Notable Collections

This digital collection contains excavation reports, philological works, and museum catalogs published in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and scanned to create .pdf files in 2006-2007.

The Penn Libraries collects contemporary works by African-American authors in all formats and genres, including genre fiction (science fiction, fantasy, detective novels, thrillers, etc.), novels, play scripts, comic books and graphic novels. Musical recordings, television shows, feature films, and documentaries by and featuring African Americans are also well represented.

The Kaplan Collection documents commercial, social, religious, political, and cultural ties that connected Jews and the general public from the colonial era through the nineteenth century.

At the University of Pennsylvania, holdings relating to art and architecture may be found in the Anne and Jerome Fisher Fine Arts Library; the Architectural Archives of the University of Pennsylvania; the University Archives and Records Center; and in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts.

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.

This collection of approximately 18,000 items includes books and periodicals on German literature, linguistics, philology, folklore, and related disciplines.

A pioneering, controversial doctor, chemist, and signer of the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Rush (1746-1813) spent much of his career as a professor at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Berendt-Brinton Linguistic Collection is an important repository of Indigenous language materials and other documents, primarily from colonial-era Central America.

The Caroline F. Schimmel Collection of Women in the American Wilderness comprises over 6,000 works by women writers, including novels, short stories, poetry, works by Native American authors, travel writings, narratives of polar expeditions, captivity narratives, and works for children.