Special Collections

Location: Fairchild-Martindale Library, 3rd floor North, Room 625 (until Linderman renovation is complete)
Hours: Monday - Friday
1 - 5 p.m. Other times by appointment.

Lois Fischer Black, Curator
(610) 758-5185
Email: lob206@lehigh.edu
Ilhan Citak, Archives and Special Collections Librarian
(610) 758-4506
Email: ilc4@lehigh.edu

Rare Books

Lehigh's Special Collections encompasses a rare book collection of over 25,000 volumes, with first editions of English and American literature from the 17th to the 19th centuries, strengths in travel and exploration, natural history and ornithology, and works of historical significance in science and technology.
Highlights include

John James Audubon's Birds of America (4 vols., London,1827-1838)
a complete collection of first and early editions of Charles Darwin's writings, including corrected page proofs for On the Origin of Species (London, 1859)
part-issue copies of the works of several Victorian novelists, including Charles Dickens
important early printed editions of Geoffrey Chaucer's works, and all four folio editions of Shakespeare's plays
An electronic version of the Lehigh copy of Copernicus' De Revolutionibus (Nuremberg, 1543), which appears in the digital project The Problem of the Planets

Next: manuscripts