Cornell University Library records

Collection — Multiple Containers

Identifier: 13-1-17

Scope and content

Correspondence and records relating to the establishment of the Library book collection, including correspondence with book dealers, and particularly with other universities (13-1-17).

Scope and content

Includes letter books, library accounts, particularly for the years 1870-1947 (13-1-395).

Scope and content

Collection also includes 2 bound manuscripts, cataloged separately (13-1-17 Bd. Ms. 1-2+).

Scope and content

Also, the leaflet "Twenty-five years of the annals of Cornell University Library, 1868-1893," by George William Harris, extensively annotated with a list of major early acquisitions in special collections from 1893-1911/1912. The notes appear to be in the hand of George Lincoln Burr. With the leaflet is another early list of special collections acquisitions, covering 1868-1905, in pencil; and a list of special collections in the Library in 1908 (2 leaves), on letterhead of George William Harris.

Dates

1868-1947.

Creator

Burr, George Lincoln, 1857-1938 (Compiler, Person)
Harris, George William, 1849-1917 (Title of work: Twenty-five years of the annals of Cornell University Library, 1868-1893..) (Author, Person)

Biographical / Historical

George Lincoln Burr served as Andrew Dickson White's private secretary, and as the librarian of White's historical rare book collection from 1880 to 1922, eventually becoming a professor of medieval history at Cornell. Burr built Cornell's manuscript and rare book collections in the areas of witchcraft, the Reformation, and the French Revolution. George William Harris was an early University Librarian at Cornell. He invented the Harris classification system for library materials, which was used at Cornell from the 1880s until the 1940s.