Rare Book Room and Collections Learning Lab

Highlights

The Class of 1912 Rare Book Room in Canaday Library houses the library’s stellar collection of 15th-century printed books, while also functioning as the College's primary exhibition gallery. Most of the exhibitions on view here are drawn from the College's enormous collections of art, artifacts, rare books, and manuscripts.

As the main space in which the College's Special Collections are visible to the campus community, the Rare Book Room becomes a public classroom -- or what we describe as a Collections Learning Lab. Exhibition programming and our Friday Finds series are hosted here. Class visits can be hosted and enhanced by additional materials not included in the exhibition,  including related items from the College Archives and the rare book collections. Museum Studies students can use the space to try out curatorial strategies, to study exhibition ideologies, and to analyze light levels and relative humidity as part of conservation studies.

Locating Resources

The Rare Book Room is located on the first floor of Canaday Library.