Building Cornell University Library’s Collections
Introduction
Vladimir Nabokov. Nine Stories.
[New York: New Directions, 1947].
From Cornell’s Vladimir Nabokov Collection.
Collectors play a vital role in preserving intellectual and cultural history, and in ensuring that students and scholars have the opportunity to learn from that history. Other Cornell alumni and friends contribute to the collecting enterprise by providing essential support in the form of endowments and gifts. These generous gifts enable Cornell to build upon its existing collection strengths, and forge new collecting paths in areas of emerging interest to scholars.
Thanks to the generosity of Cornell’s alumni and friends, endowment income supports, for example, Cornell’s collection on the French Revolution (the largest outside Paris), William Wordsworth (the second largest in the world), the history of science, and abolitionism (each among the finest in the country). Gifts and income also make possible new collecting initiatives, such as those in Victorian fiction, the history of prison reform, and food and wine.
Cornell University Library is grateful for these gifts, which ensure the vitality and growth of its collections.