Rare Books

The Rare Book Collection at Stony Brook University includes over 20,000 volumes dating from 1493 to the present. Holdings can be located using STARS, the University Libraries’ online catalog. The collection encompasses titles on diverse subject areas including: Long Island and New York history; classics in Latin; Irish literature; the Perishable Press Limited; "Black Mountain" poetry; natural sciences; and book and printing history. Our oldest volume is The Nuremberg Chronicle, a pictorial history of the earth published in 1493 tha was compiled by Dr. Hartmann Schedel, illustrated and engraved by Michael Wohlgemuth, Wilhelm Pleydenwurff and Albrecht Dürer, and printed and published by Anton Koberger.

In 2002, the University received as a gift from Dr. Jacqueline Newman the largest English-language Chinese cookbook collection in the world. The collection can be searched in a database accessible through STARS (please click here).