What kinds of rare books are in Special Collections?
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Special Collections
Jones Hall
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New Orleans LA 70118
ph: 504-865-5685
fx: 504-865-5761
Kenneth Owen has reorganized the Special Collection Division's Science Fiction and Fantasy Collection. Every book in the collection has now been arranged and indexed by author and title, and, for the first time, the ephemera and serials holdings are indexed and available. Researchers may browse the printed index in the Special Collections reading room.
A rare book is not necessarily old or monetarily valuable. Rather, it is a book with research or intellectual value that would be difficult or impossible to replace.

Special Collections' rare books unit preserves approximately 50,000 titles dating from a leaf of the Gutenberg Bible (ca. 1456) to recent first editions. These include a wide range of formats, from miniatures no larger than one inch high, to volumes forty inches tall; from five-hundred year-old books in as fine a condition as the day they were printed to twentieth-century first editions crumbing from the acidity of their paper.

Besides individual books, Special Collections houses book collections that bring together groupings of volumes on a particular topic. Subjects represented are broad, but areas of special interest are:

  • natural history
  • the American Revolution
  • American travel accounts
  • British shire histories
  • nineteenth and twentieth century English language fiction
  • Romanov Russian history and travel
  • science fiction and fantasy
  • Swiss history
  • Kelmscott Press publications
 Authors represented include:
  • William Faulkner
  • Lafcadio Hearn
  • Stendhal
    (Marie Henri Beyle)
  • Robert Southey
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Tulane's rare book holdings are part of the Special Collections Division of Howard-Tilton Memorial Library.
updatedThursday, February 16, 2006 11:51 AM
We welcome your comments and suggestions.