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 Kislak Center holds substantial collections of family papers from Italy, containing a wide range of documents dating from the Middle Ages and Renaissance into modern times. This webpage provides an overview of these diverse collections.
Penn Libraries has developed its coverage of 20th century Spanish history and literature in recent (since the early 21st century) years. A basis for the collections is the Paul C. Smith endowment, which aims to provide general support for printed works of Spanish and Portuguese literature and culture. Paul Smith’s donations have particularly increased holdings of works by and about (many of them by Smith himself) the early 20th century political journalist and novelist Vicente Blasco Ibáñez. The library has added to these, works that explore the connections among art, literature, politics and culture. At the same time, courses in the history of Spain, including the Spanish Civil War, have encouraged collecting on the war, the Republican exile, Francoist Spain and the transition.
The Sydney S. Keil Collection contains over 1,000 items from colonial Latin America, including books, pamphlets, broadsides, and maps. A particular focus of the collection is the religious history of Mexico in the colonial period. The collection was presented it to the Penn Libraries by Jeffrey D. Keil in memory of his father in 1986, and it continues to grow thanks to an endowment.