The Yale Library Collections

The Yale University Library houses one of the premier research collections in the world. The Library consists of the central libraries--Sterling Memorial Library, Cross Campus Library, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the Seeley G. Mudd Library (a high-density storage facility which also houses the Government Documents and Information Center)--and twenty-one school and departmental libraries, as well as small collections within each of the twelve residential colleges. Second largest among the university libraries in the United States, the Yale Library contains more than eleven million volumes, well over one-third of which are in Sterling Memorial Library (major humanities, social science, and area studies collections) and the Cross Campus Library (primarily an intensive-use collection). Each year the Yale Library adds approximately 175,000 new volumes as well as numerous maps, sound recordings, microforms, manuscripts, coins, musical scores, art works, computer files and databases. Descriptions of the Library's holdings may be found in Orbis, the online catalog and WorldCat.

The philosophy collection at Yale is nearly as old as the college itself. The Yale Library's first printed catalogue of books, compiled in 1743 by Thomas Clap, then President of Yale College, lists a number of philosophical treatises including works by Descartes, Gassendi, Newton, Watts, Crousaz and Evelyn. Many of these came as part of a gift of books from George Berkeley, the Irish philosopher and Anglican bishop. Among other titles in Berkeley's collection were editions of Aristotle, St. Augustine, Erasmus, Malebranche, Locke, Bacon, Grotius, and Machiavelli, as well as one of Berkeley's later works, Alciphron, or the Minute Philosopher. These titles are now part of the "1742 Library" and are kept at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Today most of the philosophy collection at Yale resides on floors 6M (LC Classification B) and 7 (Yale Classification K) of Sterling Memorial Library. A small collection of heavily used journals and major critical editions is kept in the Philosophy Study (room 610 in Sterling).

The library also owns several relevant collections in microform, including the papers of Martin Buber, Charles S. Peirce, Ludwig Wittgenstein, John Locke, and David Hume. Full-text databases include The Philosopher's Index, Past Masters, Early English Books Online, Eighteenth Century Collection Online, Early American Imprints (Evans), Series I, and ARTFL.

In addition to Sterling, several other libraries maintain growing philosophy collections. The Divinity Library collects extensively in religious philosophy and ethics; the Law Library, in addition to jurisprudence, collects ethics, political philosophy and the history of philosophy. The Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library owns a number of important historical texts and manuscripts, including the papers of Ernst Cassirer and Felix S. Cohen, a large collection of Islamic philosophical manuscripts, and thousands of early printed works, including the 1578 Strasburg edition of Plato's Works printed by Henri Estienne. The Arts Library, the Social Science Library, the Kline Science Library and the Classics Library also have collections of interest. Most of their holdings can be found in Orbis.

Yale University Library Research Guide in Philosophy
Comments and questions to Anne Oechtering
Prepared by David L. Eastman
Illustration from René Descartes' Principia Philosophiæ, 1677
©2007 Yale University Library