Penn Libraries get $4.25M boost for special collections expansion

The University of Pennsylvania’s library system is made up of more than a dozen individual libraries associated with its schools or subject areas, holds nearly 6 million book and serial volumes and more than 4 million microform items. Thanks to a recent gift that ranks as the largest to the library from a living donor, the Philadelphia institution’s library system will become even larger.

Earlier this month the school received an anonymous $4.25 million donation from a member of Penn Libraries’ Board of Overseers that will support the first phase of a $15 million expansion project that will create a Special Collections Center. The collection, study and curatorial facilities on the sixth floor of Penn’s Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center will be transformed into the Center, which will play to the strengths of the Rare Book and Manuscript Library and its teaching and digitization program.

“Students will now have a place where they can physically experience the past as part of their preparation for the future,” says Penn president Amy Gutman.

More than 250,000 rare books, representing subjects as diverse as Australia, the history of chemistry, Shakespearean and Renaissance literature, and comic books will serve as the centerpiece of the Special Collections Center. In addition to 800 medieval manuscripts, notable manuscript collections include works of Theodore Dresier, Lewis Mumford and Marian Anderson.

The center will encourage the use of the special collections in both research and in curriculum. The first phase of construction for the Center will begin in late summer.

Source: Amy Gutman, University of Pennsylvania
Writer: Joe Petrucci