The Celtic Collection
| The Celtic Collection |  |
The Celtic Collection is the largest component of the department's rare book holdings, came to the library primarily in three major donations.
The Ancient Order of Hibernians of Minnesota gave 500 titles on then-contemporary Irish politics and on 19th century Irish history to the library in 1917, to commemorate the 1916 Easter Rising in Ireland.
In 1936, Srs. Mary Agnes and Mary Fidelis O'Connor, nuns of the Visitation Convent of St. Paul, donated the splendid miscellaneous rare book collection of their father, Peter O'Connor (d. 1916), a prominent businessman in the Minneapolis-St. Paul area and San Francisco, to the college library. This collection, of more than 2,000 titles, focuses on the history (particularly the local history), church history, religion, antiquities, folk-lore, art, and music of the Celtic nations, emphasizing Ireland and Scotland.
Dr. James P. Shannon, President of the (then) College of St. Thomas (1956-1966), arranged for the purchase of the scholarly library of Eamonn O'Toole, formerly professor of Irish at Trinity College, Dublin, when the latter died in 1956. This collection, also of over 2,000 titles, primarily reflects O'Toole's interest in the Irish and Scots Gaelic, Welsh, Manx, Cornish, and Breton languages and national literatures.
The department also houses a collection of rare and first editions of twentieth-century Irish poetry. Prominent among these texts is the greater portion of the output of the Dolmen Press (a collection of over 200 titles acquired from the estate of the late Liam Miller, the founder of the Dolmen Press), the Cuala Press and the Raven Arts Press; works by Nobel laureate Seamus Heaney and Nobel nominee Austin Clarke; and a collection of early-twentieth century nationalist poetry.
Approximately eighty-five percent of the Celtic Collection focuses on Ireland, ten percent on Scotland, and five percent on the other Celtic nations (Wales, Cornwall, the Isle of Man, and Brittany). Nearly thirty percent of the "Celtic Collection" consists of titles written in a "foreign" language, most often Irish.
All of the items in the Celtic Collection are cataloged and are entered in into CLICnet, the University of St. Thomas' online public acess catalog (designated by the locations OSF - Special or OSF-Special Oversize). The catalog available for searching at http://clicnet.clic.edu
For those interested in using materials in the Celtic Collection for genealogical research, the department has created a "Guide to Researching Your Irish Roots."
Selected Websites of Interest:
Irish Literature, Mythology, Folklore, and Drama
Irish Genealogical Society International
Public Record Office of Northern Ireland
The National Archives of Ireland
