4,000 Years and Counting Special Collections Research Center

Bird Library

07-01-2014 to 08-14-2014

"4,000 Years and Counting" features treasures from the Special Collections Research Center (SCRC) that highlight the breadth of the Libraries' special collections--from second-century-B.C. cuneiform tablets to the papers of notable contemporary figures like Joyce Carol Oates.

The exhibition opens with the origins of special collections at SU: the 1887 purchase of the eminent German historian Leopold von Ranke's library. In support of the acquisition, University Librarian C. W. Bennett made this assessment: "For this has always been my theory, that six thousand to ten thousand well-selected volumes are sufficient for the wants of the undergraduate, but to keep the professors from mental hunger and starvation, sources, authorities and books of a very different kind must be had in large numbers and in special collections."