Catalogs, Finding Aids, and Collections : Brown University Library Brown University Library

John Hay Library

Catalogs

BruKnow, the Brown University Library online catalog, includes information for most of the books, periodicals, manuscripts, and broadsides in Special Collections. Consult Special Collections staff in the John Hay Library for information on other materials and formats and for assistance in locating materials.

Finding Aids

BruKnow includes collection-level records for all manuscript collections acquired prior to March 1996. Inventories, finding aids, and the manuscripts card catalog, available in the Library, provide more detailed subject and name access to manuscript collections. The Library is in the process of creating online versions of these paper finding aids. Many of the collections have been digitized and include links from the finding aid to digital facsimiles of letters, photographs, or other objects. See Rhode Island Archival and Manuscript Collections Online (RIAMCO).

Online Digital Collections and Databases

The John Hay Library is an active partner with the Library’s Digital Production Services and Center for Digital Scholarship to produce online digital collections and web-based databases of its holdings. Collections digitized to date include African-American Sheet Music, prints, drawings, and watercolors from the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, works from the collections on alcohol and temperance, and many other areas. See the Center for Digital Scholarship and its Library web databases for a full list of digital projects.

Collections

The John Hay Library houses the University Library’s collections of rare books and manuscripts, the Archives of the University, and many special collections on a wide variety of topics. Altogether, Special Collections consists of more than 250 separate collections, numbering some 2,500,000 items.

Areas of strength include American literature and popular culture, the history of science, political and diplomatic history, and the arts of the book. Collections of particular note include the Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays, the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, the Lownes History of Science Collection, and the McLellan Lincoln Collection. There are, in addition, notable collections of broadsides, sheet music, and prints.