f the Yale University Library up to 1865. Bosses on the nave's ceiling depict writing implements. Samuel Yellin, the blacksmith who shaped most of the ironwork for Yale's Gothic buildings, created handwrought elevator doors for the Stacks depicting major trades, as well as ironwork and gates for the building. Other decorative stonework by Chambellan—gargoyles, corbels, and reliefs—can be found throughout the building. While most of his works depict scholarship and university life, several are humorous interpretations of the lives of students and librarians.
Several tributes in the library commemorate pioneering graduates of the university. A portrait of Edward Bouchet, one of Yale's earliest African American graduates, hangs in the nave's transept. Near the Franke Family Reading Room is a statue of Yung Wing, the first Chinese graduate of Yale. In 2016 a portrait of the first seven women to receive Ph.D.s from Yale, which those seven women all did in 1894, was placed in the library. The women include Mary Augusta Scott, Elizabeth Deering Hanscom, Margaretta Palmer, Charlotte Fitch Roberts, Cornelia H.B. Rogers, Sara Bulkley Rogers, and Laura Johnson Wylie. The portrait is the first painting hanging in the library to have women as subjects. Brenda Zlamany was the artist.
The large majority of materials in Sterling are housed in the bookstacks, which are contained in the building's tower. The bookstacks use two classification systems: the Yale Library system and the Library of Congress system. Adopted in the 1890s, the non-standard Yale system became cumbersome and inefficient for cataloging. Though replaced in 1970 by the Library of Congress system, many of the 5.7 million volumes held by the library at that time remain filed in the Yale system. The card catalogs in the nave once contained as many as 9.5 million cards, sorted in 8,700 trays.
Manuscripts & Archives
Manuscripts & Archives is the primary archival repository of the university, housing Yale memorabilia, university archives, historical manuscripts, and personal papers donated to the university. Though the archive uses the former Rare Book Room as its primary reading room, most of the collection is held off-site. Significant materials within Manuscripts & Archives include the papers of Charles Lindbergh, Eero Saarinen, Eli Whitney, and the audio library of Osama bin Laden. The archives hosts a notable collection of diplomatic papers, including those of Dean Acheson, Henry Kissinger, Henry Stimson, and Cyrus Vance.
Audio, visual, and paper materials related to music are retained in the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, a facility converted from one of Sterling's courtyards. The collection was established in the mid-19th century under Gustave J. Stoeckel, and was significantly expanded by the acquisition of Lowell Mason's papers and library in 1873. Its collections include one of the largest catalogs of recordings and scores in the United States, including the papers of Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, Quincy Porter, Horatio Parker, Virgil Thomson, Richard Donovan, and J. Rosamond Johnson. Moved to Sprague Hall of the Yale School of Music in 1955, the collection arrived in Sterling when the Gilmore Library was completed in 1997.
In addition to the library's main collection, the library houses several significant special collections:
- The Yale Babylonian Collection, the largest collection of Babylonian cuneiform writing in North America;
- The library of the American Oriental Society, the oldest American learned society for area studies, whose catalog has been housed at Yale since 1855;
- The Map Collection, a collection of over 200,000 print maps as well as Geographic Information Systems data;
- Arts of the Book, a variety of materials related to printing, bookbinding, woodblock, and graphic design.
Major editorial projects
- The Benjamin Franklin Papers, a project founded in 1954 to collect and publish all the papers of Benjamin Franklin. The library received a major donation of Franklin's papers when Sterling opened in 1935, and the collection formed the basis of Yal