History of the Harold A. Miller Library Reprint Collection
Obscure (Hard to Find) Reprints found in the Harold A. Miller Library Reprint Collection
Link to the digitized Card Catalog for the Harold A. Miller Library reprint collection
Many university libraries around the world are holding an archival copy for most print periodicals. These are copies of articles, referred to as reprints or separates, that were printed separately as overruns from scientific and technical journals, for distribution by the author(s). The Harold A. Miller Library at Stanford University maintains a reprint collection that holds old and rare reprints from back in the pre-digital age. A significant number are from the 1800s. The collection holds contributions from Stanford University’s earliest faculty, Oliver Peebles Jenkins, Charles H. Gilbert, George C. Price, Harold Heath, Frank Mace MacFarland and Walter Kenrick Fisher.
Beyond these faculty, the scientific publications appear to have originally formed the personal reprint collections of numerous individuals including, but not limited to, Donald P. Abbott, S. Stillman Berry, Amy Elizabeth Blagg, Rolf Bolin, Nanette Chadwick, Charles M. Child, Carl Chun, William D. Clarke, Max Walker deLaubenfels, Albert Kenrick Fisher, John Sterling Kingsley, Dr. C. Hart Merriam, Harold Mestre, Arthur R. Moore, George Sprague Myers, Charles Cleveland Nutting, Ida Shepard Oldroyd, Julia B. Platt, Edward F. Ricketts, Norman B. Scofield, Karl Tage Skogsberg, Robert E. Snodgrass, C.V. Taylor, Harry Beal Torrey, Gertrude Van Wagenen, Frank. W. Weymouth.
In addition to these individuals, many of the reprints contain a stamp for - HMS Alexander Agassiz Laboratory, Jacques Loeb Laboratory, Hopkins Marine Station Library, HMS Hydro-biological Survey, Te Vega Expedition, Reprints Library of Biological Sciences Stanford University, California State Fisheries Laboratory, Terminal Island, California. These stamps identify the original location of where a number of these reprints resided.
The majority of these reprints held in the Miller Library Reprint Collection can be found online in digital format. Most of these reprints are beyond copyright protection (published before 1923) and freely available for downloading.
How does one locate reprints that are available freely available online? A search of the “Author” and the “Title” using quotes “quotes”in Google can often lead a researcher or librarian to an article. Many of the reprints in the Miller Library Reprint Collection that are beyond copyright can be found in the Biodiversity Heritage Library (https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/). A search of the catalog for the “Author,” “Article Title” or the “Journal Title” can often lead to the article one is attempting to find. If the Biodiversity Library has the Journal, which may not be indexed, then it is a matter of searching for the title of the article in the text of the Journal issue.
Other reprints can be found at the World Register of Marine Species by searching the literature section of that repository (http://www.marinespecies.org/) One can also use WorldCat (https://www.worldcat.org/) to search the title of the article or the journal. The result may direct one to a library that retains the article or a bound journal that has the article. A WorldCat search may also direct one to the article available online. Other sites to consider searching are the Internet Archive (www.archive.org), Zobodat, or Hathitrust Digital Library (https://www.hathitrust.org/)
The article you are attempting locate, may exist in a bound journal held in the Miller Library or another Stanford Library, such as Branner or SAL 3. One can find where the bound journal, that contains the article you are are seeking by searching the journal title in Searchworks.
To facilitate the usage of the periodicals in reprint collection, the library can provide researchers with a pdf of any article from these holdings. If provided the correct article reference (author, title, year) the librarian can locate, scan the article, and provide a patron with a pdf. The patron will receive an email with the attached article as soon as the Harold A. Miller Librarian has been able to process the request.
