Contents: About the Davies Project | About This Database
About This Database
In forty years of data-collecting and historical research, Professor Haynes McMullen created a database of statistics about more than ten thousand American libraries established before 1876, work which culminated in the publication of a landmark volume entitled American Libraries before 1876 (Greenwood Press, 2000). In a review of this book, Bill Olbrich called it “perhaps the most significant work of American library history since those of Jesse Shera and Sidney Ditzion half a century ago” (Olbrich 2002, p. 132). Concluding his review, Olbrich concludes that “the only way McMullen can surpass himself now is to place the American Library History Database on American libraries, with names, dates, places, and a detailed bibliography, in a public-access online database” (p. 137).
The Davies Project responded to Olbrich’s challenge in 2004, with the release of a searchable online database compiled from Professor McMullen’s original research cards and an extensive bibliography of sources. This database covered nearly 10,000 institutional and commercial libraries that existed in what is now the continental United States from the time of first settlement through 1875.
In 2024, the online database was decommissioned; the data it contained was extracted and is now available for online research on this site, as well as in tabular formats for more detailed research.
About the Davies Project
The Davies Project was an effort to increase knowledge about American university libraries and their collections, begun by Princeton University President emeritus and Professor of Economics and Public Affairs Harold T. Shapiro and Stephen Ferguson, Curator of Rare Books at the Princeton University Library in 2000.
The project’s major digital accomplishment was a database compiled from the punch cards used by Professor Haynes McMullen in his decades-long research into American Libraries before 1876. The contents of this database are now being made available for searching and browsing.
The Davies Project also compiled an extensive bibliography and a collection of transcriptions, as well as a collection documenting the history of the Princeton University Library. Many of these materials can be found in the University Archives.