Collection Resources

The Collection's principal strength is in Greece, encompassing the period from Neolithic times to the present, but with an emphasis on the post-Classical Hellenic world from Byzantium through contemporary Greece, including the diaspora. Users will find materials spanning virtually every discipline within the social sciences and humanities, with a rich assortment of primary source materials from all eras.

The Collection also has strengths in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, and the Balkans, particularly the former Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. The Ottoman and Modern Turkish section of the Collection contains extensive primary sources from the fifteenth through the twentieth centuries. The Bulgarian and Serbo-Croatian materials in the Collection, which focus primarily on early modern and modern history, literature, and socio-cultural history, include materials collected by Dr. Vryonis especially in the 1980s and books donated to the former Vryonis Center by the first non-Communist leader of Bulgaria, renowned historian Nikolai Todorov.

Some highlights of the collection include:

• The library and manuscript collection of the late Dr. Basil Vlavianos, publisher of the Greek-American newspaper Ethnikos Kēryx (National Herald) from 1940-1947, along with holdings of the paper from those years and selected coverage of other years
• The library of the late journalist and author Pyrrhus J. Ruches
• The Hellenic library of the late economist, columnist, and author Dr. Steve A. Demakopoulos
• A comprehensive collection of government documents from Greek, American, British, and other sources
• An extensive collection of Modern Greek literature, poetry, and drama, including signed editions by major literary figures
• Robust holdings on Greece's regional and local history
• A sizable number of non-print materials (cassettes, CDs, DVDs, microforms, etc.), including over 400 dissertations on microfilm
• Approximately 250 volumes of the Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum
• A collection of approximately 1,500 rare books and other ephemera including:
  • A variety of scarce pamphlets on Greece, Cyprus, and the Middle East
  • An early edition of Eustathius' commentary on Homer published by Froben, 1559–1560
  • An Erasmus New Testament of 1541, also by Froben
  • The complete set of Adamantios Korais' translations of Ancient Greek authors into purist Greek (katharevousa) dating between 1800 and 1820
  • Ottoman Turkish chronicles published in the 19th century
  • 17th to 19th century travel accounts
  • Various editions of the Thousand and One Nights Tales

See the Research Guides to the left for further information on specific Collection resources.