The Rare Books & Special Collections
The Rare Books & Special Collections room at Reeves Library contains many rare and unique collections, such as the texts used by early Moravian students, rare first edition books by well known authors, over-sized bibles, an autograph collection, and much more!
Rare Book Room Announcement
Reeves Library is pleased to announce the recent addition of the Eric Ruskoski Collection to its Rare Books Collection. This generous donation by Mr. Ruskoski, a college Alumni (class of 1969), features more than 170 rare and/or autographed first edition books by critically acclaimed American authors such as Walt Whitman, John Updike, Ernest Hemingway, Joseph Heller, and more.
Be on the lookout for educational exhibits and lectures at Reeves Library in the near future that highlight many of these beautiful works and their authors.
How to Access the collections
Materials from the Rare Books and Special Collections room do not circulate and require approval and a scheduled appointment to view. Access is limited to faculty, students and approved visiting scholars.
To browse the collections of books located in the Special Collections/Rare Books Room, please go to https://library.moravian.edu/reeveslibrary and search the catalog using B8: to pull up specific collection. For instance, if you enter in the search bar:
"B8: Rare" - This will retrieve all items in the Rare Books Collection.
"B8: Female" - This will retrieve all items in the Historic Female Seminary Collection (books used by students of the Moravian Seminary for Young Ladies, 1742-1935).
"B8: Men" - This will retrieve all items from the Historic Men's Seminary Collection (books used by students at Moravian College and Theological Seminary, 1807-1924).
To search for specific items each collection, use the advanced search option and place "B8: rare" in the keyword search and add another search index term to narrow your results.
For questions or to inquire about accessing the rare books and special collections, please contact:
Cory W. Dieterly
College & Seminary Archivist
Phone: 610-625-7965
Email: dieterlyc@moravian.edu