The History of the Written Word: Pages from the Past, 2400 BCE-1920 CE, consist of a collection of original leaves from rare books and manuscripts in limited portfolio sets.
The Parker mss., 1264-1871, consist of commonplace books, legal records, account books, volumes on heraldry, rhetoric and logic, genealogy, sermons, political tracts, a diary, gazetteer and a jest book in verse.
The Near Eastern mss., 700-1915, consist of a collection of individually acquired manuscripts pertaining to the region formerly known as the Near East, now referred to as the Middle East.
The Gottfried mss. consists of Latin manuscripts and a working translation of Giovanni Della Casa's Rime by Rudolf B. Gottfried, 1909-1986, professor emeritus of English, Indiana University.
The Ege mss., 12th-16th cent., consist of original leaves from medieval manuscripts of Western Europe collected by Otto F. Ege, 1888-1951, dean of the Cleveland Institute of Art and lecturer on the history of the book at the School of Library Science, Western Reserve University, Cleveland, Ohio.
The Medieval and Renaissance mss., 700-1600, consists of individual items acquired from time to time either as a gift or purchased from a variety of sources.
The Ricketts mss., 9th-19th cent., are illuminated medieval and renaissance manuscripts assembled by Coella Lindsay Ricketts, 1859-1941, calligrapher, of Chicago, Illinois. Most of the material relates to religious matters.
The Pliny mss., 9th cent.-1938, are photostats of Pliny manuscripts assembled by Selatie Edgar Stout, 1871-1969, professor of Latin and dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Indiana University.