The Eaton Special Collections Room is named in honour of the Eaton Foundation, whose generous donation helped to make possible the construction of the Cardinal Carter Library, which opened in September 1995. Subdued lighting, easy chairs, oak cabinetry, hardwood floors, and Persian carpet, as well as special temperature and humidity controls add to its scholarly ambiance. The collection policy for the Eaton Special Collections Room indicates the types of material acquired for the room. The Eaton Special Collections Room is a jewel in King’s crown, and one in which present and future generations of visitors and scholars will take pride.
Archival material and artifacts celebrating the religious life of the late G. Emmett Cardinal Carter (1912-2003), our library’s namesake, are prominently situated in the Eaton Special Collections Room. These include a gold chalice and paten that were given to Cardinal Carter by His Holiness, Pope John Paul II, when he stayed with the Cardinal during his 1984 official visit to Toronto. Finding Aid
Published at Brescia, Italy, in 1487, this printed incunabular copy of Dante Alighieri’s immortal Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy) became the Cardinal Carter Library’s 100,000th title on April 2, 1998, a gift from The University of Western Ontario. Printed by Boninus de Boninis, the so-called Brescia Dante boasts 68 full-page woodcuts, each illustrating a canto of the poem. The text is surrounded by the commentary of Cristoforo Landino.
The Psalter is a manuscript book of psalms arranged for devotional use, hand-lettered in Gothic script on vellum (calf skin), and consisting of 197 leaves. Many are beautifully illuminated with floral designs in gold leaf, red, light and royal blue, green and violet. Probably from late 14th- or early 15th-century Flanders, the manuscript was purchased from a dealer in Lima, Peru, and, given its age and provenance, may have travelled to the New World with the conquistadors or early Spanish missionaries. The manuscript retains its original binding of calf or goat skin, finished with simple, hand-tooled geometric designs. The Psalter was a gift to the Library from former Chief Librarians Miss Elizabeth Russell (1986-1993) and Dr. John S. Clouston (1993-2005).
This impressive collection of 15th to 18th-century imprints was acquired largely from the former rare book collection of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science, at The University of Western Ontario. The items were purchased by the former Chief Librarian, Dr. John S. Clouston (1993 -2005), and given to King’s University College in 1998. Named in honour of Clouston's late parents, it consists of works of history, literature, biography, philosophy, theology and travel, chiefly from the United Kingdom, France, Italy and the Low Countries.
Archival copies of books authored, books edited and refereed articles and chapters by King's University College faculty, as well as dossiers of winners of the King’s University College Award for Excellence in Teaching are prominently displayed.
Professor William S. Bush, a widely recognized authority on the work of French Catholic novelist Georges Bernanos (1888-1948), donated some 400 volumes to the library in 1995. The collection is not so much material by or even about Bernanos, as a component of Bush’s own personal library dealing with the French Catholic literary revival, which served as context for Bernanos’ extensive oeuvre. The collection is complemented by holdings of Bernanos’ writing and criticism devoted to it, both in the Cardinal Carter Library, and in the D.B. Weldon Library at The University of Western Ontario. Also housed with the collection are 16 volumes of primary source material amassed by Bernanos scholar, Hubert Sarrazin, of Rio de Janeiro, entitled L’Oeuvre de Bernanos à l’époque de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale: suite chronologique de 1938 à 1945 / texte et commentaire établi sur documents originaux (1964-) and L’oeuvre de Bernanos à l’époque de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale: manuscrits (1984). This Sarrazin material is on permanent loan from The University of Western Ontario Libraries.