More than 25,000 books and other materials are in ten unique collections for reference and research. Plan your visit to the Special Collections at the Minneapolis Central Library.

The Minneapolis Collection covers all aspects of the city’s history and includes books, photographs, high school yearbooks, archival and manuscript collections, periodicals, maps, and thousands of files of newspaper clippings. Also includes information about how to research your Minneapolis home or property.

The Kittleson World War II Collection contains books on both theaters of the war, the home front, biographies, war-inspired fiction, and 2,000 digitized propaganda posters.

The Nineteenth Century American Studies Collection is comprised of 4,500 books and manuscripts, including first editions by such notable authors as Emerson, Thoreau and Longfellow.

The Huttner Abolition and Anti-Slavery Collection contains books by and about abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Frederick Douglass.

The Hoag Mark Twain Collection is comprised of approximately 250 books, magazines, and pamphlets by or about Mark Twain.

The Spencer Natural History Collection is notable for the many hand-colored plates which accompany early printed descriptions of the world’s birds, plants, and insects.  The bulk of the collection dates from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.

The North American Indians Collection contains many of the important early books that describe and illustrate the native peoples of the United States, Canada, and Mexico.  Highlights include first editions of Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, George Catlin, and Edward S. Curtis.

The Early American Exploration and Travel Collection includes narratives and maps from the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries.

The Heffelfinger Aesop’s Fables Collection is comprised primarily of 152 editions of Aesop’s Fables in numerous languages that date from the sixteenth century to the present.

The History of Books and Printing Collection includes books on bookmaking, typography, printing, and fine binding. A shared Athenaeum and Library collection.