Edwin Schroeder reappointed director of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library

Edwin (E.C.) Schroeder, director of the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library and associate university librarian, has been reappointed to a second term through June 30, 2021, President Peter Salovey has announced.

As director, Schroeder is responsible for using the library’s resources and collections to introduce faculty, students, and the broader Yale and New Haven communities to many of the university’s treasures. “There is no doubt,” Salovey said in a letter to the community, “that in his first five years in the post E.C. has excelled in this charge. Early on, he made it his goal to have every undergraduate visit the Beinecke during his or her four years at Yale, and in the past five years the number of classes held there has risen from 200 to more than 500 annually. The establishment of the Windham Campbell Literature Prizes has, under E.C.’s stewardship, contributed to Yale’s standing as an internationally recognized showcase for emerging literary achievement.”

Salovey also noted that Schroeder has opened the Beinecke’s doors to wider audiences from the region and beyond, hosting tours during New Haven’s Festival of Arts & Ideas and offering the building’s exterior as a canvas for the arts in an exhibit titled “Lux: Ideas Through Light,” held last April. Additionally, said Salovey, Schroeder has taken the Beinecke’s renovation “as a once-in-a-generation opportunity to rethink nearly every aspect of the library and its work, including the expansion of teaching spaces as one of his principal goals.”

During his first term, Schroeder oversaw the Beinecke’s acquisition of a number of renowned collections: the Meserve-Kunhardt Collection, one of the largest private collections of 19th-century American photography devoted to Lincoln and the Civil War; the Anthony J. Taussig Collection, widely considered the world’s most important private collection of rare materials relating to English law; the Toshiyuki Takamiya Collection, the most comprehensive privately owned collection of Middle English texts; archives of the playwright and Pulitzer Prize-winner Paula Vogel; and the papers of award-winning children’s author Mo Willems.