Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library ( BRBL ) Yale University in New Haven ( Connecticut ) is one of the world's largest archives of rare books and manuscripts.

The library was a gift from Yale University in 1963 from the Beinecke family ( Edwin J. Beinecke, Frederick W. Beinecke and Walter Beinecke ). It is located in the center of the university campus, called the Hewitt Quadrangle or Beinecke Plaza. The six-story building was, Owings and Merrill designed by architect Gordon Bunshaft and the architectural firm Skidmore and built by the George A. Fuller Construction Company of Hamden, Connecticut in 1960 to 1963.

Description

The modern building basically consists of a six-story tower with library shelves, surrounded by a windowless rectangular building. The exterior walls are made ​​of translucent, white-gray - veined Vermont Danby marble, which, although allow indirect lighting, but at the same time protect from direct sunlight and harmful ultra-violet radiation. The marble panels are each about 3 cm thick and surrounded by gray Vermont granite. Three floors of shelves located below the Hewitt Quadrangle. In the courtyard of the library there is a sculpture garden with works by Isamu Noguchi, which earth ( pyramid ), sun (a circle ) and happiness ( a cube ) are supposed to symbolize. The library also includes an exhibition hall, where a copy of the Gutenberg Bible is displayed, reading rooms, catalog rooms, a microfilm archive and office space. The Gutenberg Bible, which are published in a showcase is, once turned over daily by the library staff.

On the site of the building is the sculpture Gallows and Lollipops by Alexander Calder. During the 1960s, the sculpture Lipstick on a Caterpillar track of Claes Oldenburg stood on the library premises. The work later moved into the atrium of the adjacent Morse College.

The design of the installation of the Kings Library, the original core component of the British Library, a gift of George III. , Applicable in a glass tower in the construction of the British Library in 1998 as a tribute to the modern elegance of the Beinecke Library.

History

In the late 19th century, rare and valuable books of the Yale College Library were (now Dwight Hall ) have been put in the Old Library. This then migrated into the Rare Book Room of the Sterling Memorial Library, which opened in 1930. With the opening of the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library on 14 October 1963, the collections of the Sterling Memorial Library Rare Book Room and the Collection of American Literature, the Collection of Western Americana and the Collection of German Literature under one roof were. A little later the James Marshall and Marie -Louise Osborn Collection was added, and then the Beinecke Library became the repository of all the books in the Yale collection that were printed before 1601. Furthermore, there are books from Latin America before 1751, books from North America before 1821, newspapers and broadsheets of the United States by 1851, European treatises and pamphlets before 1801, books from the Slavic and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, 18th century as well as some special books outside these categories.

Special collections held by the Library

Even in the early years of Yale can be copies from the early years of printing proof 1714 an illuminated manuscript of the Speculum Humanae salvationis was purchased as a gift from Elihu Yale, but a planned acquisition strategy did not exist. Only in the course of the 19th and 20th century led the research interests of the professors and the willingness of patrons to build internationally important collections of medieval and Renaissance. One of the priorities is the history of printing with the collection of over 3,500 incunabula - including the 1926 acquired copy of the Gutenberg Bible from the library of Melk abbey - and its own collection of Aldine, printing from the workshop of Aldus Manutius, the world to this extent is unique. By first editions of authors and texts of Greek and Roman literature in 16th century are represented.