Rare Books and Special Collections is a part of ROAAr at the

McGill University Library McGill University Library is the library system of McGill University in Montréal, Québec, Canada. It comprises 13 branch libraries, located on the downtown Montreal and Macdonald campuses, holding over 11.78 million items. It is the fourth-lar ...

Montreal Montreal ( ; officially Montréal, ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, second-most populous city in Canada and List of towns in Quebec, most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian ...

(

Canada Canada is a country in North America. Its ten provinces and three territories extend from the Atlantic Ocean to the Pacific Ocean and northward into the Arctic Ocean, covering over , making it the world's second-largest country by tot ...

), whose mandate is to

"support the teaching, learning and research needs of McGill students and faculty from all disciplines, and the wider scholarly community."

Description

Located at the fourth floor of the McLennan Library Building, the unit has a collection core of rare books on the following subjects :

art Art is a diverse range of human activity, and resulting product, that involves creative or imaginative talent expressive of technical proficiency, beauty, emotional power, or conceptual ideas. There is no generally agreed definition of wha ...

architecture Architecture is the art and technique of designing and building, as distinguished from the skills associated with construction. It is both the process and the product of sketching, conceiving, planning, designing, and constructing building ...

, Canadiana,

history History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

literature Literature is any collection of written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to include ...

geography Geography (from Greek: , ''geographia''. Combination of Greek words ‘Geo’ (The Earth) and ‘Graphien’ (to describe), literally "earth description") is a field of science devoted to the study of the lands, features, inhabitants, and ...

. The library seeks to collect books on

, philosophy and

18th-century literature Literature of the 18th century refers to world literature produced during the years 1700–1799. European literature in the 18th century European literature of the 18th century refers to literature (poetry, drama, satire, and novels) produced in ...

. The Special Collections are focused on several themes, for example :

children's literature Children's literature or juvenile literature includes stories, books, magazines, and poems that are created for children. Modern children's literature is classified in two different ways: genre or the intended age of the reader. Children's ...

cookbook A cookbook or cookery book is a kitchen reference containing recipes. Cookbooks may be general, or may specialize in a particular cuisine or category of food. Recipes in cookbooks are organized in various ways: by course (appetizer, first cour ...

puppet A puppet is an object, often resembling a human, animal or Legendary creature, mythical figure, that is animated or manipulated by a person called a puppeteer. The puppeteer uses movements of their hands, arms, or control devices such as rods ...

s. Henceforth, these collections contain other material than books, and, in addition to puppets and other artefacts, also house

prints In molecular biology, the PRINTS database is a collection of so-called "fingerprints": it provides both a detailed annotation resource for protein families, and a diagnostic tool for newly determined sequences. A fingerprint is a group of conserve ...

, original drawings by artists such as

Palmer Cox Palmer Cox (April 28, 1840 – July 24, 1924) was a Canadian illustrator and author, best known for ''The Brownies'', his series of humorous verse books and comic strips about the mischievous but kindhearted fairy-like sprites. The cartoons were ...

Archival collection

Rare Books and Special Collections also contains an important archival collection, with more than 100 fonds on various subjects such as the fur trade in Canada, Algonquin and Nipissing communities in

Oka Oka or OKA may refer to: Cars * Oka (automobile), a small car designed by AvtoVAZ and produced by ZMA and SeAZ * OKA 4wd, a large 4-wheel-drive vehicle made in Western Australia by OKA Military * 2B1 Oka, Soviet 420 mm self-propelled mor ...

at the end of the 19th century, the creation of the Red River Settlement by the Earl of Selkirk,

Ernest Renan Joseph Ernest Renan (; 27 February 18232 October 1892) was a French Orientalist and Semitic scholar, expert of Semitic languages and civilizations, historian of religion, philologist, philosopher, biblical scholar, and critic. He wrote influe ...

's candidature at the deputation of Meaux, France in 1869.

References

{{authority control Academic libraries in Canada Libraries in Montreal McGill University