It’s fun to meet The Colleges’ tour groups that stop by Special Collections when they visit Honnold/Mudd Library, especially when prospective students and their parents are present. Special Collections must seem very comforting to parents who are anticipating sending their children to college Away From Home. The Reading Room has a traditional study-library feel, and you only have to see their eyes light on our book-lined walls and antique furniture to know that parents are thinking to themselves, “Now this is college. My kid’s gonna do great here.” Parents always ask about doing research and writing term papers, and are glad to know that, yes, undergraduates are encouraged to use Special Collections materials for their coursework, and no, we do not restrict to only faculty and graduate students. They like that a lot.

red shoe reader, by Gaza Bowen. Cackling Crones Press, Santa Cruz, California, 2004. Photo by Darby Carl Sanders, Scripps College.

To their credit, the touring students also seem impressed when they’re in the Reading Room. They nearly always have a particular author, historical period, or subject that interests them. While I don’t comment on the amount of homework and research they’ll face once they arrive at college (and they ask about it), happily, I usually can tell them about a collection that we have that meets their interest.

I also remind them that additional special collections are held at other Libraries of the Claremont Colleges. For example, at Denison Library students are amazed by fanciful and complex book structures in the artist’s book collection. Erupting volcanoes are depicted in beautiful geology books at Seeley G. Mudd.

Despite our quintessential library-ness, what impresses new visitors to Special Collections the most—and I don’t know why it continues to surprise me—are our vital statistics. The top three questions I am asked by everyone? “What’s your oldest book?” (Well, it depends; what do you mean by ‘book’?) “What’s your most expensive book?” (Don’t ask; don’t tell.) and “What’s the weirdest thing you’ve got?” (Weird?) And in the last couple of years, this question probably tops them all: “Isn’t everything on the web?” (Um, no.)

Questions like these have made me realize that, no matter how many people use our collections and visit us in person and virtually via our web site and by email, special collections continues to be mysterious and maybe even intimidating, especially to undergrads. So as I think about how to represent our, indeed, special collections to current and future users, I offer the following fun facts about special collections at the Libraries (numbers approximate):

Number of volumes: 160,000
Amount of manuscript collections: 9,000 linear feet (including college archives)
Number of separate collections: 140
Number of digitized collections: 7, amounting to 2,300 digital objects
Number of coin collections: 3
Number of manuscript Koran: 4
Number of medieval manuscripts: 100 (including separate, single leaves)
Number of Edward Weston photographs: 3
Number of books made out of shoes: 1
Number of jeweled bindings: 1
Number of books made of silk by a jacquard loom: 1
Number of original William Blake engravings: 7
Number of round books: 6
Number of collections owned by a U.S. president: 1
Number of old postcards: too many to count
Oldest “book”:

• Non-codex form: Cuneiform tablets and Egyptian papyri
• Codex form: 10th century Chinese printed book, 12th century manuscript

• 1920s “flapper” dresses
• Porcelain, silver and ivory objets d’art
• Confederate money
• Toy that belonged to Orville and Wilbur Wright
• Robert Browning’s mortarboard from Oxford
• Diary of an Alaska gold miner

Carrie Marsh
Honnold/Mudd Library
carrie.marsh@libraries.claremont.edu