RBSC scholars – RBSC at ND

An 18th Century Copper Collective and Britain’s Triangular Trade

by Anne Elise Crafton, PhD, RBSC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Hesburgh Libraries

Although I am trained primarily as a scholar of the medieval world, much of my time as the 2024-2025 Rare Books and Special Collections Postdoctoral Research Fellow has been preoccupied by the early modern documents within the Hesburgh Library’s collection. Among this material is the White Rock Copper Works Shares Collection, which consists of several “assignments of shares”—documents which recorded the transfer of shares or capital—for an eighteenth-century copper cooperative in Bristol and Swansea, UK. Under various names—including the Thomas Coster and Co. (1736/7-1739), the Joseph Percivall and Copper Co. (1739-1764), and the John Freeman and Copper Co. (1764-)—the merchant cooperative operated the White Rock Copper Works, a copper smelting firm in Pentrechwyth (near Swansea). On the surface, the items in this collection simply record the finances of a copper collective during the first 45 years of its existence. When appropriately contextualized, however, this collection testifies to the ubiquity of the Transatlantic Slave Trade in contemporary British markets.

The nineteen items in this collection document the notable growth of the copper cooperative from its creation under Thomas Coster in 1737 until 1781, at which point the controlling interest was held by John Freeman Sr. The financial success of the copper cooperative cannot be understated. In its first year of operation a single share in the cooperative was worth £297 (£56,563 today), but by 1781 a single share was worth £2000 (£266,208, or $345,055 today)!

Assignment of Shares, Thomas Power to Joseph Percivall and Copper Co., 1746-03-08 (MSE/EM 3700-2)

As physical objects, these items are both imposing and underwhelming. They are quite large—most of the parchment documents are approximately 680 x 825 mm (around 2 ¼ x 2 ⅔ ft)—but textually simple. Each document lists the parties involved individually and multiple times (including each member of the copper cooperative at the time of sale), the exact nature of the sale, and the binding nature of the sale in exhaustive and dull legal language.

MSE/EM 3700-2, beginning of document with list the parties involved in the collective

Nowhere in this exhaustive language, however, is there any mention of the primary force behind the collective’s financial success: the Transatlantic Slave Trade.

In the eighteenth century, Bristol was “the slave capital” of Britain’s triangular trade. The port, which in 1755 had 237 slave traders, sent thousands of ships full of manufactured goods to Africa, which brought enslaved Africans (purchased with said goods) to the Americas and returned to the city with the products of slave labor. Every Bristol industry profited from this trade, but the copper industry especially so. Copper products—many of which were produced by the copper collective and the White Rock Copper Works—were favored in nearly every theater of the global slave trade. Copper rods were used to purchase enslaved Africans in West Africa, copper products were used to refine sugar in West Indies plantations, slave and merchant ships had copper-plated bottoms to withstand tropical waves, and copper luxury goods were sold around the world to fund Britain’s colonial control. In other words, it is no coincidence that a copper cooperative in Bristol would see such financial success.

MSE/EM 3700-2, detail of Isaac Hobhouse’s name

Through the data made available by the Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery and the collaborative database Bristol and Transatlantic Slavery, I was able to identify several partners in the copper cooperative named in this collection as active participants in the triangular trade. For instance, the document, “Assignment of Shares, Thomas Power to Joseph Percivall and Copper Co., 1746-03-08 (MSE/EM 3700-2)” (seen above) lists an Isaac Hobhouse (d. 1763) as a member of the Bristol copper cooperative. Like many of his fellows, his occupation is listed innocently as “merchant.” More accurately, though, Hobhouse’s primary occupation was “slave trader”, with 68 recorded voyages on the Transatlantic Slave Trade between 1722 and 1747.

Assignment of Shares, Sibylla Dymock to John Freeman and Copper Co., 1772-01-24 (MSE/EM 3700-8); full document and detail of Samuel Munckley’s name

Another member of the cooperative, Samuel Munckley (1720-1801) (highlighted above in MSE/EM 3700-8), is listed on twelve documents. Like Hobhouse, the designation of “merchant” obscures Munckley’s role as a slave trader and profiteer in the West Indies. Munckley’s own ships were used to bring enslaved peoples from Africa to the West Indies, where many were sold as laborers on sugar plantations—an industry in which Munckley was also heavily invested. (See also “Bristol and Transatlantic Slavery”, which has compiled dozens of Munckley’s papers and correspondence as they relate to the slave trade.)

As I have said: nowhere in the White Rock Copper Works Shares is the slave trade explicitly mentioned. The collection is, at first glance, innocuous to the point of boredom. Yet this does not negate the fact that the wealth described in this collection was gained through an industry which itself relied on the trade of enslaved peoples. For this reason, when creating the finding aid for this collection, I deliberately included the names of each individual listed on the documents (parties involved, partners in the cooperative, and witnesses). No matter the degree to which these historical figures actively participated in the Bristol slave trade, each individual named in this collection profited from the enslavement of others and for this reason, their legacy—as a part of this archive—must be made explicit.

MSE/EM 3700-8, detail of Sibylla Dymock’s signature

Several of the documents in this collection name women as economic actors—whether as sellers of shares, buyers, or witnesses. Although most of these transactions concern widows selling shares formerly owned by their deceased husbands back to the copper cooperative (like the above Sibylla Dymock of MSE/EM 3700-8, who sold her husband’s share back to the cooperative in 1772), their presence in these documents necessarily complicates our reading. Simultaneously, these documents testify to the names and economic force of women whose lives, in many cases, have otherwise gone undocumented and, they also tangibly record the ways in which these women profited from the slave trade and colluded with prominent slave traders.

Works Cited:

“John Freeman and Copper Co.” Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History.

“Isaac Hobhouse.” Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery.

“Joseph Percivall and Copper Co.” Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History.

“Samuel Munckley.” Centre for the Study of the Legacies of British Slavery.

“Suppliers to the trade.” Discovering Bristol: Bristol and Transatlantic Slavery.

“White Rock Copper Works.” Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History.

Unfolding and Understanding a Medieval English Charter

by Anne Elise Crafton, PhD, RBSC Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Hesburgh Libraries

As the 2024-2025 Rare Books and Special Collections Postdoctoral Research Fellow, I learn something new about the Hesburgh Library’s diverse collections every day. This is especially true of my primary research project: the description and arrangement of the library’s hitherto uncatalogued collection of medieval and early modern charters. The collection includes both public and private documents – primarily concerned with land and land-based transactions – spanning eight centuries and three countries (England, France, and Italy), though the majority are of English origin.

Many of the medieval English charters were part of the vast documentary collection of famous antiquarian and bibliophile, Sir Thomas Philipps (d. 1872). In fact, the iconic “Philipps Numbers” which he used to identify the over 40,000 documents in his collection are still visible on the exterior of many of the charters in the Hesburgh Library’s collection.

*Image taken by Jen Hunt Johnson, Special Collections Conservator.*

This Lincolnshire charter was evidently the 30,607th document to join the extensive Philipps collection. After his death, the collection was eventually disbanded and sold. Now, libraries across the world hold small portions of the once massive collection. Of the Hesburgh Library’s collection of charters, at least thirty-five were once owned by Sir Thomas Philipps.

Philipps was not the first person to annotate these charters before they arrived at the Hesburgh Library. In the Middle Ages, after the transaction was complete, the parties involved would add their personal seals and tightly fold the charter recording the event using a method known as “docketing.” This collection of charters was received in their original docketed form and are currently being flattened for ease of access by Hesburgh Library’s Special Collections Conservator Jen Hunt Jonson. The photos in this post were taken during that ongoing process.

Once docketed, a scribe would label the document, naming the location of the land in question, names of the parties, or the date. If no medieval label existed, early modern archivists might inscribe a label according to their own filing systems.

*Images taken by Jen Hunt Johnson, Special Collections Conservator.*

This next charter from the collection, for example, still retains a medieval wax pendent seal bearing an “S” and the word “Ughill,” a small town in Sheffield, Yorkshire, in an early modern hand. This corresponds with the text on the interior, which tells us in Latin that a Richard Schagh granted a tenement in “Ugilwode” to a Thomas Curton in 1377.

A third charter in the collection also bears an early modern inscription which reads, among other notes, “Without Date.” This is true. The text inside does not include the date of signing, though this is not particularly unusual for medieval English charters. Using modern resources and research, however, it is possible to ascertain a general date of origin.

This particular charter is a “feoffment” – an exchange of land for a pledge of service – between Thomas Furnival, son of Thomas Furnival, and John Witely, son of John Witely concerning lands in “Wiggethuysel” (Wigtwizzle, near Sheffield, Yorkshire). All in all, this charter is extremely typical of medieval English charters; the names “Thomas” and “John” are common medieval names and the contract between them is nothing special. The handwriting – a popular medieval English script known as “Cursiva Anglicana” – only tells us that the charter is medieval and English. There are few clues in the physical material of the charter – like many medieval charters, this document is small, made of soft parchment, and stained with wax.

There is, however, a clue in the surname “Furnival” (highlighted in yellow below). In the mid-fourteenth century, the Furnivall family was granted the Barony of Sheffield, Yorkshire and raised to minor nobility. As nobility, the Furnivall family kept detailed genealogical records dating back to the twelfth century.¹ Based on these records, we find that there were two “Thomas, son of Thomas” Furnivalls, the first of whom died in 1279, and the second in 1348. This suggests that this document is either from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century.

We can specify further. Among the witnesses listed in the charter, there is a “Lord Elias Middehop” (in red) and “Robert Rus of Anesacre [Onesacre]” (in blue). According to a catalogue of Sheffield charters, the same Elias Middehop witnessed a separate charter for a Thomas, son of Thomas Furnivall, sometime between 1267-1279.² Additionally, according to a genealogy of important Yorkshire families, in the late thirteenth century, the daughter of a “Sir Elias Middehop” married the grandson of a “Sir Robert Rus of Onesacre.”³ Altogether, this evidence suggests that the Hesburgh Library charter is probably dated to the late thirteenth century, likely between 1250-1279.

Each charter in the Hesburgh Library collection has similarly rich historical puzzles to unwind. Once catalogued, the collection will be made available for use by students and researchers alike.

Footnotes

1. John Burke, A general and heraldic dictionary of the peerages of England, Ireland, and Scotland, extinct, dormant, and in abeyance, (London, H. Colburn and R. Bentley, 1831), 215-217. Special Coll. Reference • CS 422 .B84 1831

2. Walter Hall, Sheffield and Rotherham from the 12th to the 18th Century: A Descriptive Catalogue of Miscellaneous Charters and Other Documents Relating to the Districts of Sheffield and Rotherham with Abstracts of Sheffield Wills, proved at York from 1554 to 1560 And 315 Genealogies Deduced Therefrom, (Sheffield: J. W. Northend, 1916), 210.

3. Joseph Foster, Pedigrees of the County Families of Yorkshire, v. 2 (London: W. Wilfred Head, P L O U O H Court, Fetter Lane, E.G., 1875), 281-282.

A Closer Look at a Glossed Bible Leaf

by David T. Gura, Ph.D., Curator, Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts

This leaf (Frag. I. 21) comes from a glossed Bible produced in France during the twelfth century. Glossed bibles contained both scripture and explanatory comments (glosses) on the same page and were used in teaching and formation. The small format of this Bible (305 x 207 mm) allowed a master to bring it to the schoolroom easily for use. The layout of glossed bibles is intentional and functional: scripture occupies the central column and space is allotted for glosses to be written in the margins (marginal glosses) and between lines (interlinear glosses). The glosses can explicate the biblical text in literal, allegorical, moral, and even anagogical ways.

The particular text of this leaf comes from 2 Chronicles (II Paralipomenon). The function of interlinear and marginal glosses is distinct and can be observed in the following two examples. On the verso above the text misit Nabuchodonosor rex (“King Nebuchadnezzar sent”) an interlinear gloss is written: de hoc plenius in libro Regum scriptum est (“there is a fuller written account about him in the book of Kings”). The gloss is short and informative, directing the reader to find more information about a proper name.

Compare this to the gloss on Joachim copied in the left margin of the recto. This comment is more substantive and begins a literal/historical interpretation, then moves to allegorical and moral explications: “Joachim was taken prisoner and lead into Babylon; this signifies the fall of the righteous who were deceived by the Devil’s handiwork. They are lead astray into the ruin of heresy and vice. These people were supposed to teach others in word and deed and raise them from sin.” (Ioachim captiuus in Babilonem ductus, lapsum rectorum significat qui diaboli arte delusi, abducuntur in confusionem errorum ac uiciorum et qui alios uerbo et opere docere debuerant, et a peccato suscitare.)

The parent manuscript was formerly in the Benedictine abbey of Saint-Oyan de Joux (Saint-Claude), where it appeared in the abbey’s library catalogue dated 8 March 1492. The codex was later in the collection of William L. Clements of Bay City, Michigan (1860-1934) and then in possession of the Cleveland, Ohio, biblioclast Otto F. Ege by 1937. Leaves were also being offered for sale by Philip Duschnes (New York, NY) in 1943 and 1946.

Bibliography

Alexander Andrée, “Glossed Bibles,” in The Oxford Handbook of the Latin Bible, ed. H.A.G. Houghton, 208-224. Oxford University Press, 2023.

Auguste Castan “Le Bibliothèque de l’Abbaye de Saint-Claude du Jura: Esquisse de son histoire.” Bibliothèque de l’École des chartes 50 (1889): 301-354.

David T. Gura, A Descriptive Catalogue of the Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts of the University of Notre Dame and Saint Mary’s College. Notre Dame (IN): University of Notre Dame Press, 2016, p. 429-430.

Scott J. Gwara, Otto Ege’s Manuscripts: A Study of Ege’s Manuscript Collections, Portfolios, and Retail Trade. Cayce, SC, 2013, 31-32, 39, 40, 71-72.

Congratulations to the 2024 Graduates!

Best wishes to the 2024 graduates of the University of Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College, and Holy Cross College, from all of us in Rare Books and Special Collections.

We would particularly like to congratulate the following student who worked in Special Collections during their time on campus:

Anne Elise Crafton (ND ’24), Ph.D., Medieval Studies. Their dissertation is titled “You Sound Like a Wif: The Representation of Women’s Speech in Old English”.

Both images: MSE/EM 110-1B, Diploma, University of Padua, 1690

Spotlight Exhibit: A Choir Book for Medieval Nuns

by Kristina Kummerer, Ph.D. student in the Medieval Institute

The February-March Spotlight, A Choir Book for Medieval Nuns, highlights one item from the Hesburgh Library’s Special Collections in order to showcase the activities of women religious in the Middle Ages. It features a small fifteenth-century manuscript from Poissy, France, which once belonged to a convent of Dominican nuns devoted to St. Louis (that is, King Louis IX of France, who ruled 1226-1270). This manuscript, called a Processional, would have been used by the nuns at Poissy as they moved through the ceremonial space in liturgical celebrations throughout the year.

Processional chants for Palm Sunday, cod. Lat. a 17, f. 7r

Each member of a procession likely held her own book as they processed. Nuns at Poissy, typically noblewomen, often personalized their Processionals with elaborate paintings of their personal patrons, family coats of arms, or convent community. Unlike most other surviving Processionals from this convent, of which there are many, this manuscript is surprisingly lacking in ornate decorations. Even on celebrations unique to their community, such as the Procession for the feast day of St. Louis, the decorations are standard for the genre. This, along with an ownership mark from the seventeenth century, may indicate that this Processional was a general community book under care of the chantress – the appointed musical leader of the liturgy – rather than personally owned.

Processional chants for St. Louis, cod. Lat. a 17, f. 44r

Even within a women’s community, the foremost leadership roles in the liturgy were primarily held by the male religious who oversaw the convent and its care. However, at the convent in Poissy, the nuns held an explicit liturgical role in certain ceremonies, including processions. This can be seen in this Processional’s rubrics (red-ink liturgical instructions).

Rubrics (red ink) and chant cues for Good Friday responses, cod. Lat. a 17, f. 23v-24r

For example, on Good Friday, after two priests (duo sacerdotes) sang Christ’s words in a ceremonial recapitulation of the Passion, this manuscript designates that two sisters (due sorores) sang a part assigned typically to male deacons. The choir (chorus) responded afterwards. Since it was unusual to include women as liturgical leaders, these rubrics indicate that women regularly used this manuscript and emphasize their agency and participation within the liturgy.

This exhibit was curated by Kristina Kummerer, a Ph.D. student in the Medieval Institute, as part of a curatorial assistantship in Rare Books and Special Collections. It can be viewed in 102 Hesburgh Library from 9:00 am – 5:00 pm on weekdays.

Keough-Naughton Library Research Award — Visiting Scholars of Irish Studies

We congratulate the following scholars who won this award in 2023, and we hope they will enjoy, as well as benefit from, their time in the Hesburgh Libraries.

The Keough-Naughton Library Research Award in Irish Studies, a grant designed to assist scholars who travel to use the Irish collections at the Hesburgh Libraries, was inaugurated in 2018. The annual competitive award is sponsored by the Keough-Naughton Institute of Irish Studies and ND International.

Dr. Seán Doherty, a lecturer at the School of Theology, Philosophy and Music, Dublin City University, is a composer and musicologist.

His project is ‘Patterns in 1001 Gems: The O’Neill Collection of Traditional Irish Music.’

Seán expects to visit in the fall and will work closely with the O’Neill Collection, the personal library of Francis O’Neill, the Chicago Chief of Police whose published collections of Irish traditional dance music have played a large role in the music of Ireland.

Dr. Anne Jamison, Senior Lecturer in Literary Studies at the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University, Australia.

Anne is a feminist literary critic with a research focus on nineteenth-century Ireland and also on Australian women’s literature. She has published widely on Somerville and Ross as well as on other Irish women writers.

Her project is ‘Irish Women’s Fairy Tale and Fantasy Writing for Children, 1800-1935.’

She expects to visit this summer, and to make great use of the Irish literature collections throughout the Hesburgh Library, focusing on works by Winifred Letts, Rosa Mulholland and Frances Browne in our Rare Books and Special Collections.

Annabel Barry is at the Department of English at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is a PhD candidate.

Her project is ‘The Romantic Ordinary’, and in her visit she studied materials from the nineteenth century and earlier, including the Holzapfel Collection of James Clarence Mangan.

Past recipients of the Award are listed on the Keough-Naughton Institute’s website, and this website also provides information on the award itself.

Congratulations to the 2023 Graduates!

Best wishes to the 2023 graduates of the University of Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College, and Holy Cross College, from all of us in Rare Books and Special Collections.

We would particularly like to congratulate the following students who worked in Special Collections during their time on campus:

Sarah Berland (ND ’23), Bachelor of Arts in Neuroscience and Behavior, with an Irish Language and Literature Minor.

Kathryn Heyser (ND ’23), Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering and Bachelor of Arts in History.

Special Collections in the Classroom: Notre Dame Students’ Online Exhibition Hidden Depths

by Rachel Bohlmann, Curator of North Americana and American History Librarian and Erika Hosselkus, Curator of Latin Americana and Strategic Implementation Project Manager

This week Special Collections highlights an online exhibition created by Notre Dame students in their fall 2022 class, Stories of Power and Diversity: Inside Museums, Archives and Collecting. The exhibition, Hidden Depths: Resurfacing the Overlooked and Underrepresented, brings together materials from the University of Notre Dame’s campus repositories–Rare Books and Special Collections, the Snite Museum of Art, and University Archives–selected and interpreted by the students.

Screen shot of the homepage of the digital exhibition "Hidden Depths", showing the header banner at top (a collage of detail images of the items explored in the digital exhibit) and below that the first few tiles of the exhibit showcases.

The items displayed here vary in format, time period, medium, style, and content–abstract painting, sculpture, installation art, photographs, and collections of historic documents–and are created by people of diverse backgrounds and experiences. Their selection reflects the themes of the class, which were to explore the history of collecting in Europe and North America and some of the field’s major questions, including, what has been left out? Where are there gaps and silences in collections and archives?

Eight students applied a curatorial gaze to these materials, to examine how they do and do not intersect with themes of diversity. While these curators recognize the diverse identities of the creators of these objects, the showcases comprising this exhibition point viewers to hidden depths. They ask that we consider how identities are nuanced through regional conditions, educational background, economic forces, and personal trauma. And just as importantly, the curators of the show consider how identity and diversity are not always directly linked in one’s art or expression. They also demand that consumers of these pieces of art and historical sources work to apprehend the complexities behind their creation. By extension, they suggest that we take a careful second look in other contexts, beyond the online gallery or the museum.

This exhibition offers interpretation, but it also asks questions, and challenges viewers even as it invites them to connect with holdings in the University of Notre Dame’s campus repositories. Information about the student curators and their experiences in this course can be found in the personal statements at the end of each showcase.

Hidden Depths showcases ways in which students engaged with special collections materials over a semester-long project. The result is a display that uncovers, refocuses and takes an imperative second look.

Students Propose New Diverse and Inclusive Acquisitions in RBSC

by Rachel Bohlmann, American History Librarian and Curator and Erika Hosselkus, Curator, Latin American Collections

Museums, special collections, and archives acquire materials in a variety of ways, most commonly through donation and purchase. Hesburgh Libraries is no exception.

Last fall, students in the multi-disciplinary class, Stories of Power and Diversity: Inside Museums, Archives, and Collecting, created acquisition proposals for Hesburgh Libraries. Class members were asked to put themselves in the shoes of curators and select materials that would develop the library’s collection in diverse and inclusive ways. The formats of prospective purchases were left fairly open; students could consider a wide range of types of materials–from books to manuscripts to posters and even artifacts (realia). As an incentive (and as a gesture to how libraries and archives compete for and manage resources), the most deserving proposal (determined by class vote) would be purchased, placed in the library’s collections, and featured on the library’s social media (this blogpost!).

Students searched vendor websites and online catalogs and considered some of the following questions.

How complete is this item or collection? Are there significant gaps or pieces missing?
If a collection of photographs, are they identified or identifiable, in terms of locations, dates, names of people?
If it is a printed item (a book, posters, pamphlet), how rare is it? (Use WorldCat.)
Does HL already own it? (Check the library catalog, ask librarians/instructors.)
If the item is a manuscript (not printed or published), does the library hold related items?
What might be the research value? How might researchers (in different disciplines–history, gender studies, art history, etc.) make use of this item(s)? What perspectives does the item convey? What can we learn from it?

The students presented their proposals in class and discussed some of the challenges and satisfaction they discovered along the way. Timi Griffin, who assembled a small but significant collection of printed materials and realia from different vendors about Civil Rights activist, presidential candidate, and comedian Dick Gregory, won the class’s vote for best proposal. Congratulations Timi!

Timi argued that the library should purchase items relating to Gregory’s 1968 presidential campaign, including a poster, flier, buttons, and fake dollar bills with the candidate’s portrait in place of Washington’s, and a signed copy of his 2000 memoir. Taken together, the items contextualize Gregory’s activism and prominence in the Civil Rights movement and American culture and politics in the last decades of the twentieth century.

The students’ presentations showed that they had taken seriously the assignment’s task of strengthening diversity and inclusion in the collections. Rare Books and Special Collections decided to purchase all of the items they proposed adding to the collections. These are:

–a 1914 photograph of the Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute Football Team, an African American school in Hampton, Virginia.

Football Team, Hampton Normal and Agricultural Institute, 1914

–a signed, fine press copy of the first chapter of Margaret Atwood’s The Blind Assassin with an original print by Yoko Ono; created to raise funds to fight AIDS in Africa (2008).

Slipcover and print for Margaret Atwood’s *Blind Assassin*

–an issue of Black Fire, the newspaper of the Black Students Union at San Francisco State University from 1969.

–a collection of nine mid-century lesbian pulp fiction paperbacks and reprinted novels, and a related work.

–an album of photographs, probably by an American, of the Pacific and South-East Asia, including Hawaii, Japan, the Philippines, Ceylon, India, and the Himalayas, circa 1905.

Views from Darjeeling and
“a thorn between two roses”

–diaries of Thaddeus Hayes of Connecticut, created between 1795 and 1803.

Thaddeus Hayes diary page, December 1797 – January 1798

–two photographic essays about Japan by W. Eugene Smith and associates: Japan–a Chapter of Image (1963) and Minamata : Life – Sacred and Profane (1973).

These new acquisitions are welcome additions to the library’s special collections, adding particularly to sources about Southeast and East Asia, and materials created in the last 30 years. The collections need to be strengthened in all of these areas. The newly-purchased materials are currently in the process of being cataloged, organized, and housed so that they can be accessed and used by present and future generations of library users.

Opportunities for Research Visits to Notre Dame’s Special Collections

The Rare Books and Special Collections at Hesburgh Library welcomes visiting scholars whether they wish to consult one book or to spend many days immersed in our collections.

A number of research grants and awards are made available by a variety of institutions which may be of interest to people considering travelling for research visits. These are administered and funded by various groups, and so the information in this blogpost is intended to serve as a signpost to different opportunities, and to encourage readers to follow the links to the relevant grants and awards.

Dante Studies Travel Grants

With the Devers Family Program in Dante Studies, the Center for Italian Studies co-sponsors travel grants for faculty and graduate students from other institutions whose research would benefit from on-site access to Notre Dame’s special collections on Dante, the Ambrosiana archive, or other of its Italian holdings. For more information, please contact devers@nd.edu.

The Italian Studies Library Research Award

The Center for Italian Studies and Notre Dame International jointly administer an Italian Studies Library Research Award. This award provides grant funding for scholars to use the collections of the Hesburgh Libraries for research in Italian studies. Research awards are intended to defray the cost of travel and accommodation for research visits of one to three weeks in duration. Applications from international locations are encouraged. Read more about this award and access the application on the Center for Italian Studies’ website.

Keough-Naughton Library Research Award in Irish Studies

The Keough-Naughton Library Research Award provides grant funding to assist scholars who travel to the Notre Dame campus to use the collections of the Hesburgh Libraries for research in all aspects of Irish studies. This award is funded and administered jointly by the Keough Naughton Institute for Irish Studies and Notre Dame International. Information and application instructions for this grant may be found on the Keough-Naughton Institute for Irish Studies website.

Professor Sonja Tiernan,
Eamon Cleary Chair of Irish Studies and Co-director Centre for Irish & Scottish Studies,
University of Otago | Te Whare Wānanga o Otāgo

Cushwa Center Research Travel Grants

The Cushwa Center provides research grants for the Study of Catholicism in America. Information on their opportunities for research in the University of Notre Dame Archives and the Hesburgh Libraries may be found on the Cushwa Center’s Research Travel Grants page.

Hibernian Research Awards

Funded by an endowment from the Ancient Order of Hibernians and Ladies Ancient Order of Hibernians, these annual awards provide travel funds to support the scholarly study of Irish and Irish American history. This grant is administered by the Cushwa Center of Catholic Studies. Information is available on the Grant Opportunities page of the Cushwa Center’s website.