The core of the Penn Libraries’ outstanding linguistics collection is the library of August Friedrich Pott (1802-1887), professor of general and comparative linguistics at the University of Halle and first librarian of the Deutsche Morgenländische Gesellschaft.
Significant examples of Benjamin Franklin's work as a Philadelphia printer are preserved in the Curtis Collection, donated by the Curtis Publishing Company in 1920 and containing more than 300 titles printed by Franklin and his associates between 1719 and 1786.
The Robert Dechert Collection includes over 1600 printed books focusing on American travel, exploration, and Native American relations with settlers. Materials date from the sixteenth to the twentieth centuries. French Americana and the writings of Las Casas are particular strengths of the collection. A Dechert fund supports ongoing acquisitions.
The Library at the Katz CAJS is the permanent home of the extant library collection of the Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning. Dropsie College was founded in Philadelphia in 1907 under Jewish auspices. It was established on democratic principles of open admission without regard to “creed, color or sex,” or even financial ability since originally no tuition was charged.
The Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection is devoted to the history of chemistry and collects broadly in that field, emphasizing periods prior to 1900. The collection includes early and modern works on chemistry, alchemy, early medicine and pharmacology, dyeing, metallurgy, mineralogy, and pyrotechnics; biographies of chemists; works on the chemical industry; and the history of chemical education.
From 1583 to 1712, the Dutch firm of Elzevier (sometimes written Elsevier or Elzevir), with additional offices in France and Scandinavia, published a wide variety of books, and notably small-format books, for circulation throughout Europe. Penn's collection of Elzevier imprints, a donation of E. B. Krumbhaar to which subsequent purchases have been added, comprises over 1600 volumes produced by the Elzevier firm, along with related publications.
Penn's libraries are home to a wide range of special and general collections related to the Holy Land.
The Kislak Center holds over 560 exemplars of books printed in Europe from movable type before 1501. Sixty-six of these titles are the only recorded copies in North America. These volumes contain texts in religion, philosophy, and ancient and modern literature. This collection group includes includes incunables from the Henry Charles Lea Library and the Yarnall Library of Theology.