THE YALE UNIVERSITY DIVINITY LIBRARY

ΓΤ 'ΗΈ Divinity Library was established in 1932 through the conI solidation of the Day Historical Library of Foreign Missions, JL the Trowbridge Reference Library, and the Richard Sheldon Sneath Memorial Library of Religious Education. These three collections numbered 34,430 volumes, of which about two thirds were in the Day collection. The Library has developed rapidly, especially following World War II, and now contains over 260,000 volumes on which full library service can be offered. (Not included are more than 15,000 volumes awaiting addition to the Library, on which limited service can be provided, and the John R. Mott Library, which, when it was transferred to New Haven, was reported as containing "from 12,000 to 15,000 items/') Approximately 7,000 volumes are added annually, and 868 periodicals are currently received. The most important collection in the Divinity Library is that on the history of Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox missions. Professor George Edward Day began collecting mission materials in the late 1 870s, turning over his collection to Yale in 1891. Later he provided resources to construct a building and an endowment to maintain the collection. In the last decade of the nineteenth and the first of the twentieth century, the Day missions collection represented one of Yale's most substantial efforts in documentation relating to East Asia, South Asia, Oceânica, and Africa. In recent years the non-mission materials have been transferred to the central collection. The Day Missions Library is now one of the two major collections of its kind to be found anywhere. Apart from missionary interest, these resources constitute invaluable support for the East Asian, Southeast Asian, African, and Latin American area programs at Yale. In addition to monographs, serials, and reports, there are substantial collections of manuscripts: of John R. Mott, and those who were associated with him; of the elder Hiram Bingham and his son, missionaries to Hawaii; of Arthur Judson Brown of China; of Eli Smith of the Near East; of Robert P. Wilder; of Kenneth Scott Latourette; and of others who