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 Yale professor Edmund Morgan's best-selling biography of Franklin.
- The Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies, a collection of approximately 4,500 video-recorded testimonies from witness and survivors of the Holocaust, deposited in the library in 1981.
- Boswell Editions, an edited collection of the papers and publications of Scottish lawyer James Boswell, the major biographer of the famous 18th century English literary figure Samuel Johnson.
- Wing STC Revision Project, an effort begun in 1933 by Yale librarian Donald Wing to compile a Short-Title Catalogue, a bibliographic reference for books printed in England and its colonies between 1641 and 1700.
- Schiff, Judith Ann (Sep–Oct 2005). "The "Heart of the University" Turns 75". Yale Alumni Magazine. Retrieved 6 April 2014.
- Tolles, Bryant F., Jr. (2011). Architecture & Academe: College Buildings in New England Before 1860. Lebanon, NH: University Press of New England. pp. 37–39. ISBN 9781584658917. Retrieved 4 April 2014.
- "The Sterling Bequest to Yale University". Science. 48 (1230): 87. 26 July 1918. doi:10.1126/science.48.1230.87. Retrieved 4 April 2014.
- "Yale Central Complex, New Haven Historic Resources Inventory" (PDF). City of New Haven. 1984. Retrieved 4 April 2014.
- Bloomer, Kent C. (2000). The Nature of Ornament: Rhythm and Metamorphosis in Architecture. New York: W. W. Norton & Company. pp. 187–185. ISBN 9780393730364. Retrieved 4 April 2014.
- Grubiak, Margaret M. (2009). "Reassessing Yale's Cathedral Orgy: The Ecclesiastical Metaphor and the Sterling Memorial Library" (PDF). Winterthur Portfolio: A Journal of American Material Culture. The Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Museum. 43 (2/3): 159–184. doi:10.1086/599848. Retrieved 15 January 2015.
- Mills Brown, Elizabeth (1976). New Haven: A Guide to Architecture and Urban Design. New Haven: Yale University Press. p. 128. ISBN 9780300019933. Retrieved 4 April 2014.
- "The History of Sterling Memorial Library". Yale University Library. Retrieved 4 April 2014.
- Keogh, Andrew (1928). "No