To: UI Special Collections

The Charlotte M. Smith Collection, a gift to the Libraries in 1996, currently numbers some 4,000 titles. The books are less than 3" tall or wide -- and most are smaller in both dimensions. Principally collected by Charlotte M. Smith (1919-2002) of Newton, Iowa, the books range in date from the 17^th century to the present. The range of subjects is equally broad, but many of the books concern, as well as demonstrate, arts of the book. The collection was exhibited in 1996 and that exhibition has been preserved virtually as Tiny Tomes. Mrs. Smith also wrote two articles for Books at Iowa: "The Joys of Miniature Books" and "The Tamazunchale Press: A Bibliographic Checklist". Finally, Mrs. Smith's papers and the records of the Tamazunchale Press form MsC 457; the link leads to the finding aid for that collection.

Books in the the Smith Collection will eventually be cataloged and classified in the Libraries' OPAC, InfoHawk, but the website in front of you brings together in preliminary fashion a variety of less formal lists and descriptions.

For presentation here, the collection has been sub-divided into United States Miniature Books and Non-United States Miniature Books. The United States titles, in turn, have been divided into pre-Twentieth Century and Twentieth Century and later imprints. The Twentieth Century books produced by fine and other personal presses and publishers have been organized by press or publisher as described in Robert C. Bradbury's Twentieth Century United States Miniature Books (No. Clarendon, Vermont: The Microbibliophile, 2000), while books produced by companies, corporations, and organizations, often for advertising purposes, have been given their own page.

Descriptions for U.S. items published before 1901 have been checked against Robert C. Bradbury's Antique United States Miniature Books 1690-1900 (No. Clarendon, Vermont: The Microbibliophile, 2001).