About the Division
In 1927, Archer
M. Huntington, founder of
the Hispanic
Society of America, established an endowment fund in his name, the
first of several important donations for Hispanic studies at the Library
of Congress. The second "area studies division" to be founded by the Library,
in 1939 the Hispanic Division was established to acquire Luso-Hispanic
materials in a systematic fashion. In that same year, the division's reading
room, The "Hispanic Society Reading Room," named after the New York Hispanic
Society of America, was inaugurated to service the Library's growing Luso-Hispanic
collections.
Although primary emphasis has always been the acquisition of current materials
and government documents the Hispanic Division has also acquired a rich collection
of rare items. The Division was instrumental in acquiring significant gifts
of manuscripts, music scores, and posters, photographs and films. It made
efforts to develop special groups of materials such as collecting folk music
from San Antonio, Texas, and pioneering the recording of Hispanic poets.
Through the generosity of countless donors, the Library of Congress has
amassed the world's finest collection on the history and culture of Latin
America, Iberia, and the Caribbean. Many of the rare items were received
as gifts, such as rare books
donated by Lessing J. Rosenwald and manuscripts
given by Hans P. Kraus. Gifts and bequests have enabled the Hispanic
Division to purchase materials in various formats, in addition to books and
periodicals, and to record authors for the Archive
of Hispanic Literature on Tape. Further information on the various Luso-Hispanic
collections can be found in the Hispanic Reading Room.
Lewis U. Hanke, the
first chief of the Hispanic Division, brought with him from Harvard University
the Handbook of Latin American
Studies (established in 1935), which since 1939 has been prepared
at the Hispanic Division. The Handbook reflects the breadth and
depth of the Library's Hispanic collections. The Fundación
Histórica Tavera of Spain, with the assistance from the Andrew
W. Mellon Foundation, financed the retrospective conversion of 53 volumes
of the Handbook to CD-ROM format. In remembrance of their father,
the children of Lewis Hanke donated funds to the Hispanic Division to place
the entire automated database of the Handbook on the World Wide
Web.
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