Rare Books

Our rare book collection contains published works from the 1500s to the present. It features travel accounts, maps, atlases, and North Carolina imprints. Subjects covered include education; the Civil War; abolition and slavery in the US; military, naval and maritime history; and print and book history.


We also have several more specialized collections. We are building a collection of artists’ books; we also maintain the J. Edgar Hoover Collection on International Communism and the James H. and Virginia C. Schlobin Literature of the Fantastic Collection. The Hoover Collection, donated by Dr. J.C. Peele of Kinston, NC, in 1968, includes books, magazines, newspapers, pamphlets, leaflets, and other ephemera expressing pro- or anti-communist views. The Schlobin Collection, donated by Professor Robert C. Schlobin in 2004, contains science fiction and fantasy literature, as well as reference material related to these subjects.

Resources

For information on how to search our collections, visit our Research Help page.