The Brown University Library, in support of the University's educational and research mission, is the local repository for and the principal gateway to current information and the scholarly record. As such, it is simultaneously collection, connection, and classroom, primarily for the current and future students and faculty of the University, while also serving other colleagues in the University community and our regional, national, and global communities of learning and scholarship.
The Napoleonic satires housed in the Anne S. K. Brown Military collection of the John Hay Library represent several important gifts made to the library in the 20th century. In addition to the Napoleonic satires located in the military collection …
This collection is a grouping of over 1,400 items dating from the 1830s to the 1920s. The contents of the collection depict representations of Black diasporic people and cultures through close to a century of illustrations and musical and lyrical …
The digitized items in the Alcohol, Temperance and Prohibition Collection are from the Alcoholism and Addiction Studies Collection, as well as from various collections in the Brown University Library — broadsides, sheet music, pamphlets and government publications.
The items have …
In August 1923, William Dana Reynolds, with his wife Vera Hunt Reynolds and their young daughter Helen embarked from Honolulu on the Japanese steamship Taiyo Maru, bound for Yokohama. While at sea, the ship experienced and survived a tsunami only …
In the fall of 2005, the Brown University Library celebrated the 400th anniversary of the publication of El ingenioso hidalgo Don Quixote de La Mancha with an exhibit featuring book illustrations and title pages from the first edition of this …
Miniature paintings from the estate of Mrs. Adrienne Minassian. The paintings often include text from Persian and Indian tales. Many of the illustrations within the Minassian Collection are depictions of stories from the classical Persian text, Shahnama of Ferdowsi.
The …
The project, "Paris, Capital of the 19th century," initiated by the French Studies and Comparative Literature Departments of Brown University, provides a window into the cultural, political and social context of 19th century Parisian culture.
It offers online access to …
The James Koetting Ghana Field Recordings collection presents a vibrant mix of traditional and popular music recorded at a broad range of locations and events in Ghana during the 1970s by ethnomusicologist James Koetting. Students and researchers can hear online …
A journal born from the collapse of the New Left and hopes for a new beginning of a social movement, but also of left-wing thinking about culture, Cultural Correspondence was in many ways a unique publication.
Its founding editors, Paul …
A digital research collection focusing on Modernist journals and magazines, together with essays, introductions, and biographical sketches.
The Modernist Journals Project publishes fully searchable online editions of the English-language journals and magazines that were important in shaping the modes of …
Documentary evidence of the first slave trading voyage sponsored by the Brown brothers of Providence, RI.This project arose from the work of the Brown University Committee on Slavery and Justice, led by James Campbell. The committee investigated the contributions that …
The United States incarcerates the world’s largest prison population, caging, surveilling and supervising more people than any other nation. The Mass Incarceration Lab, supported by Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity and the Brown University Library seeks to …
The Brown University Library and Alumni Relations have digitized yearbooks from 1870 to 2007 for private research, study, and teaching.
The Liber Brunensis (1870-present) documents important events from the year, as well as athletics, academics, and student organizations. The Brun …
This digital collection includes digitized items from the Mumia Abu-Jamal Papers, the Free Mumia Movement Collection, and various other items curated in the Mumia Abu-Jamal: A Portrait of Mass Incarceration exhibition at the John Hay Library (2023). Digital …
The Ruth J. Simmons Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice is a scholarly research center with a public humanities mission. Recognizing that racial and chattel slavery were central to the historical formation of the Americas and the modern …
The John Hay Library has four anthropodermic books. Testing in April 2015, confirmed the books are bound in human skin (or a closely related primate):
Vesalius' De Humani Corporis Fabrica (Venice, 1568)
Dance of Death (London, 1816)
Dance of Death …
The Gordon Hall and Grace Hoag Collection of Dissenting and Extremist Printed Propaganda focuses on printed organizational literature, often ephemeral, created for circulation among supporters or to persuade new supporters. The collection consists largely of pamphlets and leaflets, with smaller …
The Brown Alumni Magazine (BAM) is a bimonthly publication of the Office of University Communications. The BAM publishes news of interest to its alumni audience, with a particular focus on exceptional accomplishments through stories that demonstrate how a Brown education …
