Collection Development

RBML holds one of the largest collections of manuscript fragments in North America, as well as a substantial collection of codices and diplomatics. RBML collects across national, genre, and linguistic boundaries in this area, with particular emphasis on items that contribute to active international fragmentology reconstruction programs; manuscripts of pastoral care; and fragments and codices offering useful and compelling opportunities for classroom teaching and outreach (odd or unique formats and layouts, evidence of direct reader interaction with texts, vernacular texts, and unusual scribal and codicological features). When acquiring fragments, RBML actively strives to avoid the purchase of recent or new products of deliberate book-breaking.

RBML has extensive collections of books printed prior to 1800, with particular strengths in incunabula (pre-1501 imprints); German and English Reformation materials (16th-17th centuries); early-English and Golden Age Spanish drama; historical astronomy; and English imprints from 1475-1700. Some current areas of collecting focus include:

• Women and the pre-modern book (women as authors, owners, publishers, patrons, and readers, or about women’s related topics)
• “Small voices” of the Reformation, or works revealing the thoughts and opinions of everyday people during this tumultuous period
• Central and South American indigenous culture (materials reflecting the persistence of indigenous cultures and their interaction with European colonial powers from the 15th-18th centuries)

RBML has substantial collections of modern literature, predominantly in English, but with select holdings of materials in other languages. Our major areas of collecting focus include:

American Literature

The William Charvat Collection of American Literature features one of the most extensive collections of American fiction in the world. RBML aims for comprehensiveness (excluding folk tales, juvenile fiction, anecdotes, and formulaic fiction) for American fiction titles published from the late-18th century to 1920, with more selective acquisition for titles published after this date based on a flexible and responsive approach to emerging literary, scholarly, and curricular trends. OSU’s holdings of American fiction published through 1900 are among the strongest in the nation and are particularly strong for the period 1876-1900. The collection's holdings for the years 1901-1925 are rivaled only by the Library of Congress. In addition to fiction, RBML collects American poetry, with a particular emphasis on 19th-century authors.

• The Charvat Collection is named in honor of William Charvat, professor of American literature at The Ohio State University who was a guiding force in the development of this collection. More information is available here.

British Literature

RBML has strong holdings in modern British literature, including first editions of works by significant writers such as William Blake, Jane Austen, Joseph Conrad, and Virginia Woolf; Victorian periodicals such as Household Words; important modernist magazines such as Blast and The Little Review; select archival materials, including scrapbooks and correspondence related to Dylan Thomas.

Underrepresented Voices

RBML’s current collecting focuses on more deliberately capturing diverse historical and contemporary voices in modern literature, with particular emphasis on BIPOC and LGBTQ authors and concerns; pulp fiction; and genre fiction.

RBML’s printed collections of modern literature (principally American) are augmented by an expansive collection of contemporary literary archives that bear witness to the creative, commercial, and production processes behind published works. Materials include correspondence, manuscripts, drafts, ephemera, and other associated materials. Significant collections include: Nelson Algren, Samuel Beckett, Louis Bromfield, William S. Burroughs, Raymond Carver, Conjunctions (literary journal), Joanne Grant, Karen Harper, Jessica Mitford, Rick Moody, James Purdy, Helen Hooven Santmyer, James Thurber, Frederic Tuten, William T. Vollmann. In addition to continuing to strengthen existing collections, RBML is interested in literary archives of women writers; writers of color; Ohio writers (particularly Sarah Piatt); literary archives related to Columbus writers, publishers, booksellers, and other local literary endeavors.

RBML actively collects zines—self-published, inexpensively made, often photocopied and stapled, small circulation publications created for passion rather than profit—that document voices, perspectives, and experiences that may not be found in mainstream publications. RBML has particular strengths in: LGBTQ zines from the 1980s-present; 1970s-1980s punk zines; Riot Grrrl zines. We are actively collecting zines with a local or regional focus (especially by OSU students or writers from Columbus); by LGBTQ writers or with an LGBTQ focus; by women writers; about women’s, gender, sexuality studies, including feminism and activism; and by BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) or with a BIPOC focus.

RBML holds the Brett Shingledecker GLTB Collection, an archival collection documenting Shingledecker’s work as cofounder of the first exclusively LGBTQ bookstore in Chicago as well as his LGBTQ activism during the 1980s and 1990s. The collection also contains more than 800 cataloged volumes, including books, magazines, and zines. Additional collections with LGBTQ content include: William S. Burroughs Papers, James Purdy Papers, Don Tunncliff Rice Collection of Radical Literature, LGBTQ Zine and Ephemera Collection. RBML is aggressively pursuing collection development in this area, with particular interest in zines, photographic archives, and manuscript material chronicling LGBTQ life and culture (particularly in Ohio and the Midwest), and historic, artistic, and literary works testifying to LGBTQ life worldwide prior to the 20th century.

RBML houses several collections related to women’s history, with a particular emphasis on activism, feminism, and literature. Relevant collections include: Women’s Suffrage Collection, Collection on Women’s Rights and Other Issues, Rebecca Pixler Collection of Dealer Catalogs Pertaining to Women’s Literature and History; Margaret Honton Papers, numerous diaries, journals, and scrapbooks. RBML is actively collecting on women and activism, and women’s social movements (generally but especially related to Ohio), with an emphasis on 19th – 21st century American materials.

RBML holds the Talfourd P. Linn Cervantes Collection, one of North America’s most significant collections of works by Miguel Cervantes, ranging from a 1605 printing of Don Quixote and other 17th-century editions of his works through modern editions, adaptations, and translations from around the world. RBML actively acquires any editions not already owned, and also seeks out materials revealing how Cervantes and his works have been adapted and repackaged for new purposes and audiences (such as advertising ephemera, the performing arts, and select examples of merchandising and realia).

RBML actively develops the Ivan Gilbert Trade Catalogue Collection, an assembly of more than 10,000 items (primarily American) that illustrate through textual content and graphic design the commercial preoccupations and everyday lives of American from the mid-19th to the mid-20th centuries.

RBML holds an exceptional collection of 18th to early-20th century English and American materials—books, printed ephemera, and some manuscripts—on English and American rhetorical and oratorical education and practice. Collections include Jerry Tarver Collection of Elocution, Rhetoric, and Oratory Ephemera and the Nan Johnson Collection on Elocution and Rhetoric.

RBML holds one of North America’s largest collections of 19th-century cased photographs, as well as extensive collections of 19th-21st century documentary, art, and vernacular photography. Current collecting foci include materials illustrating different photographic processing techniques and technologies; select examples of 19th-century cased photography; vernacular photography exploring the lives of indigenous communities around the world, but particularly in the Americas; LGBTQ culture and experience; and the experiences of American military veterans. Click here for a more detailed description and link to our online photographic collections database.

RBML’s largest cookbook collection is The Peter D. Franklin Cookbook Collection, which includes more than 8,000 volumes reflecting the history of Ohio and Midwest regional cooking, early-American culinary arts, and ethnic and immigrant cookbooks. RBML also houses The Margaret Sila Barres Collection of Regional American Cookbooks, comprised of more than 1,500 volumes, as well as manuscript receipt books from America and Europe (17th-20th centuries).

RBML holds a significant collection of historic Irish literature, with particularly strong holdings in 20th-century materials and the works of Samuel Beckett (including manuscripts), and developing collections of 18th-19th century literary and historical works. Current areas of collecting interest include early Irish and Irish-American periodicals; materials related to the Easter Rising; 17th-18th-century political tracts; 18th-19th century literature by Irish authors; and the output of the Cuala Press (including ephemera related to its activities). The acquisition of current Irish poetry, drama, and fiction is supported by an approval plan.

RBML holds an extensive collection of Avant materials, primarily of North American writers from the 1970s to the present, but with international materials from writers associated with the American authors represented in the collection. Particular areas of focus include visual poetry, mail art, and Fluxus materials. The collection includes both physical and born-digital materials. RBML currently is focusing on acquiring select contemporary Avant publications, as well as historical examples of the movement from the early-19th to the early-20th centuries.

RBML is home to the HJAL, a growing collection that chronicles the history and development of architecture worldwide from the advent of printing to through the mid-20th century. Current areas of developing strength include 15th-17th-century Western European architecture; the Beaux-Arts movement; Soviet Constructivism; iron and steel architecture; 19th- and 20th-century Chinese and Japanese architecture; and photographic archives of individual architects. The HJAL will continue to collect in these areas, but is also actively seeking materials related to African, Eastern European, Near Eastern, Indian, and Indigenous American architecture.

The Albrecht Library and Foundation was established and endowed by Robert S. and Margaret V. Albrecht in tribute to the career of the respected Ohio architect, Herman J. Albrecht, Robert's father. Click here for additional information.