A R T I C L E S SPECIAL COLLECTIONS FOR EDUCATION RESEAR CH: CON TRIBUTIONS TO AN INFORMATION NETWORK by Gladys I. Dratch Abstract This article focuses on special collections in the United States which provide historical curriculum resources and other specialized materials for education research. An overview of the Special Collections at Monroe C. Gutman Library, Harvard University, Graduate School of Education provides background on their growth and development, descriptions of major collections, information about the preservation microfilming projects, and a discussion of the research use of the collections. Other sources of information about special collections are presented, including the author's annotated bibliographies of directories for locating special collections and selected World Wide Web sites. Various collections are featured in the descriptive entries for the print and online sources. The author concludes that promoting our institutions' special collections through various print and online sources, as well as formal and informal communication with colleagues and scholars, advances the work of researchers in the field, although there are challenges in addressing the associated issues of access, staffing, services, and preservation. It is suggested that Web sites have the greatest potential for enhancing the research process by disseminating in-depth i�formation about special collections. INTRODUCTION In the interdisciplinary field of education, research interests are broadly based, and draw upon a wide variety of book and manuscript materials, as well as photographs, audiotapes, videodisks, and other multimedia formats. Although the emphasis is on the collections at the Monroe C. Gutman Library, Harvard University, Graduate School of Education, a selection of other collections and sources are identified, both print and online, in an effort to disseminate information that will be useful to researchers in the field. We can trace the origin and development of schools, school practices, and curriculum, but it is not until researchers are engaged with the materials actually used in the classrooms, peruse the catalogs of the early academies or the reports of the school committees of the schools and towns in nineteenth century America, that the study of education h istory becomes a meaningful intellectual and personal discovery. Whether scholars are seeking textbooks of the 1 970s or of the 1 840s, the records and catalogs of particular schools that are defunct or whose archives are incomplete, the records and collections of education organizations, publishers, or individual educators, there is not always an easy path to determining the sources for these materials. Developing a network among education librarians for the sharing of information about special collections for education research is a goal toward which this article seeks to contribute. SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AT GUTMAN LIBRARY Background Beginning i n the l ate n ineteenth century, with the establishment in 1 89 1 of the Department of Education at Harvard University, efforts to enhance the courses in education began with the collecting of reports and publications of school systems throughout the United States. At about the same time, there were approximately 3 ,000 schoolbooks which were brought together to relieve overcrowding in the stacks of the Harvard College Library, known as Widener Library. In 1 922, during the second year of the Graduate School of Education's founding, Dean Henry W. Holmes became aware of the need to fill in the gaps in the collection of public school reports and funds were made available to have them more effectively organized and systematically collected. Likewise, the Dean recognized at that time the importance of the textbook collection and encouraged and supported the development of these primary source materials. The textbooks were soon augmented by a major gift of 9,000 volumes from the Essex Institute of Salem, 700 volumes from Ginn and Company, and the purchase of 600 volumes from the American Antiquarian Society. Gifts in subsequent years greatly enlarged these collections. EDUCATION LIBRARIES VOL. 22, No. 1 / 2 s A R T I C L E S In 1 972 the Monroe C. Gutman Library was erected on its present site and named after its chief benefactor, a 1 906 Harvard College alumnus. Prior to 1 972 the School of Education Library maintained a small collection of specialized education materials and relied heavily on Widener Library, constantly transferring materials to Widener to make room for new purchases. Once Gutman Library was opened, the Historical Textbooks Collection and other special collections, as well as general education books and serials, were transferred from Widener Library to the new School of Education Library. In 1 988 the U.S. Public School Reports, as well as a unique collection of U.S. Private School Catalogs, were also transferred to Gutman Library. In addition, other major collections have been donated to Gutman since 1 972. A descriptive listing of the major collections is provided below. Descriptive Summary of Major Gutman Special Collections Action for Children's Television (ACT Collection) Action for Children 's Television was donated by Peggy Charren, founder and former president. ACT was a national nonprofit organization during the years 1 968- 1 99 1 , which worked to encourage quality and diversity in television programming for children and adolescents and to eliminate commercial abuses particularly targeted at children. Peggy Charren 's work was the catalyst for the significant legislative achievement of the Children's Television Act of 1 990, and she continues to speak out and to advise on matters related to children and television. The collection contains the records of the organization, legal documents, including petitions and complaints filed before government agencies; subject files, articles, reports ; and over 1 400 videotapes of children's programming. A local in-house cataloging system (not HOLLIS, Harvard's online catalog) provides access to the research reports and videotapes. American College and University Histories This col lect ion of ni neteenth and twentieth century publications of American colleges and universities documents the development of these institutions, providing a rich resource for the study of U.S. higher education. A recent donation by the National Library of Education, the collection has not been inventoried and remains unprocessed at this time. Jeanne Chall Collection on the Teaching of Reading Dr. Jeanne S. Chall, Professor of Education, Emerita, at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, eminent in the field of reading research, donated 1 0,000 titles that span over 200 years of American education history. Dr. Chall, author of the landmark publication, Learning to Read: T he Great Debate ( 1 967, 1 983, 1 996), among her extensive list of published works, has made extraordinary contributions to the field of reading. The collection is especially strong in textbooks published from 1 940 through the 1 980s. Although the collection is currently unprocessed, plans for EDUCATION LIBRARIES VOL. 22, No. 1 / 2 cataloging this resource will be implemented once the relocation of the Gutman Library Special Collections to a new facility is completed.! Historical Textbooks Collection This collections consists of more than 35,000 American and some European textbooks covering all school subjects. Most were published between 1 800 and 1 950 for use in elementary and secondary schools. Also represented in this collection are college textbooks, foreign imprints, and some pre- 1 800 titles .2 The collection is particularly strong in the areas of reading, history, geography, mathematics, and the sciences. The local classification scheme arranges the volumes by year of publication. The Historical Textbooks are cataloged in the online catalog, HOLLIS (Harvard Online Library Information System), and in OCLC. More than 10,000 titles have been filmed with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. The NEH preservation microfilm projects are described elsewhere in this article. History of Education and Teacher Training Schools Among the History of Education materials from approximately mid-nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries are: a) records of American teacher training colleges and normal schools ( 1 830s to the mid-20th century) including catalogs, prospectuses, curricula, and alumni registers; b) pamphlet collections documenting teacher training and the teaching of individual subjects; c) prospectuses of summer camps for boys and girls; d) and materials on the education of ethnic and racial groups and physically challenged students. This collection is cataloged in HOLLIS. Houghton Mifflin Textbook Collection This donation by Houghton Mifflin Company in 1995 of 5,400 volumes represents Houghton Mifflin textbooks published between 1 840 and 1 97 1 . The collection complements the Houghton Mifflin Archives held by Houghton Library, the rare books and manuscripts library of Harvard College. National Academy of Education Archives The National Academy of Education, founded in 1 965, is composed of practitioners in the behavioral sciences, humanities, and education who have made outstanding contributions to educational scholarship. The NAE Archives which were established at Gutman Library in 1 989 pertain largely to the Spencer Foundation. The records of the Academy at Gutman cover the period 1 965 to the present, and include correspondence, minutes of meetings, and applications related to the work of the Spencer Foundation, a program of the NAE dedicated to supporting research which improves education, broadly defined. Access to these materials requires special permission. The National Academy of Education has relocated from Stanford University to New York University, School of Education. A R T I C L E S 1 I.A. Richards/Language Research Inc. Collection This collection contains the publications and business records of Language Research, Inc . , a nonprofit corporation founded in the 1 940s by Professor I vor Armstrong Richards ( 1 893- 1 979), literary critic and Harvard University Professor of English. The purpose of the corporation was the dissemination of language teaching materials developed by Richards and his Harvard collaborator, Christine Gibson, based on their research into Basic English, an 850-word system originated by British linguist, Charles Kay Ogden , and their improvement upon this system. The collection contains the texts, audiovisual aids, and supporting materials used for the teaching of English and its adaptation to other languages. Language Research continued to republish materials in other formats after the deaths of Richards and Gibson. There is an in-house listing of materials in this collection, which also provides an overview of the teaching system and serves as a guide to the collection. This collection complements the papers of I.A. Richards at Harvard's Houghton Library. U.S. Private School Catalogs Arranged by school, this collection of 7 ,000 items includes catalogs, prospectuses, announcements, bulletins, registers, and pamphlets documenting private school education from the 1 830s to roughly 1 960. Yearbooks, student magazines, and alumni publications are also represented. Of particular note are materials from the early female academies. All states and the District of Columbia are represented except Alaska, Hawaii , Montana, and North Dakota. This collection is not cataloged in HOLLIS, but there is a shelf list and in-house guides. A geographical index, which lists by city or town the private schools, academies, and colleges available in the Gutman collection, is one such guide. U.S. Public School Reports Numbering about 1 0,000 volumes ranging from the early nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries, this col lection documenting public education throughout this period contains statistical and financial information, courses of study, lists of textbooks used, various narratives, some individual school publications, including yearbooks, school regulations, manuals, directories, information about individual students, annual reports, and minutes for meetings of school committees and education commissions from state, city, and town school departments throughout the United States. With the exception of Hawaii, all states and the District of Columbia are represented. They are arranged by state and then by city and town. The reports are not cataloged in HOLLIS, but there are in-house guides and a shelf list. Preservation Microfilming Project Since 1 99 1 Gutman Library proposals for the preservation of a selection of its Historical Textbooks Collection have been included in Harvard University ' s requests to the National Endowment for the Humanities for preservation microfilming funds. NEH awards to the University, as part of the national brittle books program, have provided funding, through the Harvard University Library Preservation Center, for three projects at Gutman, one of which is currently in progress . The selection of books filmed may be found in HOLLIS by the series titles: Harvard Reading Textbooks Preservation Microfilm Project (4,961 titles), Harvard Social Studies Textbooks (3,407 titles, 239 of which are in color microfilm), and Harvard Science and Math Textbooks) The filming of a selection of the science and mathematics textbooks (approximately 1 ,900 titles) is expected to be completed by the summer of 1 998. The Harvard Reading Textbooks includes readers, grammars, spellers, and literary works, published between 1 800 and 1 950, which American children and young adults studied in order to become literate, fully informed members of society. The Harvard Social Studies Textbooks include history, geography, government and civics, and economics texts published between 1 800 and 1 940, the same time period of coverage for the science and mathematics textbooks. The film reels for titles which are identified in HOLLIS are available through interlibrary loan. Microfilm reels may be purchased through the Widener Library Imaging Services, information about which is available on the Gutman Library Special Collections Home Page.4 These microfilm projects have been a fascinating journey, from proposal-writing and in-depth communication with the many researchers who utilize the historical textbooks at Gutman to the selection of titles, which often times yield between those fragile textbook pages a variety of pressed plants, notes, bookmarks, old newspaper clippings, lesson assignments, valentines and youthful poetry. Discovering the fragments of the lives of the owners and users of the textbooks, the inscriptions from donors and authors, and the drawings and comments of the young students have been a delightful aspect of these projects .s The contents of these textbooks, of course, are a mirror of the culture and values of our nation's past. They reflect the expectations for students and our society's interpretation of literacy over a period of 150 years. The historical textbooks provide a unique opportunity for scholars and educators to chart the changes that took place over this period of time. One outstanding characteristic of many histories and geographies of the nineteenth century is the stereotyping of other cultures. A map that appeared within an atlas by Samuel Goodrich in 1 826, for example, denotes "emblems of civilization" as a bow and arrow, sword, gun, and a house to represent "savage," "barbarous," "half-civilized," and "civilized" areas of the world.6 When the books have finally deteriorated beyond use, and many are at that stage now, the master negatives of the microfilm will continue to be stored safely in the off-site, environmentally stable storage facility of the Harvard Depository. In addition to preservation microfilming and cataloging of the filmed titles in the national bibliographic databases, Online Computer Library Center (OCLC) and Research Libraries Group (RLG), conservation treatments are an important component of the projects. Conserving EDUCATION LIBRARIES VOL. 22, No. 1 / 2 a A R T I C L E S the life of the filmed textbooks, preserving their contents for future scholars, and making the titles to scholars and institutions more widely accessible through enhanced cataloging records, interlibrary loan, and purchase options are the lasting benefits of the National Endowment for the Humanities support for these projects. Research Use of the Special Collections Researchers of the Gutman Library Special Collections are drawn from a wide cross-section of geographic areas and range from students and faculty at the Graduate School of Education, other Harvard graduate schools, and Harvard College, to faculty and students affiliated with U.S. and international schools at all levels, as well as individuals and practitioners in many disciplines with a variety of specialized research topics and interests. While researchers are chiefly engaged in the field of education, broadly defined, they represent such areas of study as American and world history, art history, English and American literature, reading research, chemistry, astronomy, biology, and other sciences, mathematics, economics, and government. The Special Collections have also been a resource for a producer of a television documentary, a film maker, an author/host of a series of radio programs, and other researchers interested in or representing the television and broadcasting industry. Researchers utilizing the Historical Textbooks Collection can trace the changes that have taken place in the teaching of various subjects and in the expectations for students over a period of one hundred and fifty years. The chronological arrangement of the collection within subject areas and the multiple editions of many titles within series are particularly useful for this research. For example, the contents of the history textbooks, the selections of events, the descriptions, and the interpretations provide a valuable dimension of research for contemporary historians and social scientists, as well as educators. The illustrations are often equally important to researchers. Some of the topics that bring scholars to Gutman concern research on how women were taught, how ethnic groups were portrayed, and the materials used to demonstrate the principles of scientific studies in nineteenth century America . The study of how evolution was presented, curriculum comparison between the North and the South, and the teaching of writing in the nineteenth century are other examples. An article written by Lucille M. Schultz ( 1 994) focuses on her analysis of a selected number of first books of composition, published between 1 838 and 1 855, which are examples of teaching methods that are contrary to the popular models of this period. Her study is of particular interest because it enlarges the understanding of how writing was taught in mid-nineteenth century America. Recently, a study of the Italian textbooks at Gutman, which were used by students during the regime of Mussolini, 1 930- 1 942, focused on how the contents of the elementary school textbooks were the instruments by which the dictatorship sought to mold the development of Italian youth. An article by Clive Foss ( 1 997) in the Harvard Librmy Bulletin describes this research. EDUCATION LI B RARIES VOL. 22, No. 1 / 2 Researchers trying to locate the titles of textbooks that were used in the classrooms in particular cities or towns in the United States make use of the historical collection of Public School Reports. A high percentage of the te)5:tbooks listed in these reports are found within the Historical Textbooks Collection. The Public School Reports contain all types of statistical information on students and teachers, as well as narratives that document state and local education issues over a span of more than one hundred years. The Public School Reports used separately, or in conjunction with the textbooks, provide an understanding of American cultural values and the growth and development of public education. These reports are invaluable for the study of specific towns, cities, or states, and for those locations for which Gutman Library has a long run of reports, it is possible to gain an in-depth understanding of topics, such as curriculum development, over"an extended period of time. Scholars studying these reports gain insight for research in various disciplines. For example, the work of Harvard economist Claudia Goldin, who has utilized the data found in the School Reports to document the effects on the American economy of public education in the early twentieth century, has been reported by David Wessel ( 1 996) in the Wall Street Journal. Often, researchers are trying to locate information about particular educators or the development of various schools. Especially in the case of schools that are now defunct, materials may be scattered and difficult to locate. The collection of catalogs of Teacher Training Schools and the Private School Catalogs provide an extensive resource for such study. In much of the research that underlies the use of all these historical collections, there is an interest in how these resources can inform our understanding of the past and also enhance present-day education practices. The Special Collections, used as resources for class assignments and individual research, both by students and scholars at Harvard and beyond, lead to interesting scholarship. It is particularly gratifying to work with students who h ave not previously been exposed to the use of historical collections for research . Their enthusiasm for this document-based approach to their research is reflected in contributions to the history of various schools or to an understanding of educators or organizations represented in Gutman's Special Collections. Scholars are drawn to Gutman Library Special Collections for topics of educational interest that are of more recent vintage. For example, the impact of television on children is central to the Action for Children's Television Collection and·the records, reports, and subject files of this organization, are a unique resource, as are the more than 1 400 v ideotapes document ing ch il dren 's programming, 1 968- 1 99 1 . Likewise, researchers interested in the development of Basic English and the work of I. A. Richards and Christine R. Gibson seek out the Language Research Inc. Collection. The retrospective conversion of Gutman's holdings to online records in 1 993 made an impact on the use of the Special Collections. The conversion of records included the Historical A R T I C L E S s Textbooks and the specialized collection of the History of Education and Teacher Training Catalogs, resulting in requests for information and services, as well as on-site visits. As i t happened, a fortuitous review o f the Gutman Library Special Collections along with access policies, which had been undertaken by the Gutman Library Special Collections Committee in 1 990 - 1992, led to the recommendation to hire a Special Collections Librarian/Archivist. This recommendation was implemented in 1994 with the hiring of a librarian/archivist, a much-needed position in view of the increasing use of the collections.? Home Page of the Gutman Library Special Collections: http://hugse1. harvard . edul-library/collections. htm The Gutman Library Special Collections Home Page has also made information more widely available. Shortly after the home page appeared on the Web several years ago, we were surprised and delighted to greet a professor from Japan who arrived with Web page in hand. All librarians must grapple with the mixed blessings that Web and online catalog information bring to libraries in the way of increased use and demands for services. There is no doubt that research and scholarship have immeasurably changed for the better. The Gutman Special Collections Home Page describes the collections and services, accompanied by images to illustrate the range of materials. The site offers a selected list of other collections and provides available links to related colJections. As all sites are, the home page is a work-in-progress. Future plans include more detailed information about the Gutman Special Collections. OTHER SPECIAL COLLECTIONS AND SOURCES A number of databases are useful for researching topics and collection resources : ERIC, Dissertation Abstracts, Library Literature, MLA Bibliography, Education Abstracts and Index. An early issue of Education Libraries featured an article by Charles Missar ( 1 978), which provided a compilation of selected U.S. and Canadian historical textbook collections.s More recent articles on textbook collections by Nancy O'Brien ( 1 989, 1 993, 1 994) and Charles Aston ( 1 994) highlight collections at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and several other institutions, the Center for Research Libraries, and the University of Pittsburgh.9 An article in Education Week ( 1996) refers to various historical collections at the National Library of Education in Washington, DC., including the historical textbooks and the school reports.IO Two publications by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement, and a third by the former National Institute of Education, are interesting, illustrated catalogs of representative materials from the collection of the Educational Research Library, now absorbed by the National Library of Education. They are: Early American Textbooks, 1775-1900: A Catalog of the Titles Held by the Educational Research Library ( 1985); Early American Spellers, 1775-1900: A Catalog of the Titles Held by the Educational Research Library (1985); and Fifteenth to Eighteenth Century Rare Books on Education: A Catalog of the Titles held by the Educational Research Library ( 1976). Directory Resources The resources that follow can be utilized to locate Special Collections. They are particularly useful for identifying textbooks or other curriculum materials, as well as early children's literature. While the limitations of the indexes and the descriptive entries make it difficult to identify the wide range of Special Collections for education research, they are helpful sources. Directory of Curriculum Materials Centers (1996) This directory is based on a 1 995 questionnaire sent out to institutions by the Education and Behavioral Sciences Section of the Associati on of College and Research Libraries . B rief information about Special Collections may be found in a "comments" section at the end of each entry, but such information is not uniformly reported. U.S. institutions are arranged by state and Canadian institutions by province. The comments are not indexed. Directory of Historical Curriculum Collections (1988) This earlier directory by the EBSS Section of ACRL describes collections of forty-seven U.S. and three Canadian institutions. Readers, textbooks, curriculum guides, and non-book curriculum materials are the focus. Access and database listing is included for each entry. This resource contains a cross-reference index. Among the textbook collections listed is the John A. Nietz Textbook Collection of 14,000 volumes of mainly pre- 1 900 texts. The Nietz Collection is located at the University of Pittsburgh, Hillman Library. The publications of John A. Nietz are classic titles for textbook research: Old Textbooks ( 1 96 1 ) and Evolution of American Secondary School Textbooks ( 1 966) . Directory of Special Libraries and Information Centers (1997) The entries in this two-volume resource are arranged by institution and include "special collections" as a category. A broad subject index refers to the numbered entries. The Balch Institute for Ethnic Studies focuses on North American immigration and ethnic history and the library holds the Ethnic History Curriculum Collection: 62,000 books, 5,000 linear feet of manuscripts, 6,000 microfilm reels, photographs, sound recordings, and broadsides. The University of Michigan's Bentley Historical Library includes a special collection of printed materials and manuscripts on temperance and prohibition in the United States. The University of Washington's Curriculum Materials and Children's Literature EDUCATION LIBRARIES VOL. 22, No. 1 / 2 10 A R T I C L E S Section holds a Children's Literature Archive. Among its holdings are 8,000 children's l iterature book jackets, covering the period 1 920- 1 965. History of Education Museums and Collections International Directory (1992) This revision of the 1 99 1 edition, arranged by country and then by city, contains 1 07 U.S. institutions, along with institutions from twenty-five countries. Miami University, Kings Library in Oxford, Ohio holds an 1 1 ,000 volume collection of children's literature from 1536 to the present, including a hornbook, several battledores, chapbooks, games, and toys; a collection of 5,000 pre - 1 900 American school books; the McGuffey collection of readers and other textbooks; and the McGuffey manuscript collection. The McGuffey Museum on campus is located in the house in which Miami University faculty member, William Holmes McGuffey, compiled the readers. The Museum of Education, McKissick Museum of the University of South Carolina at Columbia, holds an elementary and secondary textbook collection used in South Carolina dating back to 1 789. Among other materials, such as photographs and oral histories, the museum has catalogs and annuals from fifty postsecondary South Carolina institutions. In adddition, the museum houses the national archives for the Society for the Study of Curriculum History. The Ontario Textbook Collections are located at the Ontario Institute for Stuqies in Education in Toronto, Canada. Researchers will find 1 ,000 Ontario curriculum guides, 1 90 1 - 1 960; 2,600 textbooks and readers, 1 846 - 1 970; 1 0,000 of the Ontario Teachers Federations Collections; and 7 ,000 uncataloged items. National Directory of Education Libraries and Collections (1990) Entries are based on questionnaires sent out to selected United States libraries and education organizations. The category of "special collections" provides brief information which is generally not descriptive. Institutions, subjects, and names of collections are indexed. It includes the National Council of Teachers of English Library, which holds NCTE documents, publications, and records since the organization's founding in 1 9 1 1 . Special Collections in Children's Literature: An International Directory (1995) This directory of the Association for Library Service to Children of theAmerican Library Association is arranged by state and c ity for U.S . i nstitutions and by country and city for international collec tions . It focuses on children's l i terature collections as well as textbooks. It also includes information about the location for the works and papers of various children's authors. In addition to housing a children's literature collection, the Massachusetts Historical Society holds the papers of Horace Mann and kindergarten reformers, Mary Tyler Peabody Mann and Elizabeth Palmer Peabody. The Elizabeth Nesbitt Room at the EDUCATION LIBRARIES VOL. 22, No. 1 / 2 University of Pittsburgh holds 1 0,000 volumes, from 1 695 to the present, of British and North American authors and illustrators, and the complete archival videotape collection of the "Mister Rogers' Neighborhood" television program. Eight Canadian collections are represented, including the Special Collections at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, which holds 1 0,000 volumes of English titles of children's literature published in Canada, Great Britain, and the United States for the period 1 7 1 3 - 1 939, and a 4,000 volume Early Textbook Collection from the eighteenth century to 1 930. Subject Collections: A Guide to Special Book Collections and Subject Emphases as Reported by University, College, Public, and Special Libraries in the United States and Canada (1993)11 In its most recent seventh edition, this two-volume reference source is organized by Library of Congress subject headings and then by state of listing. The range of subjects that touch upon education in this subject resource is broad. The descriptions are largely based on responses to questionnaires sent out to the institutions represented in the previous edition. Bowling Green State University has a collection of Juvenile Series Novels and 45,000 comic books, and the Free Library of Philadelphia holds the American Sunday School Union Collection and a collection of hornbooks, among other materials. The Child Drama Collection at Arizona State University, which covers U.S. youth theatre history since 1 900, i ncludes the archives of the Children 's Theatre Association of America and the American Alliance for Theatre and Education. The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution & Peace at Stanford University holds the records of the White House Conference on Child Health and Protection established by President Herbert Hoover in 1 930. Manuscripts, documents and the like cover the topic of children's well-being and health education and services for the period 1 909- 1 950. The Toronto Public Library in Toronto (Ontario), Canada holds 27,500 cataloged volumes of the Osborne Collection of Early Children's Books, which consists mainly of books published in England from the fourteenth century through 1 9 10. World Wide Web Resources The development of World Wide Web sites has the greatest potential for disseminating information about special collections. As libraries increasingly provide Web sites with the level of detail that allows for more targeted searching strategies, through finding aids, inventories, and selected digitized texts, the task of locating particular collections will be greatly improved. Faster and more accurate retrieval will also be possible with more refined Web search engines. Even now, images and sound enhancements create virtual visits, which bring an understanding of the breadth and richness of the available resources. The selected sites that follow point out the range of collections and detail that can be discovered on the Web. A R T I C L E S 11 American Antiquarian Society, Worcester, MA gopher:!!mark. mwa. org/ This gopher site describes the work, collections, programs, and publications of the Society, which concentrates on the American period to 1 877. The site also provides access to the AAS online catalog of books, serials, and manuscripts. AAS holds two­ thirds of the materials printed in this country between 1 640 and 1 82 1 . Its eighteenth and nineteenth century newspaper collection is extensive and the broad range of its collections, held on shelves twenty miles long, i nc ludes broads ides, c i ty directories, manuscripts, state and local histories and documents, school catalogs and histories, school books, and children's literature, to name just a few of the categories listed. The American Antiquarian Society is noted in a number of the directory sources listed above as likely having the most complete pre- 1 82 1 American textbook collection. Center for Research Libraries, Chicago, IL http://wwwcrl. uchicago. edu!index. html The CRL Special Collections include primary and secondary school textbooks, college and university catalogs, U.S . state documents, and foreign dissertations. By policy, the Center for Research Libraries does not catalog these materials. The 7,000 volume textbook collection includes U.S. imprints and foreign language grammars and readers. Although the volumes date back to the eighteenth century, the majority of the imprints are from the twentieth century. The curriculum guides are mostly twentieth century publications from state, county, and municipalities in the U .S . and its territories . The U.S. college catalog collection, numbering 1 60,000 volumes, dates from the founding of the institution to 1 974, and includes all nineteenth century and a selected number of twentieth century preparatory schools. Foreign college catalogs number 32,000 and this collection is still growing. Herbert T. Coutts Library, University of Alberta http://library. usask. ca!spcol!collections/032e. html The Historical Curriculum Collection includes the textbooks, curriculum guides, and programs of study used in the Province of Alberta schools from the early territorial days to the present. The collection consists of about 3,500 cataloged volumes. Cubberly Education Library, Stanford University http://www-sul. stanford.edu!depts/cubberley !resources/hist. html Cubberley Library's beginnings as a departmental library in 1 89 1 centered on its collection of college catalogs and school reports. The library's special collections have greatly expanded over time and now include its Pre-Twentieth Century Textbook Collection , which ranges from the late eighteenth to the early twentieth centuries. Titles are listed by subject in a card catalog. Twentieth century elementary and secondary school textbooks, collected up to the mid- 1 970s, are listed in a card catalog by author, title, and subject. Collections of U.S. and foreign college and university catalogs are also available at Stanford, but not online, including a collection of mostly nineteenth century catalogs or bulletins from teachers colleges and normal schools. The Hanna Collection on the Role of Education in the Twentieth Century holds archives for more than 950 individuals and institutions. Institutional collections include the American Council on Education, the International Council for Educational Development, and the International Institute for Educational Planning. Individual papers include former U.S. Commissioners of Education and many other educators. The Hanna Collection is located at Stanford's Hoover Insitution. Education Library, George Peabody College for Teachers, Vanderbilt University http://www. library. vanderbilt. edu/education/edcoll. html Special Collections include over three hundred papers by and about Jean Piaget and an historical textbook collection. Education and Social Science Library, University of lllinois at Urbana-Champaign http://www.library. uiuc. edu/edx/schcoll. htm The School Collection of children's and young adult literature includes among its 67,000 volume collection historical children's literature that dates from the early nineteenth century. A Rare Book Room contai n s pre- 1 800 c hi ldren's l i terature and some instructional materials. Since 1 993 the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Library holds the 58,000 volume collection of children's literature formerly at the Center for Research Libraries. More than 8 ,000 volumes dating from 1 9 14 are also held by this library. Making of America Digital Library, Cornell University and University of Michigan http://moa. cit. cornell. edu! http://www. umdl. umich. edu!moa/ The Making of America Project, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Charles E. Culpeper Foundation, is a joint effort by Cornell University and the University of Michigan to document American social history for the period 1 850- 1 877. The goal is to create a digital library of scanned page images from 5 ,000 significant journals and monographs. Some texts may be viewed either as page images or electronic text. The contents of the materials thus far selected are available over the Internet, and at this writing over 4,000 volumes have been digitized. Future plans include contributions by other Iibraries.I2 McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern Mississippi DeGrummond Children's Literature Research Collection http://www.lib. usm. edu/-deg rum/ The DeGrummond Collection focuses on American and British children's literature and contains manuscripts, illustrations, books, and related materials donated by more than 1 ,200 authors and EDUCATION LIBRARIES VOL. 22, No. 1 / 2 1 2 A R T I C L E S illustrators. Some of the collections highlighted are those of Ezra Jack Keats, Kate Greenaway, Randolph Caldecott, H.A. and Margret Rey, 2,000 historical and contemporary textbooks dating from the mid- 1 800s, series books, and eighteenth and nineteenth century British publishers. There are links to other Web sites describing special collections of children's literature. Milbank Memorial Library, Teachers College, Columbia University http :Ill web. tc. columbia. edu/cs/scl The manuscript collections at Teachers College include the records of a number of organizations, such as the National Council for the Social Studies, the Bank Street College of Education, the National Kindergarten Association, and the American Montessori Society. Special Collections also include the archives of the Board of Education, City of New York, school books of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, catalogs and publications of U.S . independent schools, an international collection of elementary and secondary textbooks of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and the Harvey-Darton Collection of pre- 1 850 English children's literature. The textbook collection includes Houghton Mifflin textbooks published since 1 97 1 , as well as titles dating from the 1 920s. As a result of the acquisition of D.C. Heath Company by Houghton Mifflin, Milbank Memorial Library acquired 300 English and Spanish textbooks, manuals, and workbooks covering the 1 970s - 1 990s. The Ginn Company archives are also field at this library. National Library of Education, U.S. Department of Education http://www. ed. gov/NLE/collections. html The National Library of Education's Special Collections include children's books and American textbooks mainly covering the nineteenth century and early twentieth century. Henry Barnard's personal collection of American schoolbooks was the beginning of this national collection. The NLE holdings also include a pre- 1 800 Rare Books Collection, a Legislative Reference Collection, and a complete collection of official documents published by the U.S. Department of Education. National Public Broadcasting Archives, University of Maryland http://www. lib. umd. edu!U M CP IN P BA!npba. html In addition to holding the records of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the Public Broadcasting Service, and National Public Radio, other organizations are included . by NPBA, such as: Children's Television Workshop, the Agency for Instructional Tel ev is ion , and the Jo in t Counc i l for Educat ional Telecommunications. This Web site provides information about collections of individuals and organizations connected with public broadcasting and held at the University of Maryland as well as collections located at other repositories. For example, the records EDUCATION LI BRARIES VOL. 22, No. 1 / 2 of the Carnegie Commission on Educational Television covering the years 1 954- 1 957 and 1 963- 1 967 are located at the State Historical Society of Wisconsin. Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, Radcliffe College http://www. radcliffe. edu/schles!index. htm The Schlesinger Library currently holds 2,000 manuscript collections and more than 50,000 books which document the history of women in the United States, particularly during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In addition, the collection contains oral histories, ephemera, and over 50,000 images. Personal papers of women and the records of organizations involved with women's issues and concerns are rich sources of research. A selected number of finding aids, which provide more thorough information about individual manuscript collections than can be found in the online cataloged record, are available at this Web site. There are, for example, finding aids for the papers of Charlotte Perkins Gilman ( 1 860- 1 935) and Julia Ward Howe ( 1 8 1 9- 1 9 1 0), and the records of the Bureau of Vocational Information (New York) for the period 1 908- 1 932. In time, more finding aids will be added to this Web site, but published sources containing finding aids and i nventories for collections at Schlesinger and other libraries are listed. Manuscript collections and other holdings of Schlesinger Library are searchable in HOLLIS, Harvard's online catalog. George A. Smathers Libraries, University of Florida, Gainesville Baldwin Library of Historical Children's Literature http://special. uflib. ufl. edu/baldwin. html The Baldwin Library Collection contains over 93,000 British and American publications of children's literature from the 1 700s through the 1 970s. Pre- 1 82 1 children's literature titles number more than 800. Special Collections Library, Duke University http://odyssey. lib. duke. edul This Web site features information and links to its digitized collections, such as the scanned images and texts of the works of African American women of the nineteenth century and the writings of Civil War Women. The Women's Archives hold extensive manuscript and rare book collections covering a wide range of primary sources. Syracuse University Library http ://libwww. sy r. edu/aboutsul/depts/specco ll/main . html The Department of Special Collections at Syracuse University Library holds rare books and manuscript collections in a number of fields, including adult and special education and children's literature. Among its holdings are the records of the American Book Company and the textbooks published by this company. A R T I C L E S 1 3 The American Book Company was established in 1 890 as a result of the consolidation of Van Antwerp, Bragg and Company, D. Appleton and Company, A.S. Barnes and Company, and lveson, Blakeman and Company. The textbook collection includes many pre- 1 890 editions. The records of Laubach Literacy International, founded in 1 955 as the Laubach Literacy Fund, are also held by the Library. In addition to the variety of materials, such as correspondence, diaries, video and audio tapes, photographs, reports, and films, the collection contains the personal papers and business records of founder Frank C. Laubach. University of Houston Libraries http://info . lib. uh. edu/speccoll/specspec. htm This site provides links to indexes for locating Special Collections on the Web. For example, the link to the University of Idaho leads to over 2,000 repositories of primary sources world-wide ( http ://www. uidaho. edu/special-co llec tions/ Other.Repositories. html). Some other links are Special Collections in Canadian Libraries and Archives for Research on Women and Gender. Watkinson Library, Trinity College http://www. trinco ll. edu/reso urces/lib rary/main /watkin. html The holdings of this endowed library of about 1 64,500 volumes consist of mainly primary source materials on Americana of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Special collections of particular note include American school books, the Civil War and slavery, and the American Indian. An entry in Subject Collections refers to 7,000 volumes of the Henry Barnard Collection of school books. The Web site notes that the Watkinson Library holds the papers of American educator Henry Barnard ( 1 8 1 1 - 1 900). CONCLUSION This article has focused on selected special collections for education research within the United States, with particular emphasis on the Gutman Library Special Collections at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. The overview of the Gutman Special Collections provided background on their development and growth, described major collections, discussed the preservation microfilming projects, and offered some examples of the research use of the collections. t 3 A review of various sources of information about special collections was then presented. Directories for locating textbooks and other curriculum materials and information for specialized education research were discussed, as were World Wide Web resources. A number of collections were featured in the descriptive entries for these print and online sources. To further benefit the research community, education libraries and librarians have a major role to play in transforming our specialized collection resources by sharing and contributing to an information network. We all have stories about researchers who travelled far and wide before homing in on the collection and information sought. Promoting our special collections through various print and online sources, and communicating, formally and informally, with colleagues and scholars at large, are important objectives for us all, although there are also difficult issues associated with these efforts. Improved access and information about our collections have many implications with respect to staffing, services, and preservation needs. Providing the level of staffing and services that are necessary to improve access and to accomodate increased use of the collections requires adequate funding. Moreover, frequent use of the fragile materials makes the preservation of these collections at risk. These are some of the the challenges we face in our efforts to make our special collections available for research, rather than maintaining them as proprietary resources known only to a relatively small number of scholars. An interesting collection of papers addressing issues and challenges for managing special collections is found in a volume of the Journal of Library Administration (Sui H. Lee, 1 993). As World Wide Web s i tes proliferate with descriptive information about special collections and links to online holdings, and as finding aids and digitized texts become commonplace, getting to the level of specific resources for particular research in terests wil l be faci l i tated, and improved Web searching capabilities will aid in this research process. Web sites have the greatest potential for disseminating information about special collections. If our libraries and institutions undertake to make our resources visible and to make public information widely available, the possibility of one-stop searching of special collections for education research may yet be a reality. NOTES I . An explanation of the anticipated Gutman Library renovations is provided in Note 1 3 . 2. The major location at Harvard for pre- 1 800 textbooks is Houghton Library, the rare books and manuscripts library of Harvard College. 3. Access to HOLLIS (Harvard Online Library Information System) is available from telnet://hollis.harvard.edu and http:// gseweb.harvard.edu 4. Gutman Library Special Collections Home Page is available at http://hugse l .harvard.edu/-library/collections.htm 5. The objects discovered within the textbooks have been saved and will be the subject of a future Gutman Library exhibit. 6. Samuel Goodrich, "Map of the World in Outline to Be Filled Up by Students in Geography," in Goodrich's Larger Atlas: Atlas Accompanying Rev. C.A. Goodrich's School Geography (Brattleboro: Holbrook and Fessenden, 1 826), folded map. EDUCATION LIBRARIES VOL. 22, No. 1 / 2 14 A R T I C L E S 7. Special Collections at Gutman Library was organized within the purview of Collection Development. The Special Collections Librarian/Archivist, MaryleneAltieri, began in January 1 994 . 8. I was aw.are of this article, which was published prior to the indexing of Education Libraries by ERIC. 9. The 1 994 articles by Nancy O'Brien and Charles Aston appeared in the newsletter, Paradigm . This newsletter is published by The Colloquium on Textbooks, Schools and Society, a British organization which focuses on textbook research. From time to time Paradigm includes articles on textbook research based on collections in the United States, and a number of Colloquium meetings have been held in the U.S. 1 0. Robert C. Johnston, "Historical Books Speak Volumes on Education," Education Week, 01 May 1 996, 3 1 . 1 1 . Although the focus of this article is on U.S. collections, some Canadian collections are mentioned. A pertinent article on research materials in Canadian archives and museums: W.W. McCutcheon, "The Preservation of Records and Memorabilia of Elementary and Secondary Education by Provincial Archives and Museums," Education Canada 24, no. 4 (Winter 1 984) : 43-46. 1 2. The New York Public Library 's Digital Library Collections Web site at http://digital .nypl.org includes the Making of America II project, which is in development with other research libraries. 1 3 . The Harvard Graduate School of Education, through the services of an architectural firm, has completed a study of its classrooms, computer center, and library spaces. When the renovation plans that resulted from this process are undertaken, the Gutman Library Special Collections will be relocated to a new facility within the library. Any temporary changes in access to these collections will be announced on the Special Collections Home Page. The new facility will provide the additional space needed to make the unprocessed collections accessible. WORKS CITED Aston, Charles. "The John A. Nietz Old Textbook Collection." Paradigm 15 (December 1 994) : 42-44. Chall, Jeanne S. Learning to Read: T he Great Debate. New York: McGraw Hill, 1 967. Updated edition, 1 983. _____ . Learning to Read: T he Great Debate, 3rd ed. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College Publishers, 1 996. Christo, Doris H., comp. National Directory of Education Libraries and Collections . Westport, CT: Meckler, 1 990. EDUCATION LIBRARIES VOL. 22, No. 1 / 2 Directory of Curriculum Materials Centers. 4th ed. Compiled by The Curriculum Materials Centers Directory Revision Ad Hoc Committee of the Education and Behavioral Sciences Section. Edited by Beth G. Anderson. Chicago, IL: Association of College and Research Libraries, American L ibrary Association, 1 996. Directory of Historical Curriculum Collections . Compiled by Ad Hoc Subcommittee on Historical Curriculum Collections. Chicago, IL: Education and Behavioral Sciences Section, Association of College and Research Libraries, American Library Association, 1 988. Directory of Special Libraries and Information Centers, 2 1 st ed. Edited by Marc Faerber and Sara Rowe. Detroit, Mich. : Gale, 1 997. Early American Spellers, 1775-1900: A Catalog ofthe Titles Held by the Educational Research Library. Washington, D.C. : U.S. Dept. of Education, 1 985. Early American Textbooks, 1775-1900: A Catalog of the Titles Held by the Educational Research Library. Washington, D.C. : U.S. Dept. of Education, 1 985. Fifteenth to Eighteenth Century Rare Books on Education: A Catalog of the Titles Held by the Educational Research Library. Washington, D.C. : National Institute of Education, 1 976. Foss, Clive. "Teaching Fascism: Schoolbooks ofMussolini's Italy." Harvard Library Bulletin, n.s . , 8, no. 1 ( 1 997): 5-30. Goodrich, Samuel . "Map of the World in Outline to Be Filled Up by Students in Geography," in Goodrich's Larger Atlas: Atlas Accompanying Rev. C . A. Goodrich 's School Geography. Brattleboro: Holbrook and Fessenden, 1 826. Histor y of Education Museums and Collections International Directory . DeKalb, IL: Blackwell History of Education Research Collection, Northern Illinois University, 1 992. Johnston, Robert C . "Historical B ooks Speak Volumes on Education." Education Week, 01 May 1 996, 3 1 . Lee, Sui H. , ed. "The Role and Future of Special Collections in Research Libraries : British and American Perspectives." Journal of Library Administration 1 9, no. 1 ( 1 993): 1 -98. McCutcheon, W.W. "The Preservation of Records and Memorabilia of Elementary and Secondary Education by Provincial Archives and Museums." Education Canada (Winter 1 984) : 42-46. Missar, Charles D. "Historical Collections of North American Textbooks Identified." Education Libraries 3 (Winter 1 978) : 44-45 , 77-79. A R T I C L E S 1 s Nietz, John A . T he Evolution of American Secondary School Textbooks: Rhetoric & Literature, Algebra, Geometry, Natural History (Zoology), Botany, Natural Philosophy (Physics), Chemistry, Latin and Greek, French, German & World History as Taught in American Latin Grammar School Academies and Early High Schools Before 1900. Rutland, Vt.: C.E. Tuttle Co., 1 966. Nietz, John A. Old Textbooks: Spelling, Grammar, Reading, Arithmetic, Geography, American History Civil Government, Physiology, Penmanship, Art, Music, as Taught in the Common Schools from Colonial Days to I 900. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1 96 1 . O'Brien, Nancy P. "Resources for Curriculum History: Emerging from the Warehouse." Journal of Curriculum Studies 25 (January-February 1 993) : 95-98. _____ . "Strengthening Elementary and Secondary Curriculum and Textbook Resources at the University of Illinois at Urbana- Champaign Education and Social Science Library To Improve National Access. Final Report. Urbana: Illinois University Library, 1 989. ERIC, ED 3 1 1 928. _____ . "Textbooks at the Center for Research Libraries: Repository of United States Education History." Paradigm 15 (December 1 994) : 39-4 1 . � Schultz, Lucille M . "Elaborating Our History: A Look at Mid- 1 9th Century First B ooks of Composi t ion ." College Composition and Communication 45 (February 1 994) : 1 0-30. Special Collections in Children 's Literature: An International Directory. 3d ed. Chicago: American Library Association, 1 995. Subject Collections: A Guide to Special Book Collections and Subject Emphases as Reported by University, College, Public, and Special Libraries and Museums in the United States and Canada. 7th ed. Compiled by Lee Ash and William G. Miller. New Providence: Bowker, 1 993. Wessel, David. "Scanning the Future, Economic Historian Plumbs Distant Past." Wall Street Journal 1 3 February, 1 996, 1 . Gladys Dratch is Collection Development Librarian at the Monroe C. Gutman Library, Harvard University, Graduate School of Education. She is responsible for the selection, evaluation and analysis of the collection, and also participates in Reference Department activities, providing research counseling and library instruction. Ms. Dratch focuses on both current research and on long-range planning for the growth, maintenance, and preservation of the general and special collections. Phone: (6 1 7) 496-3 108; Fax: (617) 495-0540; E-mail : gladys_dratch @harvard.edu EDUCATION LIBRARIES VOL. 22, No. 1 / 2