The Institute for Development Anthropology (IDA) was founded in 1976 by Professor Michael Horowitz of Binghamton University with colleagues Professor David Brokensha of Oxford University and Professor Thayer Scudder of the California Institute of Technology. This private non-profit research institute conducted extensive field work and policy studies on water sustainability, river basin development, and gender, sexuality and kinship studies throughout South America, the Caribbean, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific Rim. Field research funding was obtained from federal agencies and non-governmental organizations such as the US Agency for International Development, the World Bank, and the United Nations. This diverse collection of IDA project reports were produced in limited quanities and not available to the public. In many cases the field library contains the only surviving copy. Upon ceasing operations in 2004, the BU Libraries acquired the complete field library, which contains five major categories of unique archival items: 1) IDA project reports, 2) maps and field maps of project locations, 3) ephemera collected from projects including posters, photographs, tourist maps, tourist guides, auction catalogs, and local newsletters, 4) primary field notes and data from IDA projects and Professor Horowitz’s research on sexuality and kinship studies in the Caribbean during the 1950s, and 5) monographs.

The original materials to be cataloged under the auspices of this project cover a crucial period of American history. Unfortunately, scholars see Beaufort County as a county with significant destruction of records due to the ravages of war, destructive fires, natural disasters, and periods of shoddy record keeping. In spite of the validity of this perception, important original resources survive for scholarly investigation in our respective institutions. Collectively, our materials highlight local manifestations of broader topics in social history (race relations, religion, education, domestic life, arts, architecture), economic history (slavery, nascent labor movement, phosphate, seafood, and agricultural industries), political history (secession, reconstruction), military history (Civil War era), and cultural history (Gullah heritage, emergence of the "New South") from 1840 - 1915. We are stewards of family papers, organizational papers, legal records, newspapers, images, and artifacts that help illuminate the unique story of Beaufort County's contribution to our national cultural heritage. From the start of the Bluffton Movement (1844) to the advent of the 20th century, a uniquely different version of what America was and what it should be is documented in our respective holdings. We have no doubt that once scholars learn about our research resources, they will find our materials fascinating.

The Austin History Center, part of the Austin Public Library, is the home of a significant collection of materials relating to the popular writer, O. Henry. O. Henry lived in Austin, still using his given name of William Sydney Porter from 1884 to 1895 and 1896 to 1897. The O. Henry Resources of the Austin History Center are comprised primarily of materials donated by Judge Trueman E. O'Quinn and augmented by items acquired from Jenny Lind Porter, Ethel Hofer, the Maddox family, the Heritage Society of Austin, and the Austin History Center Association. These resources include original typescripts, first edition books, periodicals, correspondence, manuscripts, autograph albums, phototgraphs, sketches, maps, paintings, audio recordings, jewelry, and furniture. Researchers are particularly delighted to find two autograph albums containing whimsical sketches and poems, one of which was written to Porter's first wife, Athol Estes. The collection includes letters written by Will Porter to associates, many involving requests for financial loans or advances. Nearly 400 periodicals, ranging in date from 1897 through 1983, and featuring illustrated stories by O. Henry are part of the collection. There are extensive holdings of Ainslee's, Everybody's Magazine, McClure's, The Golden Book Magazine, Bunker's Texas Monthly, and The Munsey. In addition, the History Center houses 360 books containing stories by O. Henry, some being first editions, and many bound in distinguished sets.

The bilingual archival collections to be arranged, described, preserved and processed for the Labor Rights are Civil Rights/Los Derechos de Trabajo Son Derechos Civiles project include the records of the Alianza Hispano Americana (AHA), founded in Tucson, Arizona in 1894 as a mutual aid benefit society for Mexicans in the Arizona Territory. The Alianza expanded into the southwestern United States and into northern Mexico to protect the civil rights of Mexicans and Mexican Americans in the areas of school segregation, work discrimination and access to government housing. The League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), formed in Corpus Christi, Texas in 1929. It is the oldest, active organization of Hispanics in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., LULAC seeks to pursue goals of equality in government, law, education and business. The Maricopa County Organizing Project, Inc., (MCOP), was founded in Phoenix, Arizona in 1977 as a non-profit organization intent on organizing farm workers in Mexico and negotiating equitable labor contracts with employers in Maricopa County. The Service, Employment and Redevelopment (SER) Project, was a 1964 federally-funded non-profit organization formed to make available job training and education to the economically disadvantaged. The records of the United Steel Workers of America, Local 616 in Clifton, Arizona and the Arizona AFL-CIO, document the civil, legal, and labor rights of workers.

These collections represent the intersection and often the collision of complex political, economic and environmental currents in post WWII Arizona. Among the topics included under Politics are: the growth of conservatism (Goldwater, McCain); federalism; polls that document shifts in campaign funding and campaign strategies, voting rights, voter registration and voting trends, especially among minorities; grassroots activism; tribal politics; party politics, Hispanic leaders (Raul Castro), Right to Work, and illegal immigration. Included under Economy are: the growth of agri-business; the impact of the elderly and the growth of retirement communities; border trade; mining; Indian gaming; migrant workers (Cesar Chavez); strikes; banking (Charles Keating); city bonds and infrastructure funding, military-industrial complex; boom-bust cycles; budget deficits; employment, and tourism. Included under the Environment are: geo-spatial data, urban growth and urban planning; air, water and borderland pollution; reclamation (Carl Hayden); water management including water rights and the impact of drought and flood cycles; nuclear energy; uranium tailings; strip mining, rise of conservation movements including endangered species, grazing, wilderness areas (Edward Abbey, Mo and Stewart Udall), national parks (Goldwater), sky islands, and preservation; and solar energy.

To provide better access to our rare publications, we propose converting 1600 linear feet of our rare book library from Dewey classification (with access only through a unique and actual card catalogue) to Library of Congress electronic format. This will involve 25,000 to 30,000 books, some of which will be bound manuscripts, broadsides, or pamphlets in need of reclassification as a record group. When identified, those manuscripts will be placed, along with new finding aids, into our manuscript, pamphlet, or broadside collection. The finding aids will be available electronically, through our website listings, as is the current case for original manuscript records (www.abhsarchives.org/collections). The American Baptist-Samuel Colgate Historical Library has 16,000 linear feet of manuscripts, broadsides, images, books, pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, with 10 percent (1613 linear feet) needing conversion from Dewey to LC or archival classification. Founded in 1853, the American Baptist Historical Society has collected the range of church historical materials, with missionaries and pastors serving as collectors. All types of Baptists are included, with the collection enhanced in 1955 by a merger with the library of Samuel B. Colgate. Rare holdings include 16th century Anabaptist writings in German, Dutch, and English and the largest collection anywhere of reports by regional Baptist associations of Germans, Danish, Swedish, American Indians and African Americans.

Cataloging 230 Years of Research and Programs at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences: This project will inaugurate the first major processing effort for the Academy’s newly established archives, starting with the records documenting its research and programs from its founding during the Revolutionary War to the present. Academy members were, and are, among the leaders and scholars whose work shaped policy and helped direct the course of science, humanities, and the arts in America. Their concerns for the welfare of American intellectual life have steered the Academy’s programs since 1780. Key topics documented in the archives include the natural and physical sciences; science’s value to society; medicine and public health; education; social issues such as race, poverty, immigration, religion and fundamentalism; language; scholarly publishing; and arms control, foreign affairs, and global security, among others. These topics will guide the organization and presentation of the collections to researchers. In addition, the project will reveal shifts in American intellectual history. The Academy’s cataloging project will ensure that its complete research and program records, once processed, cataloged, and described on its website, will be available to scholars for the first time. Guided by modern research needs, descriptions and sub-groupings of the collections will enable scholars to see our records in historical context by function and by subject themes.

1. Alaska Dept. of Fish & Game Annual Management Reports, 1929-1994: geographically based series compiled data in a cumulative manner for each regional fishery; 2. U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service Annual Narratives, 1960s-present: annual reports originating from various wildlife refuges in Alaska; 3. Exxon Valdez oil spill, raw footage, 1989-1991: Raw footage of the early days of the Exxon Valdez oil spill, its subsequent clean-up, shoreline evaluations, and other government-led activities related to the spill; 4. Exxon Valdez Oil Spill, Shoreline Surveys, 1989-1993: Surveys conducted by interagency groups to assess oiling conditions in the spill area; 5. Bureau of Land Management Wild and Scenic Rivers photograph and file collection, 1908-: Multi-agency collection of original files, slides, photos documenting selection of rivers, including candidate rivers; 6. Bureau of Land Management Iditarod Collection: documents landmarks of all miles of trial; 7. Environment & Natural Resources Inst.: Historical photos, pre-statehood to 1970s, related to particular industries important to Alaska and to cultural documentation; 8. Alaska Climate Center Ice Records, 1972-2004: community ice records and ice analysis; 9. ARLIS backlog: 44,000 items - only agency serial runs are under consideration. All are relevant to individuals & groups doing research in the natural sciences or having involvement in the environmental or development realms in Alaska.

The Oberlin College Mail Art collection consists of the Harley-Terra Candella and Reid Wood (State of Being) Mail Art archives, which together comprise over 25,000 works by 1,800 artists. The collection contains a wide range of objects and media, including original stamp sheets, drawings, adorned envelopes, posters, cards and postcards, videos, letters, and artists’ books, providing a rich survey of the artistic, political and intellectual history of Mail Art. Like Dada and Fluxus, the Mail Art movement challenges both accepted standards of art and the allegedly rational actions of modern society. An international community melding creative expression across the arts, mail artists subvert traditional gallery and art ownership systems through the creation and dissemination of art through the postal system. At times ironic, absurd, political, or whimsical, Mail Art is an important but understudied movement that flourished in analog form in particular from the 1950s through the 1990s. Oberlin’s holdings are significant for their scope; number and diversity of artist-created stamps (artistamps); and geographic breadth. The collection is not currently accessible to scholars, because it has not been inventoried and processed.

Reef Relief founder Craig Quirolo surveyed the Florida Keys barrier coral reef from 1992-2007 on a slide and then digital and video format. The survey has alerted the scientific and resource management community to the appearance and spread of numerous coral diseases and documented reef health over a long period enabling researchers to study how reef health has changed. 10,000 images document the same coral reefs over time and have captured coral disease, bleaching, storm damage, boat groundings, fish grazing, and other anamolies. Quirolo studies the images and then alerts reef scientists to anamolies. He supports research that has led to discovery of the causes of several coral diseases. White pox disease is caused by a common bacteria found in sewage; aspergillosis is a fungus attacking purple sea fans that was previously found only in top soil linking it to agricultural runoff. The findings have helped save endangered coral reefs and guide good policymaking for coral reefs and is a valuable learning tool. 10,000 images have been loaded onto a free Online Archive that has been utilized by researchers, students, teachers and the general public for free at www.reefreliefarchive.org. Thirty short educational reef videos were produced last year from accompanying reef transects taken on video of each monitoring site, now available on Reef Relief's Youtube site. Taken together, the images and video of the survey are an invaluable dataset on coral reefs for public use.

This is a public history collection comprised of materials from four generations of the Fell's Point line of the Dashiell-Marine family, two of America's founding Hugeonot families. The collection begins with logs and letters of sea captain and privateer Henry Dashiell and his wife, Mary Leeke, neice of a British admiral, and continues through to two sisters who fought to save Fell's Point from demolition. The special collection consists, in part, of ship's logs, privateer records, letters of marque, maps, account ledgers, photographs and personal correspondence, books and pamphlets, sharecroppers records, diaries, documents about slavery and from the Union's Mississippi Campaign during the Civil War, the Depression, WW1 and WW2, family members' efforts to lobby Congress to have Fort McHenry become a National Monument instead of a prison, to have the Star Spangled Banner named the National Anthem, a poem by James Whitcomb Riley, correspondence in French from the Pachon family, who emigrated after the slave revolts in Haiti, Sam Houston, James Madison and others; DAR, CAR, shipping, 1812, Masonic Order, U.S. Marshall's, Hugeneot Society and Road Fight records, medical books, doctor's paraphanelia and supplies, labelled medicine bottles/vials, books, account books, patient ledgers, medical school thesis and receipts from father/son doctors in the family. Outside the scope of this, there are also portraits, artwork, textiles and 3-dimensional objects and furnishings.

Richard Hugo House, a literary arts center in Seattle, Washington, seeks support for its Zine Archive and Publishing Project (ZAPP), a collection of over 20,000 hand-made books (or zines). Zines (the word is taken from “magazine” or “fanzine”) are independent publications produced and distributed by individuals, focusing on a range of topics from politics to pop culture. The ZAPP collection at Hugo House contains several famous publications, including the Riot Grrls, Bikini Kill, Jigsaw, and Grrl Trouble and first editions of Factsheet Five, the premier zine index. It has been viewed by zine scholars from across the United States, with inquiries and visits from as far away as England and Norway. The collection includes zines from major urban centers in the United States, and from other countries including Great Britain, Germany, Latin America, France, and Australia; dating from 1971 to the present. Within the collection are zines, comics, chapbooks, pamphlets, broadsides, mail art projects, and other small press publications. These are hard-to-find, often one-of-a-kind independently produced publications. Many zine collections focus on particular subjects, but ZAPP features a broad range of content. The ZAPP collection is organized by general subject, with 28 general categories including Art, DIY, Humor, Food & Drink, Politics, Race and Ethnicity, Travel, and Work. It is a vital resource to scholars researching topics from sociology to political movements to publishing.

Gordon Hall launched the Hall-Hoag Collection when he returned from WWII and encountered U.S. domestic hate groups, both right and left wing. Appalled by their ideology and beliefs, Hall determined that such groups were a danger to democracy. He infiltrated and investigated the groups, collecting their printed propaganda and supporting himself by giving public lectures about the dangers posed by extremists and hate groups, using their literature as evidence. It became his life’s work. By the late 1960s, Hall had recruited volunteers to assist his collecting efforts, including Grace Hoag. She helped in sorting and organizing the materials. Although originally focused on extremist groups, eventually Hall and Hoag saw another trend emerge: groups not yet extremist but which may turn in that direction. They labeled these groups “dissenting” and began to add them to the Collection. The processed portion of the Collection (Part I), at 483 linear feet, contains over 168,000 items from more than 5500 organizations. The groups represented cover a very broad spectrum of militant political, social, and religious dissent in the US from 1945 through the 1990s, from far right to far left, and are as disparate as the Communist Party USA and the American Nazi Party. Part II, the focus of proposal, consists of 800 boxes (2,400 linear feet) and is thus 5 times larger than Part I. Providing access to these invaluable materials will be a significant contribution to the documentary record.

The Institute for Development Anthropology (IDA) was founded in 1976 by Binghamton University Professor Michael Horowitz with colleagues Professor David Brokensha of Oxford University and Thayer Scudder of the California Institute of Technology. For over twenty years this private non-profit research institute worked in countries throughout South America, the Caribbean, Africa (North Africa and Sub-Saharan countries), the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific Rim. Over the years the Institute received hundreds of contracts and grants from a variety of organizations from federal agencies (USAID) to non-governmental multi-lateral organizations (the World Bank, the United Nations, International Finance Corporation). As a result of this funding IDA conducted policy research throughout the world on such issues as resettlement, rural household production systems, pastoralism, gender, river basin development, and community forestry. The Institute's library consists of a significant collection of gray literature, including technical reports, grant reports and working papers written by IDA staff. The library also contains materials from other organizations and government agencies. The collection is organized into categories of reports, working papers, annual reports, serials, newsletters, books, and miscellaneous items.

The project focuses on the George Rainsford Fairbanks Collection, the Charles Todd Quintard Collection, the Guerry and Hodsgon Family Collections and university lease records. Fairbanks and Quintard were both founders of the university and made contributions far beyond Sewanee in the Episcopal church, law, medicine and scholarship. The Guerry Family Collection highlights the transition in the black community from slavery to integration. The Hodgson Family Collection documents a family prominent in the university and philanthropic in the community. They operated a charity hospital that provided most of the healthcare in the local community from its founding to the mid-1960s. Since its founding, the university has owned over 7,000 acres. Lease records offer a rare source for the study of the community, which includes university professors, professionals, and laborers. Together, these collections represent the history of the infrastructure and economic development of a sparsely populated section of the Cumberland Plateau in 1858, to the formation of a village, then a town of nearly 1,500 by the late 1960s. Through correspondence, diaries, official reports, unpublished manuscripts, town plans, drawings, surveys, court briefs, lease records, and newspaper accounts, we gain deep insight into the development of the railroad system, Reconstruction, healthcare, education, the African American community, gender roles, and socio-economic class relations.

The Nursery and Seed Catalog Collection of The New York Botanical Garden is one of the largest collections in the U. S., with approximately 43,000 catalogs from over 5,000 companies dating from 1804, with locations in North America, Europe and Japan. Seed catalogs are sources on the introduction of new plants into the U.S. and the use of plants in general, information important to plant scientists, and economic and agricultural historians, as it provides data on plants of economic or aesthetic interest. The collection is relevant to researchers in botany, garden design, agriculture, art, economic and social history and the development of color printing. Joanne Fuccello, partner in an antiquarian book dealer specializing in horticultural books, states: Much of our American Horticultural history is found in the seed catalogues of the time, and unless saved by libraries, researchers and collectors over time, these rare documents, which give us insight into the fabric of horticultural and agricultural history, will be lost to us. The stewardship of these ephemeral items is critical to their survival and through the efforts of libraries: preservation, standardization of cataloguing and access-- future generations will be able to “know” the seedsmen (and women), the plants, fruits, vegetables, flowers, trees and shrubs, garden designs and trends in history or commercial art and photography and to learn from intelligent, creative voices long gone."

To provide better access to our rare publications, we propose converting 1613 linear feet of our rare book library from Dewey classification (with access only through a unique and actual card catalogue) to Library of Congress electronic format. We estimate that this will involve 25,000 to 30,000 books, some of which will be bound manuscripts in need of reclassification as a record group. When identified, those manuscripts will be placed, along with a new finding aid, into our manuscript, pamphlet, or broadside collection. The finding aid, like the reclassified books, will be available electronically, in this case through our website listing of original manuscript records (www.abhsarchives.org/collections). The American Baptist-Samuel Colgate Historical Library has 16,000 linear feet of manuscripts, broadsides, images, books, pamphlets, newspapers and periodicals, with 10% (1613 linear feet) needing conversion from Dewey to LC or archival classification. Begun in 1853, the American Baptist Historical Society has collected the range of church historical materials, with missionaries and pastors serving as collectors. All types of Baptists were included, with the collection enhanced in 1955 by merger with the library of Samuel B. Colgate. Rare holdings include 16th century Anabaptist writings in German, Dutch, and English and the largest collection anywhere of reports by regional associations of German, Danish, Swedish, American Indian and African American Baptists.

This project unveiled two of the most significant poster collections held in the United States concerning issues related to the study of Africa. Once cataloged, the combined currently hidden collections of over 3000 posters held by Northwestern and Michigan State University Libraries will be bibliographically accessible to scholars and students worldwide via a joint portal and through individual library catalogs. Descriptions of the collections are below. The Herskovits Library of African Studies at Northwestern University (NUL) maintains a comprehensive collection of over 3300 posters, 2700 uncataloged and hidden, published in Africa, Europe, North America, and the rest of the world. These posters, published from the mid 19th to the 21st century are about the continent of Africa and provide scholars with visual first-hand insight into the various issues that have been relevant to Africa. The posters represent the issues of concern within the continent and outside of it: politics, health and education, independence, the anti-apartheid movement, Biafra, Darfur, art, publishing and music, etc. Michigan State University Libraries (MSU), one of the larger Africana collections in the U.S., has some 300 Africana posters published 1960-2008 in Africa and beyond, including the U.S., Europe and Australia. These posters provide scholars with insights into the politics, health, economies and cultures of Africa, and are well-suited to current research paradigms.

The College Archives, established by college-wide committee in 1986 acquires and preserves historical materials having permanent administrative, educational and research value which contribute to the understanding of the history of the college from its inception as a Baptist College in 1835 through the present. The collection includes Register books from 1860s to 1900; copies of the student publication Normalia and the Stylus from 1900 to the present; trustees minutes from 1841; catalogs and circular from 1842; commencement programs from 1865;yearbooks from 1899; photographs, negatives and slides by college photographers from 1900s (bulk from 1950-1990); Writers Forum videos, audios and correspondence from its inception in 1960s to the present. A secondary purpose is to acquire and preserve manuscript and published historical materials which contribute to the understanding of local history and development. Special collections include D.S. Morgan Co. papersJohn Sutphin Civil War Quartermaster papers from 1861-1903, Arnold Grade children’s books manuscript collection 1968-1976, Mary Jane Holmes, (a popular Victorian woman’s fiction writer) book collection, Brockport master’s theses from #1. Unprocessed 5 x 8 inch glass plate negative collection of 200 images from 1905 - 1915 by A.B. Elwell and George Guelph, local amateur photographers. Unprocessed collection of lantern slides developed by NY State Education Dept. as curriculum aids for its Normal Schools from 1910-1940.

The film collections contain amateur travelogues made by filmmakers depicting their travels to far-flung regions of the world from the beginning of the 20th century onward. In some cases these travels were to places exotic to American eyes, such as a Baptist mission educator’s filming of leprosy missions, a geologist’s scenes of indigenous groups in Burma (said to be the first footage of some of the peoples), footage of Diego Rivera and the Dalai Lama, and unplanned documentation of Russia’s 1968 invasion of Czechslovakia. One RCA engineer, who traveled to thirty countries over three decades, recorded with great detail the daily lives, environment, and work of the traditional cultures he visited, including handicrafts, home industries, dwellings, household arrangements, personal dress and adornment, agricultural techniques and equipment, etc. While some of the travelers were motivated by the challenges of exploration and encountering the unknown, in other cases the films were more homespun and were intended only to record family travels across the United States, or those films of a railroad employee from Indiana who shot scenes of Civil War re-enactments, national parks, parades, fairs and festivals, as he crossed the country. Most, as is typical of travel films, were intended to be shown to family groups or small local community organizations. The earliest films in the collections were those shot by one of the first women to headline the Chautauqua lecture circuits.

The Amistad Research Center at Tulane University processed and cataloged nine collections of personal papers documenting Civil Rights era organizational history. The focus of this project was to provide access to branch and local chapter records of key Civil Rights organizations that are hidden within the personal papers of individuals who were participants or officers. Organizations represented include the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), National Association of Human Rights Workers (NAHRW), Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), and the Urban League. The collections include the James Egert Allen Papers (1925-1974), Lloyd Davis Papers (1950-2007), Arnold DeMille Papers (1950-1993), John Wesley Dobbs Family Papers (1873-1993), Rose Carver Fishman Papers (1965-1968), James H. Hargett Papers (1918-2007), Ronnie M. Moore Papers (1960-1999), Marr McGee Family Papers (1951-1974) and the A.P. Tureaud Papers Addendum (1903-1970), with the bulk of the material dating 1950-1970. The processing of these collections will complement and expand access to the Center’s Civil Rights holdings. The formats of the materials include audiovisual items, correspondence, manuscripts of writings, minutes, photographs, publications, reports, sermons and speeches. All of these collections were previously unarranged with accessibility limited or non-existent for research.

The substance of the Louis Bromfield collection falls into three areas: his agricultural writings (soil conservation, agronomy, hydrology); political writings preceding and during the Joseph McCarthy era; and his literary work (fiction, screenplays, criticism). The geographic scope is national and international, particularly Brazil and Africa. In light of current national and international issues, such as world famine and drought, access to the Bromfield Collection documents research of national and international agricultural causes and reforms of enduring importance. Bromfield’s innovative theory and practice of sustainable farming is still applicable today. In fact, as an international agricultural crisis escalates, sustainable farming becomes an ever more important topic in the minds of farmers, scientists and politicians. In some cases, the Bromfield Collection contains the only extant records of such fugitive materials as transcripts of radio broadcasts and speeches to numerous business and community organizations. Bromfield’s affiliation with the Friends of the Land organization provides a detailed account of the history of the early environmental movement. The extensive collection of political newspaper columns broadens the appeal of the collection. Expanded access to this collection would be of service to such disciplines as agricultural and scientific history, political history, American studies, sociology and international studies.

The Islamic Manuscripts Collection consists of 1,250 manuscripts in Arabic, Persian, and Turkish from the 8th century AD to the 20th. With over half of the contents dating from before 1800, the collection contains historical manuscripts of rich textual significance, many of which are also very beautiful in their decoration and bindings, and ranks among the largest and most important such collections in North America. The first group of these manuscripts was acquired in 1924 from the personal library of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, the 34th sultan of the Ottoman Empire. The subjects covered by these manuscripts include the Qur'an (texts and commentaries); commentaries and other works of criticism; Islamic traditions, theology, and jurisprudence; and philology, philosophy, geography, history, mathematics, astronomy, and astrology. The collection also includes biography, poetry, and belles-lettres. There are many beautifully illuminated manuscripts, exceptional examples of Arabic calligraphy, and works by a number of notable authors. As unique manuscripts, the collection offers a vast range of raw material for the scholar of texts and an array of specimens for the student of Islamic art and calligraphy. Some of the titles are not known in any other copy. For those titles already known and/or edited and published from manuscripts in other repositories, our copies can offer confirmation, amplification, and/or correction of text, as well as different decorations and illustrations.

The Society of Bibliophiles at Brandeis University rare books and manuscripts collection (hereafter the Brandeis Bibliophiles collection) is made up of books and manuscripts dating from the thirteenth to the twentieth centuries (in addition to one papyrus manuscript from the second century), with the majority of the materials falling between the dates of 1500 and 1800. The collection includes approximately 180 Western and non-Western manuscripts and 3,300 printed texts, over 700 of which were printed before 1700. Particular strengths are in Judaica and Hebraica, sixteenth-century post-incunabula books, the history of science, English history and law, and American and European Christianity. Additional strengths include lexicography and bibliography, seventeenth-century blind-stamped vellum and armorial bindings, and fine press. The materials in the Brandeis holdings were gathered and donated by The Society of Bibliophiles at Brandeis University (1963-c.1981), a group of avid bibliophiles who were eager to support the foundation of the university library and aid in the development of a first-rank department of rare books and special collections. Thus, many of the major collections to some degree reflect the particular collecting interests of early prominent donors, including the Bern Dibner collection on the history of science, the Maurice and Badona Spertus collection of Judaica and Hebraica, the Perry Miller collection on early American Christianity, and others.

With the arrival of Dean Suzanne Thorin three years ago, we have increased our focus on the unique and special collections of the Belfer Audio Laboratory and Archive. Belfer holds a unique collection of Latin American and Caribbean popular music dating from 1950-1962. This collection consists of 15,000 45 rpm records of songs and dance music that were commercially released on both American and foreign record labels. This “hidden” collection is a treasure waiting to be discovered. An extensive review of the collection by a Latin American music scholar (Dr. John Schechter) in the 1980s revealed it to be a one-of-a-kind collection of recordings for which there is nothing comparable in any other archive or institution. We've also confirmed from a bibliographic standpoint, that there are few catalog records available for Latin American and Caribbean popular music from this time period on 45 rpm records. Belfer received this collection in 1963 as a gift from the brothers Joseph and Max Bell, who owned a music shop in Manhattan called the Music Box. As Cuban emigrants, the Bell Brothers focused their music collecting on commercially-issued popular Latin American and Caribbean music. By uncovering this rare collection, and making it known and accessible, researchers and music lovers will all benefit from the Bell Brothers' commitment to collecting and preserving this important music.