Rare Book Room

A gift of Mr. and Mrs. John Runnells, the Mary W. Runnells Rare Book Room was completed in 1981, providing a dedicated space for the Library’s special collections, which include many masterworks of natural history.  The Rare Book Room is equipped with specialized HVAC, security, and fire suppression, ensuring optimal storage and preservation conditions.

Special Collections
The scientific value of collections in the Rare Book Room is great, particularly in the fields of botanical and zoological systematics, where reference to the historical record of published descriptions of living things or their fossil remains is essential. For the fields of anthropology and archaeology, the reports of early voyages and travels are of equal importance, often preserving the first descriptions or visual representations of encounters between European explorers and Indigenous peoples worldwide. These works frequently document cultural traditions that have since been lost, while also capturing key moments in the early exploration of the globe.

Among the collections’ most widely appreciated features are the hand-colored illustrations found in early natural history volumes. The Ayer Collection, in particular, is notable for its richly illustrated books and, as a whole, provides an almost complete record of the history of ornithological publication and illustration.  
Among the most famous of these hand-colored illustrations are those in John Audubon’s Birds of America, of which the Library owns a first edition four-volume set. Learn more about this work and other items by John James Audubon.

Major Collections

Ayer: 
In 1924, Edward E. Ayer, the Field Museum’s first president, donated his impressive collection of ornithological publications to the Museum. The scope and significance of this collection were documented in John T. Zimmer's Catalogue of the Ayer Ornithological Library (Chicago, 1926) as one of the finest ornithological libraries in existence.  Zimmer’s catalogue set a standard for bibliographic description in the natural sciences and was later reprinted by Arno Press in its Natural Science in America series.
Ayer also presented the Library with the Robert Clarke Piscatorial Library, comprising 1,640 volumes, including early editions of Izaak Walton's Compleat Angler, published in the 15th and 16th centuries. Another notable acquisition by Ayer was a collection of 587 ornithological books assembled by Charles B. Cory, former Curator of Zoology, which further strengthened the Library’s standing as a premier resource in the field.  Learn more about the Ayer Collection.

Kuntz:
The library of George Frederick Kunz was acquired in 1894 and became the foundation of the Library’s rare holdings in the geological sciences. The Kunz Collection comprises approximately 6,300 publications on geology, gems, and metallurgy; nearly 1,400 volumes on ethnology; and some 360 books from the United States Bureau of Mines.

Laufer: 
The Berthold Laufer Collection encompasses works related to the anthropology and culture of China, Japan, India, and other regions of Southeast and Central Asia. This extensive collection was Laufer’s personal working library and includes approximately 1,200 works in Asian languages, notably Chinese, Japanese, Tibetan, Manchu, and Mongolian. Laufer is widely regarded as one of America’s foremost Sinologists, and his own writings remain of enduring scholarly significance.
Reflecting Laufer’s wide-ranging interests, the collection covers diverse subjects from history, art, and archaeology to science and technology.  His collected shorter papers (Kleinere Schriften von Berthold Laufer)  are being reprinted under the editorship of Dr. Hartmut Walravens. Learn more about the Berthold Laufer Collection. 

Field:
Originating from the collections of former Field Museum president Stanley Field, these holdings primarily consist of expedition records and travelogues, some dating as far back as the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

Boone:
In the late 1950s, during a three-year tour of duty in Japan, Commander Gilbert E. Boone and his wife Katharine Phelps Boone collected over 3,500 East Asian artifacts and over 400 rare Japanese books. Learn more about the Boone Collection.

General:
Supported by individual donations, gifts from the Museum’s Friends of the Library, and an endowed fund from the Van Zelst family, the Library has continued to carefully expand and curate its rare book collection.

Chicago World’s Fairs:
The Library maintains a small collection of books and ephemera about the 1893 World's Columbian Exposition and the 1933 Century of Progress. In the 1970’s, a portion of these collections was transferred to the Chicago Public Library’s Special Collections. A comprehensive inventory of materials and collections in the Library is available.