What Is A Signature Collection?
Like most academic and research libraries, Brown University Library is comprised of general collections and a wide range of special collections. Special Collections at Brown is home to some of the most renowned collections in any library in the country: the McLellan Lincoln Collection, the Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays, the Anne S. K. Brown Military Collection, the Lownes History of Science Collection, the H. P. Lovecraft Collection, and the H. Adrian Smith Magic Collection, to name only a few. Special Collections is also the collection area of Brown University Library that houses those materials which require special handling and preservation. While many items in Special Collections are rare or unique, a majority of the holdings are part of large subject-oriented collections which are maintained as discrete units. Altogether, Special Collections consists of over 250 separate named collections.
The concept of a Signature Collection derives from that of a special collection. As a subset of special collections, signature collections are noted by their comprehensiveness; their uniqueness (both in terms of individual rarity and as a collected whole); as well as the state of their processing, and as such warrant additional attention. The Brown University Library is committed to fostering these collections and to making them available to scholars, without regard to status or affiliation, through a systematic digitization program. In addition to providing digital surrogates for the materials within a signature collection, Brown University Library works with faculty and students to develop contextual information through which the user may better understand the materials. These supplementary materials may include essays, timelines, biographies, and historical vignettes. The Napoleonic Satires collection, for example, includes several of these features.
Signature Collection projects already underway would include:
 African American Sheet Music, 1820-1920
This collection consists of over 1400 pieces of African-American sheet music dating from 1820 through 1920. The collection includes many songs from the heyday of antebellum black face minstrelsy in the 1850s and from the abolitionist movement of the same period. |
 Alcohol, Temperance & Prohibition
Brown's collections of materials on alcohol, alcoholism, temperance and prohibition are among the largest of their type in the country and contain items ranging from a leaf from the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle depicting a drunken Noah to movies and videos. This digital collection focuses on the temperance and prohibition movements in the United States. |
 Carriers' Addresses
A collection of carriers' addresses from the late 18th through the early 20th Century. These addresses usually took the form of a poem, and describe the events of the past year and thus represent an important resource for the study of local and national history, American Poetry, and the printing arts. |
 Napoleonic Satires
A collection of satirical prints from such noted artists as James Gillray and George Cruikshank. When completed the collection will contain some 500 prints produced between 1792 and 1829 from Germany, Britain, France, Holland and Russia. |