A black and white image of former librarian George Parker Winship in his study

About

A private institution with a public mission, the John Carter Brown Library is an independent research library located on the campus of Brown University.

The JCB has undergone extraordinary changes since its mid-nineteenth-century inception as the private collection of bibliophile John Carter Brown. What began as a gentleman’s library has grown into a world-leading library of “Americana,” a term that traditionally denoted books, maps, and manuscripts related to the history of the Americas from the arrival of Europeans c. 1492 to the independence movements of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries. We recognize that term even as the library takes an expansive view of its interpretation.

The JCB now offers a sought-after fellowship program that attracts between 40 and 50 scholars from around the world each year; a commitment to full digitization of the library’s collections and a digital program for supporting a dynamic environment of digital scholarship; a world-class curatorial and library staff, with professional expertise in the fields the library serves and the collections it stewards; extensive academic and public programming; and an onsite and remote research environment for anyone wishing to develop, learn, and share the complex and interconnected histories of the early Americas.

Mission

By preserving, expanding, and providing enhanced access to its world-renowned collection, the John Carter Brown Library inspires scholarship, stimulates innovative and creative engagement with its materials, and connects communities around the world with the history and culture of the early Americas.

– The John Carter Brown Library

Located on the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, The John Carter Brown Library welcomes individuals and communities from around the world to research, learn, and share knowledge about the early Americas through its collections.  Committed to digital as well as on site access to its world-leading materials focused on the full western hemisphere from the 15th through the 19th centuries, the JCB supports research fellowships, a digital platform, Americana, and a regular program of academic and public events.

History

John Carter Brown (1797-1874) was already a collector, from a family of readers who also collected books, when in 1846 he initiated one of the great American collections—and one of the great collections of “Americana.” That year he made three substantial purchases of books in what was a new and growing field for collecting: the early Americas. At his home on Benefit Street in Providence Rhode Island he amassed a library that was hemispheric in scope from the start. There he inspected books on a library table that is still at the JCB today, and fitted them into specialized bookcases that were the model for those that still ring the JCB’s MacMillan Reading Room.

John Carter Brown’s private collection became a research library in 1904 when the building at 94 George Street, on the corner of the main green at Brown University, opened. A gift from the will of the library namesake’s son, John Nicholas Brown I, the JCB has maintained its founding focus on the western hemisphere in the 15th-19th centuries. John Carter Brown, and subsequently staff of the library, expanded the collection from books to encompass maps, atlases, Indigenous language materials, and other rare materials including manuscripts and prints such as broadsides and cartoons.

An exhibit “1846: Inventing Americana at the John Carter Brown Library” opened May 19, 2023 online and at the library. It shares the earliest history of the library and begins to suggest some of its implications for subsequent scholarship, a theme the JCB will continue to explore.