About the Ames Library
Learn about Ames Library history, notable gifts to the collection, and how it's expanded over the years.
The book that started it all
Charles Lesley Ames took W. H. Fitchett's The Tale of the Great Mutinyon a trip to England in 1907 as reading material. The book impressed Ames, and he spent the rest of his life building a library on the British-Indian interaction.
In 1961, after more than 50 years of dedicated collecting, Ames gave his library to the University of Minnesota.
The gift held over 25,000 titles, including manuscripts, photographs, maps, prints and drawings. It immediately established the University as having one of the pre-eminent libraries for the study of South Asia in the western world.
Mr. Ames' gift
The main focus of the collection donated by Mr. Ames is the British-Indian interaction. Particularly noteworthy are the holdings of
- military and regimental histories,
- administration of India (including many manuscripts of Viceroys and Governors-General),
- travel and description,
- histories and accounts of wars and battles, and
- official publicatons.
A Department of Education Title IIC grant provided funding for the cataloging of rare books, pamphlets, tracts and manuscripts in the collection.
Additional gifts
Several others have followed Mr. Ames' example and have given their libraries to enrich the Ames Library:
- Abdus Salam Collection of Persian and Urdu materials
- Long Beach Collection of Bengali materials
- Trois Johnson Collection of Portuguese materials
Strengthening the North American Collection
We actively participate in the South Asia Cooperative Collection Development Workshops. Through these workshops, the community of South Asian library specialists in North America works together to build broader and deeper coverage of South Asian resources collectively accessible in North American libraries, spanning all subjects and formats.
Supporting the South Asia Open Archives
We support the South Asia Open Archives, a free open-access collection of key historical and contemporary sources in arts, humanities and social sciences, from and about South Asia. SAOA contains hundreds of thousands of pages of books, journals, newspapers, census data, magazines, and documents, with particular focus on social & economic history, literature, women and gender, and caste & social structure.
Other collections at the Libraries
The University of Minnesota Libraries holds additional materials related to South Asia in other collections, which can be found using the Libraries search.
In particular, the James Ford Bell Library focuses on expansion of western commerce and civilization from the 14th to 18th century.