Collection Descriptions

The Harlan Hatcher Graduate Library is the University of Michigan's primary research collection for the humanities and social sciences. Read an overview of the entire Graduate Library collection, or select a specific collection from the list below.

Area Programs Library   |  111C North Hatcher
The Area Programs Libraries consists of four units: the Near East Division, the Slavic and East European Division, the South Asia Division, and Southeast Asia Division. Located in the Hatcher Graduate Library, each division serves the research and teaching needs for many University of Michigan academic departments. Accordingly, Area Programs staff select and acquire materials added to the collections in vernacular languages and in Western languages with relevant geographical and topical focus. In addition, all vernacular language materials receive cataloging in the Area Programs Divisions. Staff assist readers in finding materials and using the collections, compile bibliographies, identify print or electronic resources held elsewhere, and offer classes and informal instruction in library use as it applies to the geographical, linguistic, and subject areas covered by the Area Programs Libraries. Together, the four divisions hold about 1.2 million volumes and well over 3,000 periodical titles.

Near East Division
The Near East Division collects materials related to the Near East and North Africa (both ancient and modern) in Arabic, Hebrew, Persian, Turkish, Kurdish, and the European languages, including Yiddish. In addition, the division has responsibility for Judaica and the Ancient Near East (including Assyriology, Egyptology, Northwest Semitic, Hebrew Bible, etc.).

Slavic & East European Division
The Slavic and East European Division collects materials from and about Eastern Europe as well as the Soviet Union and its successor states. Russia, Poland, the Yugoslav successor states, the Czech Republic, and Central Asia and Armenia are especially well represented. Its permanent staff of three librarians and two technical library assistants helps researchers use the collection, one that is especially strong in history, political science, economics, sociology, ethnography, geography, literatures, linguistics, art history, and bibliography. The best-represented languages are Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Polish, Czech and Slovak.

South Asia Division
The South Asia Division covers the following countries: Afghanistan, Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Tibet. In addition, this division also collects materials related to these nations' diasporic communities around the world. The collection is strong in the humanities and the social sciences, with notable secondary collections in other fields--including law, medicine, public health, architecture, natural sciences and mathematics.

Southeast Asia Division
This Division collects vernacular and English language materials from the region of Southeast Asia. While three countries - the Philippines, Thailand, and Indonesia - have received the most comprehensive attention, this Division also develops the collection by increasing the holdings for the other seven countries that make up the geographic region: Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar (Burma), Singapore, and Vietnam.

Asia Library  |  418 South Hatcher
The Asia Library is one of the largest and most comprehensive collections in North America for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean materials. It currently holds 789,143 books, about 2,000 current serial titles, and provides a wealth of online services and resources specializing in the humanities and social sciences. The Asia Library holds perhaps the largest collection of Chinese newspapers in microfilm in the country as well as a 1,000 microfilm versions of Chinese rare books from the National Central Library in Taiwan. Additionally, this library has one of the largest collections in Japanese materials, with excellent resources in kabuki theater and Buddhism.

Documents Center  |  203 North Hatcher
The Documents Center is a central reference point for government information, whether local, state, federal, foreign or international. It is a depository for publications of the State of Michigan, United States Government, Government of Canada, United Nations, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, and the Asian Development Bank. In addition to the depository collections, the Documents Center subscribes to the publications of several international agencies, including the World Bank. The collections cover statistics, census information, government reports, laws and legislative information. Its web site is used worldwide and has been cited by the New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today.

Map Library  |  825 South Hatcher
The University of Michigan Map Library is the largest collection of printed maps in Michigan with over 350,000 maps and 10,000 atlases and reference works. The Map Library is the principal collection for cartographic materials, with an emphasis on both historic and modern mapping, including digital resources. It is a Federal Depository Library as well as serving as a campus resource center for Geographic Information Systems (GIS), providing access to software and data in support of instruction and research. The collection holds materials from all parts of the world, with special emphasis on Michigan, the Great Lakes region, the United States, Western Europe, the Mediterranean World, Canada, Mexico, Eurasia, and Japan.

Serials & Microforms  |  2nd Floor, South Hatcher
Serials/Microforms Services contains current issues of over 6,000 domestic and international unbound journal and periodical titles written in several hundred languages and covering a broad array of subject specialties. Current issues of nearly 200 newspapers are received daily, and back issues of many newspapers are available on microfilm. Over 2,000,000 pieces of microform may be viewed and copies made using digital scanners that print on a laser printer.

Special Collections  |  7th Floor, South Hatcher
The Special Collections Library is an internationally renowned archive of books, serials, ancient and modern manuscripts, posters, photographs, pamphlets, and original artwork. Tracing its founding to the 1890s, when the Library set off a secure area for its most valuable and fragile materials, it now holds more than 200,000 volumes of published materials and 3,000 linear feet of archives.

Humanities

• Ancient Manuscripts and Early Printed Books
• Literary and Dramatic Collections

Labadie Collection
The Labadie Collection was established in 1911 when Joseph Labadie, a prominent Detroit anarchist, donated his library to the University of Michigan. Although the Collection was originally concerned mainly with anarchist materials (the field in which it remains strongest), its scope was later widened considerably to include a great variety of social protest literature together with political views from both the extreme left and the extreme right. Materials are now collected from all parts of the world. In addition to anarchism, the Collection's strengths include: civil liberties (with an emphases on racial minorities), socialism, communism, colonialism and imperialism, American labor history through the 1930s, the IWW, the Spanish Civil War, sexual freedom, women's liberation, gay liberation, the underground press, and student protest.

Papyrology  |  807 South Hatcher
This collection is an internationally respected collection of ancient papyrus and a center for research on ancient culture, language, and history. With over 7,000 items and more than 12,000 individual fragments, it is by far the largest collection of papyrus in the Western hemisphere. Of keen interest to historicans, linguists, classicists, philosophers, and archaeologists, the collection includes biblical fragments, religious writings, publicn and private documents, private letters, and writings on astronomy, astrology, mathematics, and magic. The papyri span nearly two millennia of history, dating from about 1000 BC to AD 1000, with the majority dating from the third century BC to the seventh center AD.

Social Sciences
The Special Collections Library houses rich collections of 17th-century political tracts from the Netherlands (over 4,000 titles), France (1,150 titles), and Great Britain (1,800 titles). Its strong holdings in English local history build on similar materials in the Graduate Library stacks. Other historical collections include the Dean C. Worcester Philippine Collection which consists of his personal and official correspondence as a U. S. Philippine Commissioner and Secretary of the Interior of the Islands (1899-1915) along with his working library; the William Henry Hobbs Collection on polar expeditions; the Parsons-Rau Collection on l9th-century economics; books and pamphlets from Germany's Weimar Republic and Nazi periods in the Myers Collection; rare serials and monographs from the Oneida Community; and the writings, 1905-1960, of the noted Russian economist, Wladimir S. Woytinsky.

Science & Technology
The Special Collections Library's holdings in published books in the History of Science, especially mathematics and astronomy up to 1800, are outstanding. The editions of Euclid are particularly notable. A number of particularly noteworthy examples of the library's mathematical treatises may be found described in Rare Math Books at the University of Michigan, compiled by Bowling Green State University professor of mathematics, V. Frederick Rickey. The acquisition of books recording the history of Military Art and Science in European countries up to 1800 has been strongly supported by the Stephen Spaulding Memorial Fund.

• Power Collection for the Study of Scholarly Communication and Information Transfer
• Transportation History Collection