NEH-Funded Brittle Books Microfilming: Harvard's Contributions
Since 1990 Harvard University has been a participant in the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) preservation microfilming of brittle books and serials program. As of June 2006, seven grants have been completed. Descriptions of the collections filmed in the grants are provided below.
The university has been awarded over $10 million which the library has matched with $8.7 million in private and university funds. The seven grants have microfilmed 105,569 volumes in the following subject areas:
- Business and Social History
These materials drawn from Baker Library (Harvard Business School) document the history of commerce and economic life in the United States and Western Europe from 1870 through 1930. They document the effects of the market economy and the pursuit of a better standard of living on American social, cultural, and intellectual history. - American Historical Textbooks
The textbook collection at Gutman Library (Graduate School of Eduation) is the largest of its kind in the United States. It includes American mathematics and science textbooks, grammars, spellers, and readers from 1800 to 1950. These books reveal the methods used in teaching, what young students learned, and how viewpoints and content changed over time. They also trace the history of American education and elucidate cultural values of society during this period. - Pre-Soviet Russian Law
These materials from the Harvard Law School Library document a broad spectrum of life in Imperial Russia ranging from the legal system itself to industrial and economic development, and the status of women, as well as military and church history. - History of the Italian Risorigimento
Risorgimento collections in the Harvard College Library include many of the primary sources that document the political, economic, and religious aspects of the unification movement in Italy, from the first war of independence in 1848 through its unification in 1870. - Russian, Soviet, and Slavic History and Culture
The Harvard College Library has one of the most comprehensive Slavic collections outside the former Soviet Union. Significant to this collection are monographs about Russian and Soviet history and culture published between 1800-1950, which include religion, language and linguistics, literature, folklore, and learned society publications. - Western European Local History
Western European Local History in the Harvard College Library focuses on collections that document four major cultural areas: the Germanic states, France, Italy, and Spain. These collections contain locally-published town, municipal, state, and institutional histories that reflect industrialization, government, political movements, and local traditions. - History of Medicine
These materials on public health, preventive medicine, medical jurisprudence, mental health, infectious diseases, military and naval medicine, tropical medicine, therapeutics, and toxicology have been selected from the Frances A. Countway Library of Medicine of the Harvard Medical School. They document the evolution of the study and practice of medicine, the lives of great physicians and practitioners, the development of medical and social institutions, and the impact of disease on community life. - History of Anthropology in the Americas
Selections were made from the anthropological, archaeological, and ethnographic materials focusing on the North, Central and South Americas. The development of the Tozzer collections dates back to the founding of the Peabody Museum at Harvard University in 1866, during the period when anthropology was just emerging as an established scientific discipline. The collections are especially strong in materials relating to the indigenous people of the Americas. - History of Astronomy
Included in the collections of the John G. Wolbach Library of the Harvard College Observatory are publications of the astronomical institutions and related monographs from the 19th and early 20th centuries. These materials are related to all aspects of the fields of astronomy, astrophysics, and space science; they include observations of variable stars, star catalogs, and solar data. Selected collections from the Harvard College Library's Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library and Godfrey Lowell Cabot Science Library which complement those at Wolbach have also been preserved. - Botanical Exploration and Travel
The historical monographs in the libraries of the Arnold Arboretum and the Gray Herbarium (two of Harvard's Botany Libraries) record the travels and explorations of the New World naturalists as well as the resulting floristic documentation. The holdings comprise a vast literature that describes the use of plants by humans for sustenance, commerce, religion, and recreation. - History of Zoological Exploration
The Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative Zoology holds materials that record the travel and research of many prominent naturalists, as well as biographical materials. Historical monographs that focus on travel around the world, zoological research, the use and exploitation of animals, the impact of westward expansion on the ecology of North America, and the impact of zoological research on medicine have been drawn from the collection, as well as materials from other related disciplines, such as paleontology, geology and botany. - History of Economic Botany
The collection held by the Economic Botany Library of Oakes Ames documents the history of topics such as the use and composition of various plants (including medicinal plants), the manufacture and trade of botanical products, agriculture, anthropology, and geography. Materials that have been selected focus on the use of plants essential to human activity in the areas of medicine, commerce, and religion. - Scientific Biographies
Adding to biographical materials preserved from other Harvard libraries, specific collections from the Harvard College Library's Harry Elkins Widener Memorial Library and the Harvard Medical School's Francis A. Countway Library were microfilmed. Providing researchers with a breadth of detailed information about both renowned and forgotten scientists, physicians, and dentists, these varied materials reveal much about noteworthy individuals, as well as the increasing importance of science in the 19th and early 20th centuries. - History of Forestry
Serial publications on forestry held by the Arnold Arboretum Horticultural Library were selected due to this collection's unique historic coverage of the subject. These materials provide a rich resource for new approaches to assessing the role that forest resources have had on civilization, as well as humankind's historical impact on the forests themselves.
See Finding Microfilmed Titles in HOLLIS for instructions on searching Harvard's online bibliographic catalog for specific titles from the collections.