Special collection

Special Collections

The Special Collections of the Klau Library comprise one of the finest Judaica research collections in the world. Available to researchers around the globe, the rare books, manuscripts, and music housed in the collections represent millennia of the Jewish experience across the globe.

Eduard Birnbaum Music Collection

Eduard Birnbaum Music Collection is acknowledged to be the world’s largest and most important assemblage of 18th and 19th century European Jewish manuscripts and archival material.

Rare Book and Manuscript Collection

Rare Book and Manuscript Collection includes rare incunabula, illuminated manuscripts, Biblical codices, communal records, legal documents, and scientific tracts. Special exhibits can be viewed in the David Ellenson Rare Book Room (Cincinnati). Additionally, many of our manuscripts may be viewed online.

Lucille Klau Carothers American Jewish Periodical Center

Located in the Klau Library on the Cincinnati campus, the AJPC houses a microform and print collection of American Jewish newspapers, journals and magazines published in eight languages.

Inventories of Selected Collections

These inventories of various Special Collections include brief histories, scope notes, and indices to their specific contents.

Jerusalem Spinoza Collection

Jerusalem Spinoza Collection

HUC-JIR’s philosophy collection consists of early editions of Baruch Spinoza’s works, those of his contemporaries, scholarly works on Spinoza, and general philosophy. This philosophy collection of over 2,500 volumes was gathered in Cincinnati in 1912, and the 700 items from the Spinoza Collection have been moved to our S. Zalman and Ayala Abramov Library in Jerusalem. You can browse the Spinoza collection here.