Rare Books & Special Collections at the Fisher Fine Arts Library holds approximately three thousand rare books as well as drawings and historic maps. The foundation of the collection is the single great book of Vitruvius Pollio (ca. 90-20 B.C.E.) together with works by the five figures from the Renaissance period: Alberti, Scamozzi, Serlio, Vignola, and Palladio. The original collection was established in 1965 by G. Holmes Perkins who served as Dean of Penn’s Graduate School of Fine Arts (today’s Weitzman School of Design) from 1951 to 1971. While the charter collection is grounded in architecture, city planning, and historic preservation, it has since grown to reflect new areas of study and research within arts and design disciplines.The Annenberg School for Communication Library Archives collects, preserves, and makes available for research materials pertinent to the interdisciplinary field of communication and its history. Holdings currently include, among other things, the papers of scholars George Gerbner and Elihu Katz, the International Communication Association records, the Communication Scholars Oral History project, and a vast collection of daytime and prime time television scripts from the 1950s through the 1990s.
Unique at Penn 