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Special Collections and Rare Books

The Bienes Museum of the Modern Book: The Dianne and Michael Bienes Special Collections and Rare Book Library offers a collection of more than 5,000 items, including special collections, rare books and reference material. The majority of the holdings are locked in a humidity and temperature-controlled storage area. The librarian on duty in the reading room provides reference service and retrieves material for visitors to the center.

Collections include:

The Dianne and Michael Bienes Collection

More than 600 art and architecture books, notebooks and other artistic creations by and about individual artists, and many titles from distinguished foreign art publishers on art and architectural history. Facsimiles such as The Book of Kells, The Great Domesday Book, La Biblia de Alba and The Très Riches Heures of Jean, Duke of Berry have also been donated by Dianne and Michael Bienes.

Federal Writers' Project and Other Works Projects Administration (WPA) Materials
Core collection donated by Jean Fitzgerald. Items include books, periodicals, pamphlets and correspondence by writers, historians, poets, novelists and artists who worked on New Deal projects in the 1930s.

WPA Museum Extension Project (MEP)

The Museum Extension Project, 1935-1943, was a section of the WPA's Women's and Professional Division. The MEP had two purposes: to produce visual aids to support teaching in tax-supported schools, libraries and museums; and to help museums organize collections and exhibitions. The Bienes Museum of the Modern Book: The Dianne and Michael Bienes Special Collections and Rare Book Library's collection contains approximately 750 texts and objects, including hand puppets and marionettes, architectural and industrial models, costume plates, lantern slides, play scripts, posters, broadsides, toys, dioramas, puzzles, mannequins, and food displays.

Big Little Books

More than 425 rare comic-type books based on comic strips, movies, radio shows and children's classics. Characters featured include Dick Tracy, Flash Gordon, Blondie, Dagwood, Little Orphan Annie, Mickey Mouse, Tom Mix and Tarzan. First published in the 1930s by Whitman Publishing, the 4 inch by 5 inch books contain black and white illustrations with color covers. Donated by the Duane H. Siers family.

Nyr Indictor Collection of the Alphabet

A research-level resource that records in detail the worldwide development of nineteenth- and twentieth-century alphabets. The collection includes ABC books in languages as diverse as: Arabic, Cherokee, Chinese, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Serbo-Croatian, Sign Language, Spanish, Swahili, Swedish, Thai, Ukrainian, Yiddish, etc. The collection also includes formas as diverse as: artists' books, blocks, broadsides, ceramics, clothing, compact discs, curtain, erasers, flash cards, food, friezes, glass, greeting cards, jigsaw puzzles, key rings, miniature books, pencils, place mats, plastics, post cards, posters, records, rubber stamps, shoes, silhouettes, stationery, stencils, stickers, textiles, toys and games, videotapes, umbrellas, wallpaper, wrapping paper, etc. In short, you can find almost anything that records an alphabet.

American Novels and Literature

First editions of classic American authors including Edgar Allan Poe, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Eugene O'Neill, William Faulkner, Thomas Wolfe, L. Frank Baum and Maurice Sendak. Included is a first edition of Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn.

Floridiana and Broward County Material

Books, periodicals, manuscripts, documents and other material in which author, subject, theme or setting are related to Florida or Broward County. Highlights include a 1792 copy of Bartram's Travels through North and South Carolina, Georgia, East and West Florida, domestic and foreign editions of novels of John D. MacDonald, whose Travis McGee stories are set in Fort Lauderdale, and titles by Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. The donated manuscript of Don Shula and Ken Blanchard's book Everyone's a Coach is also of local interest.

Books About Books

This collection of more than 100 titles, donated by Paulette and Robert Greene, focuses on materials about book collecting. Within the collection are issues of the periodical Colophon: A Book Collectors' Quarterly ranging in dates from 1930 to 1950.

Reference and General Collections

Reference materials pertaining to archives management, book collecting, conservation and preservation of books, printing, typography, guides to book values and related items. Includes current periodicals such as First Edition and Biblio.