The Yale University Library is the
library system
A library consortium is any cooperative association of libraries that coordinates resources and/or activities on behalf of its members, whether they are school, public, academic, special libraries and/or information centers. Consortia exist on a ...
of
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
in
New Haven, Connecticut
New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,023 ...
. Originating in 1701 with the gift of several dozen books to a new "Collegiate School," the library's collection now contains approximately 14.9 million volumes housed in fifteen university buildings and is the fourth-largest academic library in North America.
The centerpiece of the library system is the
Sterling Memorial Library, a
Collegiate Gothic
Collegiate Gothic is an architectural style subgenre of Gothic Revival architecture, popular in the late-19th and early-20th centuries for college and high school buildings in the United States and Canada, and to a certain extent Euro ...
building constructed in 1931 and containing the main library offices, the university archives, a music library, and 3.5 million volumes. The library is also known for its major collection of rare books, housed primarily in the
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library as well as the
Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, the
Lillian Goldman Law Library, and the
Lewis Walpole Library
The Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut, possesses important collections of 18th-century British literary remains, including an unrivalled quantity of Horace Walpole's papers and effects from his estate at Strawberry Hill.
The coll ...
in
Farmington, Connecticut. Many schools and departments at Yale also maintain their own collections, comprising twelve on-campus facilities and an off-campus shelving facility.
The library subscribes to hundreds of research databases. Along with the
Harvard Library
Harvard Library is the umbrella organization for Harvard University's libraries and services. It is the oldest library system in the United States and both the largest academic library and largest private library in the world. Its collection ...
and
Columbia Libraries
Columbia University Libraries is the library system of Columbia University and one of the largest academic library systems in North America. With 15.0 million volumes and over 160,000 journals and serials, as well as extensive electronic resources ...
, it was a founding member of the
Research Libraries Group consortium. The library is also a member of
Borrow Direct, allowing patrons to check out volumes from major American research universities.
History
Establishment (1650–1786)
Throughout the Collegiate School's nascence in the early 18th century, books were the most valuable assets the school could acquire. Although
New Haven Colony founder
John Davenport began collecting books for a college library in New Haven in the 1650s, the college is said to have been founded by the gift of “forty folios” in
Branford, Connecticut by its ten founding Congregational ministers. All were theological texts, and those surviving are now stored in the Beinecke Library.
In the school's first three decades, three gifts established Yale's collection. In 1714,
Jeremiah Dummer, Connecticut's colonial agent in Boston, wrote to distinguished English scholars requesting gifts of books for the colony's college, then operating in
Saybrook, Connecticut. Over 800 volumes arrived in Boston and were sent to the college. Among the contributors were leading scientists including
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27) was an English mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author (described in his time as a " natural philosopher"), widely recognised as one of the g ...
,
John Woodward, and
Edmond Halley, who sent copies of their own tracts among their donations. Religious figures, including
Richard Bentley,
White Kennett, and
Matthew Henry
Matthew Henry (18 October 166222 June 1714) was a Nonconformist minister and author, who was born in Wales but spent much of his life in England. He is best known for the six-volume biblical commentary ''Exposition of the Old and New Testaments' ...
, fortified the theological collections, and other books arrived from
Richard Steele,
Richard Blackmore, and Dummer himself, who ultimately gave the college about two hundred books.
Four years later, Elihu Yale, who had previously given some books at Dummer's behest, sent 300 books along with other goods from his estate in Wales. The school, recently moved to New Haven, took Yale's name in recognition of the bequest. A third major donation arrived fifteen years later, when philosopher-bishop
George Berkeley donated his 1,000-volume,a major assembly of classical works library to the school. Now holding a sizeable collection, Yale President
Thomas Clap decided to catalogue the collection for the first time, then housed in the college's only building, the College House.
This first inventory already showed evidence of book losses and thefts. During the move from Saybrook to New Haven, residents angry to lose the collection overturned the ox-carts carrying the books and liberated much of the college's collection for private use. The collection, then about 4,000 items in total, was sent inland during the
Revolutionary War, a move that culled nearly a third of the collection.
19th Century growth and the first College Library (1790–1930)
The library moved often during its first 150 years while the campus’
Old Brick Row
Old or OLD may refer to:
Places
*Old, Baranya, Hungary
*Old, Northamptonshire, England
*Old Street station, a railway and tube station in London (station code OLD)
*OLD, IATA code for Old Town Municipal Airport and Seaplane Base, Old Town, Mai ...
was erected. From the all-timber College House it moved to the First Chapel (Athaneum) after its construction in 1763, to the new Lyceum building in 1804, then to the new Second Chapel in 1824. The first dedicated home for the collection, the
College Library, was constructed between 1842 and 1846 and held the collection for almost ninety years. The Victorian Gothic building, designed by
Henry Austin and considered an extravagance in its day, was modeled after
Gore Hall
Gore Hall was a historic building on the Harvard University campus in Cambridge, Massachusetts, designed by Richard Bond. Harvard's first dedicated library building, a Gothic structure built in 1838 of Quincy granite, it was named in ho ...
, the library of
Harvard College
Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher ...
. Two university-affiliated
literary societies,
Linonia and
Brothers in Unity, were given rooms in the library for their 10,000-book collections, as was the collection of the
American Oriental Society
The American Oriental Society was chartered under the laws of Massachusetts on September 7, 1842. It is one of the oldest learned societies in America, and is the oldest devoted to a particular field of scholarship.
The Society encourages basi ...
. As the collection swelled beyond the building's 50,000-book capacity, it became necessary to add annex buildings to the Library: Chittenden Hall was finished in 1890, and Linsly Hall in 1906.
Sterling Library and research collections (1920–)
As the collection surpassed one million volumes in the 20th century, it became clear that the library would need a new building. In 1917, a $17-million bequest from
John W. Sterling
John William Sterling (May 12, 1844 – July 5, 1918) was a founding partner of Shearman & Sterling LLP and major benefactor to Yale University.
Early life and career
John William Sterling was born in Stratford, Connecticut, the son of Cat ...
, stipulating Yale build "at least one enduring, useful and architecturally beautiful edifice," provided the means. The collection was moved to the
Sterling Memorial Library in 1931, which quadrupled the library's shelving capacity and offered dedicated rooms for periodicals, reference works, and special collections.
Although it had received many important books and manuscripts pertaining to the contemporaneous development of science, the American colonies, and ecclesiastical history, it had received only piecemeal historical contributions, such as the Assyrian tablets received in 1855 that founded the
Babylonian Collection. Beginning under the librarianship of
Andrew Keogh in 1924, the library undertook a purposeful program of collecting rare books, personal papers, and archival works. English professor
Chauncey Brewster Tinker mounted a campaign among Yale alumni to purchase or donate valuable items, and early gifts included a complete copy of the
Gutenberg Bible, the papers of
Gertrude Stein and
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works includ ...
, and the papers of
James Boswell. Having amassed a major rare books collection, the university established the
Beinecke Library
The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library () is the rare book library and literary archive of the Yale University Library in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of the largest buildings in the world dedicated to rare books and manuscripts. ...
in 1963 as a specialized rare books storage and preservation facility, and leaving the Sterling Library's former Rare Book Room with a more modest archival collection.
The Sterling library is also home to the largest collection of
Benjamin Franklin
Benjamin Franklin ( April 17, 1790) was an American polymath who was active as a writer, scientist, inventor
An invention is a unique or novel device, method, composition, idea or process. An invention may be an improvement upon a m ...
papers in the world, which it received as a gift in 1935 from William Smith Mason, of the Yale class of 1888, and is considered the largest and most valuable collection of materials ever given to the library. It is headquarters for the editorial staff who are collating and publishing ''
The Papers of Benjamin Franklin
''The Papers of Benjamin Franklin'' is a collaborative effort by a team of scholars at Yale University, American Philosophical Society and others who have searched, collected, edited, and published the numerous letters from and to Benjamin Fran ...
'', an ongoing effort which began in 1954 and is expected to include up to 50 volumes, containing more than 30,000 extant Franklin papers.
Yale University
Yale University is a Private university, private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Sta ...
, Essay[ Isaacson, 2004, p. 511][ National Archives: Founders Online, Essay]
More specialized facilities would follow: the Kline Science Library absorbed the library's science collections, the Mudd Library received social science books, and smaller libraries in engineering, physics, and geology were established by academic departments. By 2000, the library had expanded to more than a dozen facilities around campus, and retained over 500 staff. In 2012, many of the
Science Hill
Science Hill is a planning precinct of the Yale University campus primarily devoted to physical and biological sciences. It is located in the Prospect Hill neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut.
Originally a 36-acre residential estate kno ...
libraries were re-consolidated at Kline Science Library as the Center for Science and Social Science Information.
Facilities
Sterling Memorial Library
The library's largest building, Sterling Memorial Library, contains about four million volumes in the humanities, social sciences, area studies, as well as several special collections projects and the department of Manuscripts and Archives. The Irving S. Gilmore Music Library resides within Sterling Library, and the building is connected via tunnel to the underground
Bass Library, a facility for frequently-used materials.
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library
Opened in 1963, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library is the library's principal repository of rare and historical books and manuscripts. It holds approximately 800,000 volumes, including a
Gutenberg Bible, the
Voynich manuscript
The Voynich manuscript is an illustrated codex hand-written in an otherwise unknown writing system, referred to as 'Voynichese'. The vellum on which it is written has been carbon-dated to the early 15th century (1404–1438), and stylistic a ...
, the
Vinland map, and the papers and manuscripts of major authors and artists, with particular strengths in American literature.
Lillian Goldman Law Library
The Lillian Goldman Law Library, situated in
Sterling Law Building of the
Yale Law School
Yale Law School (Yale Law or YLS) is the law school of Yale University, a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. It was established in 1824 and has been ranked as the best law school in the United States by '' U.S. News & Worl ...
, contains nearly 800,000 volumes relating to law and jurisprudence. These include one of the most significant collections of rare books pertaining to legal history, as well as the most complete collection of
William Blackstone
Sir William Blackstone (10 July 1723 – 14 February 1780) was an English jurist, judge and Tory (British political party), Tory politician of the eighteenth century. He is most noted for writing the ''Commentaries on the Laws of England''. Bo ...
's commentaries.
Other major facilities
The
Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library, Yale's medical library, houses a collection of historical medical works. The Center for Science and Social Science Information, situated in
Kline Biology Tower on
Science Hill
Science Hill is a planning precinct of the Yale University campus primarily devoted to physical and biological sciences. It is located in the Prospect Hill neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut.
Originally a 36-acre residential estate kno ...
, contains science and social science works consolidated from the former Kline Science Library facilities. The Haas Arts Library in
Rudolph Hall houses art and architectural materials. The
Yale Film Archive is a film archive with a collection of 35mm and 16mm film prints and original elements, as well as films on Blu-ray, DVD, and VHS.
The Yale University Library includes libraries beyond its campus in New Haven. The
Lewis Walpole Library
The Lewis Walpole Library in Farmington, Connecticut, possesses important collections of 18th-century British literary remains, including an unrivalled quantity of Horace Walpole's papers and effects from his estate at Strawberry Hill.
The coll ...
in
Farmington, Connecticut is a research library for eighteenth-century studies and the prime source for the study of Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill. The Library Shelving Facility, a closed-access,
climate-controlled facility that houses 4 million infrequently-accessed volumes, is located in
Hamden, Connecticut.
References
Citations
Works cited
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External links
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{{Authority control
Education in New Haven, Connecticut
Libraries in New Haven County, Connecticut
University and college academic libraries in the United States
World Digital Library partners
Library
A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vi ...
1701 establishments in Connecticut