The Oliveira Lima Library is a widely-known repository of bibliographic, archival and pictorial materials that illustrate the history and culture of the Portuguese-speaking peoples from the 16th to the early 20th century. Inaugurated at The Catholic University of America in 1924, its original nucleus of 40,000 volumes is the private library of its founder, the Brazilian diplomat and historian Manoel de Oliveira Lima (1867-1928). The collection of books, serials, pamphlets, broadsides and manuscripts today numbers more than 58,000 volumes. While its focus is the Portuguese world, especially Brazil, the collection also includes materials for the study of Asia, Africa, India, and other parts of Latin America. The Scholar's Guide to Washington, D.C.: Latin American and Caribbean Studies (Woodrow Wilson International Center, 1992) states that the library generally is considered the finest collection of Luso-Brazilian materials in the U.S. The Library of Congress duplicates and supplements some of the materials found in the Oliveira Lima Library, but there is no other specialized collection for comparable depth, particularly for the study of Portuguese expansion in the sixteenth century and for the social and cultural history of Brazil from the arrival of the Portuguese court (in 1808) to 1930. The two-volume Catalog of the Oliveira Lima Library (G. K. Hall, 1970) reproduces five thousand entries from the library's card catalog. The Bibliographical and Historical Description of the Rarest Books in the Oliveira Lima Collection at the Catholic University of America (R.E.V. Holmes, comp., 1926) comprises 209 entries. These publications provide a glimpse of the collection but do not encompass all of the library's holdings. The Oliveira Lima Library is open to readers and visitors. Out-of-town scholars and others wishing to work in the library or visit are advised to contact the Curator sufficiently in advance of their arrival. There are restrictions, imposed by the wills of Manoel de Oliveira Lima and of Mrs. Lima, on the use of the library's materials. The most important restriction prohibits the removal of any item from the premises. Under the circumstances, the library does not participate in the interlibrary loan program but will supply, at the Curator's discretion, photocopies or photographic reproductions of any requested work.
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||
![[Image: CUA Logo]](../images/cualogo-tiny.gif){kind=small}