The Plimpton Library of 16,000 volumes- a 1936 gift of George A. Plimpton - covers what the collector called "our tools of learning" from the fifteenth to the late nineteenth centuries. The cataloged books are described in the card catalog and in CLIO. There are a good number of uncataloged books, which are classed in Dewey, and findable through a shelflist and an author catalog.
The collection is particularly strong in the "liberal arts" - grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, algebra, geometry, geography, astronomy. Many of the arithmetics, one of the great collections of sixteenth century arithmetics in the world, are described in D.E. Smith's Rara Arithmetica. The collection of handwriting manuals is one of the finest anywhere.
Plimpton Collections subject guide contains additional information about our Plimpton collections, which include medieval and renaissance archival collections, manuscripts, Arabic manuscripts, cuneiform tablets, and hornbooks.
See also the following George Arthur Plimpton Collections on the History of Education: 1. 34 Cuneiform tablets including Plimpton 322 which dates back to ca. 1900-1600 BCE and is famous because it was believed to deal with the Pythagorean theorem (long before Pythagoras was born); this belief has been persuasively challenged by Eleanor Robson. Described as part of the RBML Cuneiform collection (Bib ID: 13504676) 2. Plimpton Hornbooks: hornbooks and battledores (to be described as a separate archival collection, with some items also invidually cataloged) 3. Plimpton Mss: medieval-renaissance (to 1600) 4. Plimpton Mss: post-1600 Mss. 5. Plimpton Mss - Oriental:See: Smith/Plimpton Oriental 6. Plimpton Penmanship: penmanship and calligraphy 8. Plimpton Subject files 9. George A. Plimpton Papers (Bib ID:4079576); see also Plimpton Family Papers (Bib ID: 4079575)
All books in this collection are cataloged, and should be requested individually in CLIO. This record is for informational purposes only.