Developing and Managing the Brown University Library Collections

Special Collections at Brown University Library contain more than 2,500,000 items, well over half the Library's total resources. Collection Development for Special Collections supports scholarly research in and across disciplines by maintaining the Library's historic strengths and national responsibilities for its collections of record. In addition, in developing research collections of primary source materials for future generations of scholars and students, Special Collections builds on these strengths, taking into account changes in publication and dissemination methods over the past century.

Major collecting areas include American literature and popular culture, American diplomatic, political, cultural, and social history, military history, the history of science, medicine, and pseudo-science, incunabula, printing history and fine printing , and British literature. See John Hay Library: Collections for a detailed listing of the holdings of Special Collections.

Special Collections curators work with general collections subject specialists on Discipline Groups which seek to integrate primary sources into research and teaching activities.  See Collection Policies by Subject which lists relevant special collections for each of the academic department collecting areas.

The John Carter Brown Library is an independently administered and funded center for advanced research
in history and the humanities, located at Brown University since 1901. Housed within the Library's walls is
an internationally renowned, constantly growing collection of primary historical sources pertaining to the
Americas, both North and South, before ca. 1825.