The Library’s special collections are housed in the Donohue Rare Book Room, and feature more than 17,000 items including books, manuscripts, photographs, drawings, engravings, and other artworks.
Materials located in the Donohue Rare Book Room are cataloged in the Online Catalog. Here is a list of some newly cataloged books in the collection:
- Cupid’s pastime : with six line engravings on copper by John Buckland Wright (printed by A.A.M. Stols, 1935)
- The ‘Odes of Horace’ Book II : a new verse translation by Michael Taylor (Arion Press, 2019)
- Richard Wagener : a dialogue with wood engraving (Barbarian Press, 2019)
- Ink on the elbow : conversations between David Esslemont & Gaylord Schanilec (Midnight Paper Sales / Solmentes Press, 2003)
- Sea of Cortez : a leisurely journal of travel & research : with wood engravings by Richard Wagener (Arion Press, 2020)
- A shimmer of joy : one hundred children’s picture books in America (Book Club of California, 2019)
- Nansens’ pastport by Anneli Skaar (Two Ponds Press, 2020)
Nansens’ pastport by Anneli Skaar, is an artists’ book about Fridtjof Nansen, a polar explorer and League of Nations Commissioner for Refugees who developed a program to provide passports for stateless persons to enable them to cross national borders. The book features the text from Nansen’s 1922 Nobel Prize Lecture in which he decried the destructive effects of war and called for humanitarian responses. In this lecture, Nansen wrote: “No future, however, can be built on despair, distrust, hatred, and envy.”
View a book trailer about the inspiration and making of Nansens’ Pastport. The Donohue Rare Book Room holds the “Pocket Edition” of this book.
Special Collections materials are available to students, staff, faculty and the University Community. The Donohue Rare Book Room is on the 3rd floor of the library and is open Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. Non-affiliated patrons and researchers may access the collection by calling the Rare Book Room in advance to schedule an appointment.