Areas of Collecting
In keeping with the Library’s mission to support the teaching and research programs of the Harvard Law School, the Department of Special Collections acquires printed materials, manuscripts, and visual materials that document the history of the law in general and that of the Harvard Law School in particular. Under the guidelines of its collection development policy, the following categories of materials are collected for the teaching and research collections:Donating Materials to the Department of Special Collections
The Department welcomes donations of books, papers, and visual materials. The Librarian for Special Collections and the Curators will work closely with donors to identify those materials that complement the collections. The Library, of course, reserves the right to decline gifts that are outside the scope of its collecting, that are offered with restrictions, that duplicate existing collections, or that are more appropriate for other repositories.
We welcome gifts in the categories detailed below.
The Rare Book Collection
The principal focus of the printed collections lies in
Anglo-American and Western European law. In order to build upon
already existing strengths and to insure comprehensiveness, we
collect in the following areas:
Anglo-American imprints through 1900, especially reporters, primary law, treatises, and legal education and practice;
Anglo-American and European trials and crime broadsides through 1900; twentieth- century trials that set important legal precedent, represent emerging areas of the law, and/or are of significant cultural importance;
All other Western European imprints (reporters, major compilations of primary law, treatises, etc.) through 1850;
International law through 1911 (the date of the Library's purchase of the Olivart Collection);
Russian and Soviet law to 1954;
Chinese law to 1960;
Printed materials related to the war crimes tribunals at Nuremberg and Tokyo;
Editions of seminal legal historians and theoreticians not covered in the categories above;
Volumes having marginal notations, marks of provenance; and/or significant bindings, illustrations, or other physical characteristics that give them special research value.
Manuscripts
The Manuscript Collection contains more than 250 individual collections that include papers of distinguished members of the bar, bench, and legal teaching profession. In addition, it maintains papers relating to specific U.S. court cases; individually bound and loose English and American manuscripts written after 1701; English medieval Manor Rolls, Charters and Deeds and papers created by many American legal research projects.
Major subjects represented in the collections are: American court system, federal legislation and regulation, church and state, civil liberties, civil rights, criminal law, juvenile delinquency, First Amendment, foreign affairs, international law, international taxation, League of Nations, United Nations, jurisprudence, legal education, legal scholarship, and legal reform.
The Special Collections Department actively collects papers in the following areas:
Supreme Court Justices, especially those who are Harvard Law School graduates;
Federal District or Appellate Court judges who are Harvard Law School graduates and who have made significant contributions to legal principles and/or public policy;
Significant trials in the history of law which complement Library strengths;
Collections of the teaching, research, and professional papers of tenured Harvard Law School faculty;
Collections of the records and papers of student organizations and other Harvard Law School groups that would not automatically go to the Harvard University Archives as part of formal university business; and
Collections of Harvard Law School alumni whose papers reflect significant influence on public policy, legal principles, legal education, and law practice.
The Red Set
The Red Set developed as a separate collection by the Library in an attempt to preserve all publications of the Law School. Currently, the Red Set contains the following:
Faculty-authored publications created during the years that the author was a member of the faculty;
Student-created material including prize essays, graduate theses and dissertations;
All publications created by Law School offices, departments, and programs;
Publications of student-run law reviews and other student organizations.
Art and Visual Materials Collection
As one of the world's largest collections of visual materials relating to the law, the Art and Visual Materials Collection documents the history of legal systems in general and the common law in particular. Within the constraints of its resources, the collection gives priority to the acquisition and preservation of materials based on their documentary (as opposed to aesthetic value). Priority is also given to visual materials that illustrate the history of the Harvard Law School or that supplement the manuscript and rare book collections.
The strengths of the Art Collection are in the following areas:
Images of Harvard Law School, its faculty, alumni, staff, students, or physical environment;
Images of individuals significant in the history of the law;
Materials related to famous British or American trials;
Iconography of justice or the law;
Material illustrating legal education;
Material illustrating legal practice or process;
Material illustrating societal and cultural attitudes toward the legal professional and legal institutions.