I Give These Books

The disparate stories of the libraries of the fledgling colleges in the colonies of the Eastern Seaboard, beginning more than one hundred fifty years before the Declaration of Independence, has been recorded occasionally in scattered scholarly journals, but never has there appeared a fully-fledged history of the library of one of America's oldest universities from its founding through the present day.

In I Give These Books: The History of the Yale University Library, 1656-2022 (Oak Knoll, 2022), David Alan Richards presents this story. In its pages, the founding, growth, organisation, and expansion of a major American university library is revealed over three and a half centuries of its history.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose forthcoming book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.