Special Collections Unbound

... we found ourselves revisiting The Annunciate Virgin. Kathy's love of the piece was contagious, and we began to entertain the thought that maybe, just maybe, we would actually buy a wooden panel painting. -- T. Robert Burke

In 1975, Susan Lenkey (Senior Rare Book Librarian, 1960-1976) produced a catalog describing Stanford's collection of books from the earliest years of printing, entitled Stanford Incunabula 1975. As the title suggests, her work provides a snapshot of what she considered to be a dynamic and growing collection of rare books. The list of 131 titles (which included books held at the Lane Medical Library) in Dr. Lenkey's catalog has almost doubled in the last 44 years.

Over this past summer, I have had the privilege and opportunity to work in Special Collections. During this time, I processed a couple of fascinating collections: African Posters and Ephemera and the Charles Hobson Collection. In the following article I will talk a little about my experience processing materials, as well as give an overview of the newly available collections and their potential to be used in various research projects.