THE MARILYN M. AND WILLIAM KELLY SIMPSON LIBRARY

The Marilyn M. and William Kelly Simpson Library is one of ARCE’s most successful outreach operations. Available to ARCE members, staff, fellows, and members of ARCE affiliated expeditions, it is also accessible to the staff of the Supreme Council of Antiquities; faculty at Egyptian universities and students there seeking higher degrees; members of other foreign institutes and expeditions; and by courtesy to colleagues in general. The library’s large volume of publications in western languages, especially English, makes it a valuable resource to scholars in the Cairo area.

Founded in 1978 to support research on all aspects of the history and culture of Egypt, the library has grown organically over the years through a series of gifts, grants, exchanges, and ongoing acquisitions. Today the collection contains more than twenty-five thousand volumes, approximately twenty percent of which are in Arabic. The collection is particularly strong in Egyptology and Islamic studies, and includes all the standard scholarly reference works in these fields, as well as some 300 journal titles.

The Simpson Library collection also includes a substantial number of rare books, including a complete set of the Bulletins of the Comité de Conservation des Monuments de l'Art Arabe, a first edition of the Description de l'Egypte (one of only five complete sets in Egypt), and the catalogues généraux of the Egyptian Museum and the Musée National de l'Art Arabe (the present-day Islamic Museum).

A unique feature of the Simpson Library is the Photostat collection of important Arabic manuscripts that are held in various Middle East Libraries. Acquired by scholars working in Cairo and throughout the Middle East over the past eighty years, the collection includes many works by the Arabic philosopher Avicenna and members of his school. These works have been photocopied for public use; the originals are preserved in acid-free paper.

ONLINE CATALOG

The Center is in the process of digitizing its card catalogue, through a collaborative effort sponsored and funded by the Council of American Overseas Research Centers. The catalogue is accessible on the internet through the Digital Library for International Research. Due to the lag time between submissions from ARCE and incorporation into the DLIR, results may not be completely up-to-date.

Limited copies of material in the library, subject to US and Egyptian copyright law, are available for a fee.