Notable Collections

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.

The Libraries' collections are usually either items we purchased or gifts of rare books. However, the Libraries also curate and preserve important internet sites that reflect life and research at Penn. One topic the Libraries has curated in this way addresses the idea of the Anthropocene and the built environment.

The Weigle Judaica and Ancient Near Eastern Studies (JANES) Reading Room's non-circulating holdings support intensive, text-centered forms of critical scholarship. Significantly, the provenance of the core collection traces back to the personal libraries of some of the greatest scholars of the "Pennsylvania Tradition of Semitics" at the University of Pennsylvania.

The Wetherill Papers comprise business records, ca. 1762-1899, of the store and White Lead Works founded by Samuel Wetherill in the late eighteenth century and held by his successors through the nineteenth century. This sizable collection documents the long manufacturing history of a single family-held company in early America.

The collection documents Pepper's role in expanding the University of Pennsylvania in the 19th century, his contributions to the medical profession, and his activism in Philadelphia. Primarily comprising correspondence, the collection covers Pepper's life from his time as a student at the University of Pennsylvania to his death 54 years later.

Over 2,500 original drawings, notebooks and scrapbooks, correspondence, books, posters, and other materials by the artist William Steig (1907-2003).

The Library at the William Way Center is one of the largest of its kind in the country. The center gifted nearly 3,000 duplicate titles to the Libraries, which were processed to make them readily available to Penn patrons.