An enclosed stacks area protects volumes from extremes of heat and humidity, and a supervised reading room provides study space for students and researchers. Smaller collections and individual rare items bring the total number of cataloged rare books to more than 5,800 volumes. Many of the volumes in the room have come to the library as contributions from friends of the college.
Examples are legion.
Sara Haardt Mencken, Class of 1920, gave a number of autographed first editions she had received from literary colleagues. James Wilson Bright, an esteemed professor of Anglo-Saxon at Johns Hopkins who collected hundreds of early English imprints, sold them to the college just before the Great Depression. Dorothy Stimson, former dean and acting president, gave a first edition of Boyle's collected works that she had acquired in the course of writing a book on the Royal Society. Many books in the collection have similar histories. Thus Goucher's collection of rare books reflects the work of many distinguished collectors.