Longtime followers of Et Seq. may know that members of the Library’s Historical & Special Collections Department often submit posts under the heading “852 RARE.” Now that we are unveiling a new series of posts called “The Weekly Special,” we thought we should provide a quick reminder of how 852 RARE came to be. The name pays homage to the MARC (Machine Readable Cataloging) holdings field designation for items in the rare book collection; in other words, on the HOLLIS catalog record, it identifies a book in the Library’s collection as rare.
In addition to rare books, Historical & Special Collections encompasses early and modern manuscripts, prints, photographs, objects, and The Red Set—a collection of Law School faculty, organizational, and student publications.