Dartmouth College Library
Collection Management & Development Program
Collection Development Policy
RARE BOOKS
- COLLECTION AREA
- GENERAL PURPOSE
- DARTMOUTH COLLEGE PROGRAM
- GENERAL SUBJECT BOUNDARIES
- LANGUAGES
- GEOGRAPHIC AREAS
- TYPES OF MATERIALS COLLECTED
- FORMAT OF MATERIALS COLLECTED
- OTHER RESOURCES AVAILABLE
- CREATION DATE
- REVISION DATE
- LC CLASS
- BIBLIOGRAPHER
- COLLECTING INTENSITY CHART is located on a separate page.
Rare Books
The rare book program preserves, organizes, and services many of the most valuable, scarce, or most important materials in the Library's collections. Because of concentrated attention paid to the collections by librarians and donors throughout the history of the College, they are able to support in-depth research, especially in the fields of British and American literature.
The collections are used principally by students, faculty, and other scholars at the College. A substantial amount of use comes from the scholarly world at large.
The collections support the teaching and research activities of both students and faculty at all levels and in all disciplines, with particular emphasis on the social sciences and humanities.
- 19th- and 20th-century British and American literature
- History of printing and the book arts (Presses Collection: see separate policy)
- Polar exploration (Stefansson Collection: see separate policy)
- The White Mountains (defined as the area from the White Mountains Range and National Forest on the north, to and including Mount Cardigan, but not Kearsarge, on the south)
- The Cornish Colony (a summer gathering in Cornish, New Hampshire, of artists, writers, and public figures, ca. 1890-1915)
- New Hampshire imprints (principally pre-1840)
- History of the theatre (Williams/Watson Collection: see separate policy)
- See Collection Development Policies for Biology, Medicine, and Engineering for rare books in other libraries.
English overwhelmingly predominates, with many older books in Latin. No language is excluded.
The emphasis, in order, is New Hampshire, New England, northeastern United States, England, United States, and other. The polar regions (above 60o north latitude and 50o south) are also of prime importance.
The collections begin with incunabula (pre-1501) and extend to the present, with most recent imprints being for the Presses Collection. Guidelines for materials being considered "rare" for the purpose of transfer from general collections are: United States, pre-1840; Great Britain, pre-1800; other, pre-1700.
The traditional book format (ink-on-paper leaves assembled between boards or wrappers) predominates but other publishing formats (e.g., broadsides, experimental presentations) are included. Most items are monographs but serial and other types are not uncommon.
Most subject and author concentrations are complemented by manuscript holdings, some substantial, others representative; such parallel collecting is strongly emphasized. The rare book collections are intimately associated with those in the general stacks and in microtext, supplementing the latter's research value and providing in-depth concentrations of resources in specific and often highly-specialized areas.
Most of the rare book collections complement those of other institutions, both when the superior collection in any given area is at Dartmouth and when it is elsewhere. Particular attention is directed to the holdings of other Research Libraries Group members, to and from which rare-book materials are lent.
July 1985 (Stanley Brown)
April 1994
Stanley W. Brown
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Last updated February 18, 1999 by: CMDC@Dartmouth.Edu (jdh)