The Connolly Irish Collection: Monsignor Arthur T. Connolly was a major donor to the library of the Catholic University of America. A child of Irish immigrants, he amassed a considerable collection of material relating to Ireland and the Irish in America. These books, periodicals, and pamphlets, some 2,292 volumes, were among the first of his gifts to arrive at Catholic University in March of 1916. In 1925, The University Announcements described this material as "possibly the most complete collection of Irish history and literature in the United States." Of particular importance is the collection of over 1,000 Irish pamphlets from about 1700 to 1850, which contains "a wide range of the popular literature of the early stages of Ireland's campaign for Parliamentary Reform and the first appearance of the Catholic Question. The content of these series and monographs depicts the mutually influential currents of agrarian, economic, social and cultural change which affected the national political process." There is a catalogue of the microform edition of the pamphlets, compiled by Kathleen Ann Nee for IDC Microform Publishers in 1988. The Michael Jenkins Collection on the History of Maryland: Some 280 books, periodicals, pamphlets, and brochures collected by Michael Jenkins, one time treasurer of the university, were given to the library in 1913. The donor's stated intent was to encourage the use of these materials, many ephemeral and scarce, by scholars undertaking the history of Maryland from the colonial times to 1812. Other early materials about Maryland once in the library's general collections have been added to this collection.
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