![]() ![]() One result was the Catalogue of Manuscripts in the Collection of Western Americana in the Yale University Library, compiled by Mary Withington and published by Yale University Press in 1952. His generous financial assistance allowed the library to bring together in one place its hitherto scattered resources in the field of western history and to catalogue them, together with his own collection, in such detail as to make them more readily accessible and useful to scholars. Nor did Coe’s support of Yale stop with his gift of books and manuscripts. He insisted that his gift be called the “Yale Collection of Western Americana” rather than the “Coe Collection” so that future workers in the same field would not hesitate to add the fruits of their efforts to his. Although it represented nearly forty years of effort, Coe did not consider his collection as a completed work but rather a nucleus for further growth. The collection, given in a series of annual installments beginning in 1942, was described in the Yale University Library Gazette of October 1948 as the largest group of materials in its field that had ever been assembled. The library’s step forward was made possible by the gift of William Robertson Coe, 1949 Hon., of his collection of rare books, maps, manuscripts, and art relating to the Trans-Mississippi West. The opening was a turning point rather than a fresh departure- a consolidation of past efforts that signaled an expansion of support for the scholarly community. When the collection opened to the public in September 1952, it did not, as many people supposed, mark the Yale University Library’s entry into a new and previously ignored field. Each year new purchases and gifts add depth and breadth to the collection, allowing it to respond flexibly to current trends in scholarship and to continue to serve not only Yale students and faculty but graduate students and senior scholars from America and abroad. The collection consists of some forty thousand printed works, three thousand catalogued manuscript collections, thousands of vintage photographs, and hundreds of prints, watercolors, and paintings that document the history and culture of Native American communities as well as the European and American exploration, settlement, and development of the Trans-Mississippi West from Mexico to the Arctic Circle. The Speculum Theologiae: A collaborative project created by Yale undergraduate students in the 2006 Medieval Studies seminar “The Medieval World of Umberto Eco’s Name of the Rose.For more than fifty years, the Yale Collection of Western Americana has helped scholars from around the world better understand the history of the American West. ExhibitionsĪ Book of Her Own: Based on a 2006 exhibition that explores books owned by women before the year 1700. To browse Yale’s holdings of incunables, follow these directions on the Yale Library’s Help page. Records for these can be found in Orbis, the Yale University Library’s online catalog. In addition to its manuscript holdings, the Beinecke Library holds extensive collections of incunabula, or early printed books. Images can be searched by way of the “Search within this collection” box on the upper-left corner of this page and through the Library’s Digital Images database. The Beinecke Library is actively scanning its medieval and Renaissance holdings. The Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts Catalog also contains records for manuscripts in the Mellon Alchemical Collection as well as short descriptions of manuscripts acquired by the Library since the publication of the Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts. Commonly used abbreviations are available here (pdf, 5 p.) and the Introduction, by Barbara Shailor, can be downloaded here (pdf, 8 p.). The full-text of these catalogues can be searched in the Medieval & Renaissance Manuscripts Catalog. ![]() The manuscript collections have been described extensively in the Catalogue of Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, volumes 1-3 of which were edited by Barbara Shailor, and volume 4 of which was edited by Robert Babcock, Lisa Davis, and Philip Rusche. The systematic collecting of medieval manuscripts at Yale, however, dates from the late nineteenth century, and the most active period for collecting was after 1930. An illustrated copy of the Speculum humanae salvationis, it attracted the special attention of Yale President Ezra Stiles, who read the manuscript and annotated it in the 1790s. The first medieval manuscript recorded in the Yale collection was acquired in 1714, and was the gift of Elihu Yale. ![]() The Beinecke Library’s Medieval and Renaissance collections document the history of human thought from the Byzantine era through 1600. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |