Collections Online
The Clark’s digital collections provide online access to selected rare books, manuscripts, archives, and works of art from our collections. They offer researchers, students, and the public an opportunity to explore Clark materials from anywhere, without having to visit the Library in person.
The collections below include several major digitization projects completed with support from the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) and the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH). We are continuing to digitize material across the Clark’s collections, and new digital collections and resources will be added here as they become available.
Many of the Clark’s digitized materials are hosted on Calisphere, the University of California’s platform for digital collections.
Early Modern English Manuscripts
This completed project provides full digital access to more than 300 early modern English bound manuscripts from the Clark Library. Dating primarily from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the manuscripts include commonplace books, miscellanies, recipe collections, historical treatises, literary manuscripts, sermon notebooks, scientific texts, heraldic manuals, music, travel narratives, legal compilations, account books, and more.
Together, they form a substantial digital resource for the study of social history, food and medicine, music, literature, textual studies, and the history of the book.
Digitization was made possible by a Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) Digitizing Hidden Collections grant awarded to the Clark in 2015.
Explore the Early Modern English Manuscripts →
Early Modern Annotated Books
This completed project provides digital access to more than 250 early printed books containing handwritten annotations and other evidence of their use by readers.
Dating from 1472 to 1818, the books range from science and natural history to literature and philosophy. Their annotations include scholarly commentary, cross-references, printers’ notations, corrections, and polemical responses. Identified readers include John Florio, John Dennis, William Hogarth, François-Louis Jamet, Narcissus Luttrell, Judith Gowing, Thomas Gent, Thomas Turner, and Thomas Austen, alongside many unidentified readers.
The collection offers extensive evidence for the study of reading, annotation, book ownership, and the material history of the book.
Digitization was made possible by a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Grant awarded to the Clark in 2017. The project was completed in 2018.
Explore the Early Modern Annotated Books →
Eric Gill Artwork Collection
The Clark holds an extensive collection of original artwork and other visual material by or related to English artist, sculptor, type designer, and printmaker Eric Gill (1882–1940). The collection includes prints, printing blocks, drawings, sketchbooks, photographs, architectural plans, ephemera, artists’ proofs, and other material. Many works have been digitized.