In 1939, May Wickersham Crawford presented her husband's collection on the study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish literature to the University of Pennsylvania and endowed a fund for the acquisition of materials in the Romance languages.

Professor Crawford's (College 1902, Ph.D. 1906) collection added early philology, criticism, and regional literature from Spain's Golden Age to the Library's holdings, and the fund continues to add to the depth and breadth of the collections.