SHAKER MUSEUM AND LIBRARY

Holdings

Manuscripts
The Shaker manuscript collection includes 40 linear feet of personal andc ommunity diaries, account books, legal documents, theological essays, deeds, indentures, covenants, inspired messages and drawings, and music. Documents originate from eighteen Shaker communities and date between 1790 and 1947. The library has a particularly strong collection of materials from Mount Lebanon, NY, in the second half of the nineteenth century.

Imprints
The Shaker imprint collection of books, tracts, catalogues, broadsides includes 425 unique titles, over 30% of the Shaker publications listed in, Shaker Literature: A Bibliography, vol.1 by Mary Richmond (Hancock, MA: Shaker Community, Inc., 1977). The Irving Greenwood Library, given to the Museum in 1962 by Eldress Emma King of Canterbury, includes the collection of Shaker publications collected by the Ministry as a record of the Shakers' publishing efforts.

Historic Photographs
The photographic collection numbers 3000 images, including cabinet photographs, stereographs, cartes de visite, postcards, glass plate negatives, snapshot albums, framed crayon portraits, and photo prints. The collection, dating from 1869 to the present, includes the work of James Irving, James West, William Winter, Elder Irving Greenwood and Eldress Bertha Lindsey.

Ephemera
A collection of over 1000 unique pieces of ephemera includes herb and medicine labels, product packages, and advertisements; garden seed packages, box labels, and other food product labels and advertisements; chair industry labels and advertisements; labels and advertising material from the fancy goods industry, including cloaks and poplarware; and a wide variety of letterheads, billheads and other business related materials.

Research Collection
Primary material is supported by a research collection of books, pamphlets, auction and exhibition catalogues, serials and unpublished theses and dissertations and 224 microfilm reels of Shaker manuscripts located in other institutions. Access to these collections is through a traditional author/title/subject card catalogue, a printed guide to the manuscript collection, and various bibliographies and indices.