Notable Collections

The American Musicological Society's purpose is to advance scholarship in the various fields of music through research, learning, and teaching.

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 Gotham Book Mart was a vital bookstore in the New York literary scene from its creation in 1920 to its closing in 2006.

The Institute of Contemporary Arts is a University of Pennsylvania museum displaying contemporary art.

Otto Edwin Albrecht (1899-1984) was an internationally known music bibliographer and professor of romance languages and musicology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Spiritualism, the belief that it was possible for the spirits of the dead to communicate or interact by various means with the living, attracted many adherents in the United States since 1850.

The U.S Health Activism History Collection is a group of archival collections centered on health care, health policy, and medical reform movements.

The Kislak Center holds a number of manuscript collections, an important collection of books by and about Whitman, including a sizeable collection of rare first edition Whitman publications, and three paintings by Herbert Gilchrist, currently on display in the Reading Room.