Look­ing for the best resource to track down copies of a fifteenth-century print­ing (try ISTC)? What about the ver­nac­u­lar equiv­a­lent for Lud­guni Batauo­rum (Lei­den, Nether­lands, accord­ing to Latin Place Names)? Need to find a rare, eighteenth-century Amer­i­can imprint (try NAIP)? All of these ques­tions (and more) can be answered via the new library guide, Resources for Rare Books: An Anno­tated Bib­li­og­ra­phy. Though still very much a work in progress, the bib­li­og­ra­phy is intended to pro­vide quick access to stan­dard ref­er­ence works (both elec­tronic and print) for many fields of study in the his­tory of the book. Cur­rently, only a hand­ful of sub­jects are briefly cov­ered: incunab­ula, sixteenth-century print­ings, Americana, provenance, and book illus­tra­tion. Even­tu­ally, how­ever, this guide will encom­pass mul­ti­ple fields of study and pro­vide selected resources that are rel­e­vant to research­ing both a sub­ject as a whole, as well as spe­cific hold­ings and col­lec­tions within the Depart­ment of Rare Books and Spe­cial Col­lec­tions. In the mean­time, you should have no prob­lem in solv­ing the rid­dle of the Ivy Hall Library book­plate found in the Fire­stone copy of Stowe’s Poganuc Peo­ple (try Shelf and Own­er­ship Marks of Selected Libraries and Col­lec­tions Absorbed by the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library).

In the 1960s, Bar­bara Hadley Stein, the University’s first Bib­li­og­ra­pher for Latin Amer­ica, Spain and Por­tu­gal (1966–1977), began inten­sively col­lect­ing ephemera to doc­u­ment some of the major polit­i­cal devel­op­ments of the period, includ­ing the rise to power of mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ships, coup d’états, the insti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of the Cuban Rev­o­lu­tion, and the pop­u­lar responses to those devel­op­ments. Her suc­ces­sor, Peter T. John­son (1977–2003), expanded the geo­graphic and the­matic scope of the col­lec­tions and sys­tem­atized the process of orga­niz­ing, cat­a­loging, and pre­serv­ing them. Inten­sive col­lect­ing in this area con­tin­ues to this date, and Fer­nando Acosta-Rodríguez, cur­rent Librar­ian for Latin Amer­i­can, Iber­ian and Latino Stud­ies, has recently pub­lished a com­pre­hen­sive LibGuide to the collections:

http://libguides.princeton.edu/laec

The guide lists, by coun­try and sub­ject area, all of the col­lec­tions of Latin Amer­i­can ephemera that the Prince­ton Uni­ver­sity Library has devel­oped since the late 1960s (approx­i­mately 350 col­lec­tions). A cor­re­spond­ing call num­ber is pro­vided for each col­lec­tion, as well as links to find­ing aids or to cat­a­log records that for the most part describe in con­sid­er­able detail the con­tents of the collections.

Those seek­ing fur­ther assis­tance and infor­ma­tion to this abun­dant col­lec­tion can reach Fer­nando Acosta-Rodríguez at facosta@princeton.edu or 609–258-3193.