. Banchoff gave his library devoted to the life and work of Edwin Abbott Abbott to the John Hay. Abbott is best known as the author of Flatland, A Romance of Many Dimensions (London, 1884), which describes a two-dimensional world and explores, through fantasy, the nature of mathematical and spatial dimensions. The Flatland collection, consisting of virtually every edition to appear since its initial publication, includes variants, translations, and fine press printings, and serves as a remarkable link among the John Hay’s holdings of English literature, science fiction and fantasy literature, and the history of mathematics and science. Although his current fame rests on Flatland, Abbott also was a prolific author of theological works and made substantial contributions to the field of English philology; important editions of these works are included in the Banchoff Collection as well.
David E. Pingree Collection.
David E. Pingree Collection.
Anthony Hamilton, title page and frontispiece from Memoires du Comte de Grammont ([Twickenham:] Strawberry-Hill, 1772).
Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle, Oeuvres Diverses (A La Haye: Chez Gosse & Neaulme, 1728-1729).Brown’s mathematical collections were strengthened further by the 2008 acquisition of the research library of the late David E. Pingree, Professor of the History of Mathematics at Brown for over 30 years. Amassed over a 50-year period, the Pingree Collection is considered to be the world’s finest in its field, specifically the history of mathematics and the exact sciences in the ancient East, and their transmission and contribution to the development of mathematical knowledge in the West. Purchased with funds provided by President Ruth J. Simmons, the Pingree Collection consists of some 22,000 books, 700 fascicles and many thousands of photo-reproductions of unique manuscript material gathered by Professor Pingree from around the globe. While the majority of the collection is housed in the Rockefeller Library, the rare, antiquarian and photo-reproduced materials are located in the John Hay Library. Taken together, the Pingree Collection extends Brown’s already renowned mathematics collections, which historically have focused on the West from Euclid to the present, to their foundation in the ancient East, from Babylon to India.
In 2007, the John Hay received through the bequest of Frederick Lippitt a substantial component of the Lippitt family library, much of which consists of 18th and 19th century British and continental European literature and history. Both in terms of new titles and editions new to the library of titles already held, the 500 volumes of the Lippitt library also add substantially to major author collections, including Walter Scott and Robert Burns. Many of the books, purchased en bloc by an earlier member of the Lippitt family, had earlier belonged to the Holbech family of Farnborough Hall in Warwickshire. As a result, the Lippitt library possesses, unusually for a collection in the western hemisphere, the added distinction of providing insight into the collecting tastes, including those of women, of a single wealthy English family over a 150-year period.
James C. Beard, "The Fifteenth Amendment, Celebrated May 19. 1870" (New York: Thomas Kelly, Lithographer, 1870).
Edmund Spenser, The Faerie Queene (London: Printed [by John Wolfe] for William Ponsonbie, 1590).
Benjamin Franklin, Experiments and Observations on Electricity, Made at Philadelphia in America (London: Printed and Sold by E. Cave, 1751).
United States Continental Congress, Journal of the Proceedings of the Congress, Held at Philadelphia, September 5, 1774 (Philadelphia: Printed by William and Thomas Bradford, 1774).A second recent bequest, from prominent Boston bookseller Maury A. Bromsen, is the largest single gift to benefit Brown’s Lincoln Collection in 20 years. The collection includes a significant array of prints and ephemera from the Civil War period, along with books, pamphlets, sheet music, sound recordings, period newspapers, portraits, and manuscripts. Among the key items are the original copper plates, and full sets of prints from the Confederate War Etchings series by Adalbert Volck; substantial groups of manuscripts of Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard and Union General George B. McClellan; and a set of copy plates made by George Ayres from the original glass plate negatives created during an 1860 portrait photo shoot of Lincoln by Chicago photographer Alexander Hesler.
In 2008, Daniel G. Siegel, Class of 1957, and one of the John Hay Library’s most important donors, once again made a magnificent contribution of rare books. Totaling some 130 titles, the gift includes some of the most important works ever published in their respective fields. The greatest strengths of the Siegel gift are in the history of science; American, British, and continental European history and literature; and philosophical and religious thought. Representative scientific and philosophical titles include the first two editions of Copernicus’s De Revolutionibus (Nuremberg, 1543 and Basel, 1566); Discours de la Méthode by Descartes (London, 1649); the second edition of Giambattista Vico’s Cinque Libri (Naples, 1730), extensively annotated by the author in preparation for the third edition; and 26 titles by Einstein which together encapsulate his thought on the theory of relativity. Among the literary and historical volumes are the Constitution of the Mormon state of Deseret (Kanesville, Iowa, 1849); the Journal of the Proceedings of the [Continental] Congress (Philadelphia, 1774) inscribed by Samuel Adams to the Rev. John Lothrop; an inscribed copy of the first edition of Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel (New York, 1929); and Pushkin’s Boris Godunov (St. Petersburg, 1831).
Arsène Alexandre and Jean Cocteau, The Decorative Art of Leon Bakst (London: The Fine Art Society, 1913).
André Levinson, La Danse d'Aujourd'hui (Paris: Editions Duchartre et Van Buggenhoudt, 1929).
Natalie Bayard Brown Papers.
John Nicholas Brown (1900–1979) Papers.The most recent major collection to be given to the John Hay Library is the Bryson Dance Collection, donated in 2010 by Thomas and Antonia Bryson (Classes of 1972 and 1974). The collection of over 2,000 books, programs, playbills, photographs, and documents is focused on the development of theatrical dance in the 20th century, particularly the international development of ballet and modern dance. Included also are key earlier works that illustrate the evolution of ballet from the 17th through the 19th centuries, from a collaboration between Molière and Lully to the Ballets Russes of Diaghilev. British and American dance of the 1930s and 1940s is well represented as is modern dance, pioneered by such artists as Isadora Duncan, Loïe Fuller, Ruth St. Denis, Josephine Baker, George Balanchine, and Martha Graham. A sampling of the rarer items includes The Decorative Arts of Leon Bakst (London, 1913), Jean-Georges Noverre’s Lettres sur la Danse (Lyon, 1760), and André Levinson’s La Danse d’Aujourd’hui (Paris, 1929).
It seems appropriate to conclude this second edition of Special Collections of the Brown University Library with a collection that relates to the family whose history has been so intertwined with that of the library and the University. A major component of the Brown family papers, dating from roughly 1871 to the late 20th century, recently was transferred to the John Hay from the family home on Benefit Street by the current occupant of the house, the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities and Cultural Heritage. The archive consists of discrete groups of the personal papers of John Nicholas Brown I (1861–1900) and his son, John Nicholas Brown II (1900–1979); their respective wives — Natalie Bayard (1869–1950) and Anne Seddon Kinsolving (1906–1985); and J. Carter Brown (1934–2002). The papers reflect the family’s interests in the visual arts, from both personal and multi-institutional perspectives, travel, yachting, politics and public service, and the many philanthropic activities with which various family members were associated, from the Episcopal Church and historic preservation to Brown University.