The William L. Clements Library is a rare book and manuscript repository located on the University of Michigan's central campus in Ann Arbor, Michigan. Specializing in Americana and particularly North American history prior to the twentieth century, the holdings of the Clements Library are grouped into four categories: Books, Manuscripts, Graphics and Maps. The library's collection of primary source materials is expansive and particularly rich in the areas of social history, the American Revolution, and the colonization of North America. The Book collection includes 80,000 rare books, pamphlets, broadsides, and periodicals. Within the other divisions, the library holds 600 atlases, approximately 30,000 maps, 99,400 prints and photographs, 134 culinary periodicals, 20,000 pieces of ephemera, 2,600 manuscript collections, 150 pieces of artwork, 100 pieces of realia, and 15,000 pieces of sheet music.
The Clements Library is visited by over 450 researchers yearly. Patrons include undergraduate students, graduate students, faculty, and scholars from around the world, such as Pulitzer Prize-winning author and historian, David McCullough, who used the library's collections for the book 1776. The library building was designed by architect Albert Kahn.
History
William L. Clements, an alumnus and regent of the University of Michigan, founded the library in 1923. The library's initial collections were donated by Clements, an avid collector of materials relating to the discovery of the Americas by Europeans and the American Revolution. Clements’ extensive personal collection included "20,000 volumes of rare books, 2,000 volumes of early newspapers, several hundred maps, and the papers of William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne." Upon the opening of the library, Clements published the book, The William L. Clements Library of Americana at the University of Michigan, detailing the acquisition of his personal collection. The book and the Clements Library were reviewed by Lawrence C. Wroth in the New York Times on July 22, 1923. Wroth vigorously praised Clements, saying, "The Clements Library goes to the University of Michigan [as a collection] in which no inquiry concerning America between 1492 and 1800 need go unanswered."
In addition to giving his collection, Clements donated funds to build the current library building. Detroit architect Albert Kahn designed the building "in the Italian Renaissance style, based on Vignola's casino for the Villa Farnese, ca. 1587, in Caprarola, Italy."
Among the restrictions Clements placed upon the library was that it should remain separate from the university's greater library system and be governed by an independent board of trustees. Today, this distinct governing structure remains in place, but the library's holdings are integrated into the University Library's Mirlyn catalog.
From 1935 to 1945 Howard Henry Peckham was manuscript curator, during which time Clements Library was acquiring collections that established an international reputation for itself as an institution for the study of the Revolutionary War and British Colonial America.
Collections
The library's collections are spread across five divisions: the Book Division, the Manuscripts Division, the Graphics Division and the Map Division. The Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive, established in 2002 as a fifth division, moved in 2013 to the Hatcher Library, the special collections section of the University of Michigan Library.
Exhibits showcasing the library's collection are on public display on weekday afternoons. Exhibited materials have included rare books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, and prints. Past exhibition topics include: the history of wine-making in America, the sugar trade in the Atlantic world, sports played in 19th century America, and the War of 1812.
Book Division
The Book Division contains approximately 80,000 books, pamphlets, broadsides, and periodicals. Highlights of the collection include books on the discovery and exploration of North America, colonial American imprints, and books and pamphlets of the American Revolution. Expanding beyond the areas of William L. Clements’ personal collection, the library also holds books on a variety of subjects such as African American history, education, Native American history, politics, religion, sermons and orations, slavery and anti-slavery, the West Indies, and women's history. The contributions of other collectors, such as the James V. Medler Crime Collection and James S. Schoff Civil War Collection, provide additional subject strengths on certain topics.