“The Pontifical Institute has long appeared to observers to be the most substantial centre of medieval scholarship in North America.”
—GEORGE HOLMES, Chichele Professor of Medieval History, All Souls College, Oxford

The Institute Library, which opened in 1929 with a mere 3,000 titles donated by St Michael’s College, today has holdings of about 120,000 volumes whose lustre is enhanced and complemented by specialized collections of 9,000 reels of microfilm and 50,000 slides. The Institute’s Academic Council alone exercises control and authority over Library policies and use. Access to the Library is normally granted to professors and graduate students of the University of Toronto who work in areas allied to the Library’s resources and, on a more restricted basis, to other members of the University of Toronto who need to consult unique copies or materials not otherwise available at the University of Toronto. Every reasonable opportunity to use the Library is also granted to Guests of the Institute and other visiting scholars.

Location
The Institute Library is located on the fourth floor of the John M. Kelly Library of St Michael’s College at 113 St Joseph Street, Toronto. The Institute Council alone exercises control and authority over Library policies and use. Access to the library is normally granted to those professors and graduate students of the University of Toronto who need to consult unique copies or materials not otherwise accessible. Every reasonable opportunity to use the library is also given to visiting scholars, particularly Guests of the Institute.

Hours
Please note the following schedule. While every effort is made to keep information current, patrons are requested to confirm opening hours and any other matters relating to access or to the collections directly with the library staff (see below).

• Regular hours: from 4 January 2010 – May 2010   During the academic year, the Institute Library is open from 9:00 am to 6:00 pm, Monday, Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, and from 9:00 am to 9:00 pm on Wednesday. The Library is also open from 1:00 pm to 6:00 pm, both Saturday and Sunday. The Library will be closed Monday, 15 February (Provincial holiday), and Friday, 2 April (Good Friday).

Staff
For questions regarding policy and acquisitions, please contact the Librarian, Jonathan Bengtson at 416 926 7250. To consult rare books and manuscripts, please contact James K. Farge, CSB, Curator of the Rare Book Room, at 416 926 7283. To consult the collections, and for general information, please write to Michael Sloan or telephone 416 926 7146. Reference questions should be directed to William Edwards at 416 926 1300, ext 3423.

Policies and Regulations
The Library is owned and operated by the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, which alone exercises authority over its policies and use. It functions as a research library.

Admission to the Library is by a PIMS Library pass, valid for one year, signed by the Librarian. An up-to-date Registration Form must be on file for every pass holder and occasional user. The user's signature on the pass signifies agreement to abide by the regulations. PIMS Library Passes are normally limited to the following:

• Fellows, Associates, Guests, and Staff of the Pontifical Institute.
• Professors and Graduate Students in the Centre for Medieval Studies or other Departments of the University of Toronto who are working in medieval studies.
• Undergraduate Students Majoring in Medieval Studies at St Michael's College.
• Visiting Professors and Graduate Students from other universities working in medieval studies. Please provide reference on university letterhead.
• Private scholars working in medieval studies.
• Others needing materials held uniquely in this library may be given access for the day.

The Library Pass must be shown to the door monitor upon entry. Please sign the register. Although access is gratis, salaried card holders are urged to help support the Library by becoming members of the Friends of the Library.

PLEASE NOTE

1. Library materials do not circulate.
2. Only materials for research (notes, paper, laptops or writing materials) may be brought into the Library. All other materials (such as briefcases, large purses, bags, and books from St Michael's College Library that have not been checked out) are to be consigned to the coin-return lockers provided.
3. Sixty personal lockers inside the library are available for an annual fee ($5.00) and a key-return fee ($15.00). They are suitable for purses, laptops, notes, and microfilms.
4. When photocopying, please avoid pressing on the book spine. Books likely to be photocopied by multiple users in a course should be copied one time only, and that master copied provided for re-copying by others.
5. For reasons of conservation, Folio and Oversize books MAY NOT BE PHOTOCOPIED. The latter should be consulted on the reading stands.
6. Bound journals and books in the Reference and Palaeography Rooms should be returned to the shelves daily by the user. All other books should be returned daily to the re-shelving trolley at the entrance to the stacks.
7. Please exit the Library for conversations. Please do not engage the door monitor in conversation.
8. No food, drink, or use of cell phones is permitted in the Library.
9. Notices posted on the bulletin boards are subject to the approval of the Librarian.
10. Refusal or failure to observe these regulations may result in loss of library access.

Catalogues and Facilities
The entire collection is non-circulating. For a description of its resources, see A Conspectus of the Collections. The library maintains separate catalogues for its holdings of printed books, microfilms, and many of its slides. Its catalogue of printed books is now searchable through the University of Toronto's computerized Library Catalogue but the shelf-list of manuscripts on microfilm, the microfiches of the Vatican Palatine Collection of early printed books, and journal holdings have not been entered into the on-line catalogue.

In addition to the principal collections of sources indispensable to any research on the Middle Ages (such as the Patrologia Graeca, Patrologia Latina, the Corpus Christianorum in its various series, the Monumenta Germaniae Historica, the volumes of the Acta Sanctorum) and major reference works (such as the Pauly-Wissowa and Der neue Pauly, the Italia Sacra, and the Gallia Christiana), patrons also have access to CD–ROM databases of the Corpus Christianorum series (CETEDOC), the Catalogue of Latin Incipits, and Thomas Aquinas’ Opera omnia (for further details, see A Conspectus of the Collections). The Institute library contains seminar rooms, six individual offices (wired for network access), open study carrels, microfilm readers, a microfilm digital reader-printer with greyscale capabilities for enhancing images, as well as computing and photocopying facilities.

Report from the Librarian, 2007–2008
During the last academic year we catalogued approximately 3,400 new titles – considerably more than double the number in any previous year. The Kelly Library staff of the University of St Michael’s College provided original cataloguing of 1201 new titles (235 of them in Slavic languages) – about normal for the yearly intake at PIMS. In addition, however, during his first year as Library Technician Michael Sloan was able to add an additional 1328 new books for which records already existed in the U of T Library system. Also, Father Denis April, CSB, working as a volunteer, accessed about 1200 of the 3400 books donated three years ago by Arlette and Frank Thomas. This brings our total catalogued holdings to approximately 123,000 printed volumes. The Library also holds about 8,500 uncatalogued printed books on microfiche (about half of the Palatine Collection held in the Vatican Library) and 9,500 manuscripts on microfilms gathered from over 500 different libraries and archives. We also hold about 800 CD–ROMs and DVDs, 770 of which contain images of letters written by the popes from the 13th to the mid-15th century. We are the sole Toronto licensee for several on-line medieval resources, and have joined with Robarts Library of the University of Toronto to fund access from the library, office, and home for several additional on-line sources. We subscribe to 210 scholarly journals.

Using access to UTL Workflows system, Michael Sloan and our Reference Librarian Bill Edwards were able to correct or otherwise change 1200 catalogue entries of books already in the collection. Some changes simply involved misspellings in the author or title field, others added information to certain other fields; but the largest number of changes involved moving books formerly grouped in series to new locations next to books of a similar author or subject, in order to facilitate patron browsing in the shelves. As well, we have slowly begun what will be a very long process of re-cataloguing into the Library of Congress system the thousands of books currently shelved in the obsolete Lynn-Peterson Alternative Classification for Catholic Books. The goal of all these changes is to rationalize the Library’s collection and make it more easily accessible to patrons.

James K. Farge, CSB

PIMS welcomed 653 different patrons last year, an increase of 36% over the preceding year. Of the 588 Canadian patrons, 93 were members of PIMS or of the University of St. Michael’s College (including the Faculty of Theology and undergraduates in Medieval Studies), and 100 were students and professors from the Centre for Medieval Studies. Most of the rest were from other parts of the University of Toronto – notably, the School of Graduate Studies, the departments of History, Philosophy, English, and Classics – or from 26 other Canadian universities in 9 different provinces. We had 35 patrons from the United States; they came from 20 different universities in 17 different states. 30 patrons came from overseas: 19 from the UK, the others from Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Israel, Italy, Romania, and Spain. Our library staff shelved about 8000 books used by our patrons. Patrons shelve personally the books they have used in the Palaeography and Catalogue collections. Bill Edwards was able to fill 38 requests on Inter-Library Loan for photocopies of articles or chapters, but he had to refuse 128 other requests for books held elsewhere in Canada or for reference and palaeography books which, by long-established policy, we do not lend. He received 150 reels of microfilm. 64 of them were gifts, but 95 were films that had been absent for a number of years from our collection. We are now enforcing a more stringent policy regarding loan of microfilms.

By far the most significant single event in the library this past year was the gift of nine medieval manuscript codices from the curator of the Bergendal Collection – adding to the two manuscripts he had already donated in early 2007. Two of them, dating from ca. 970 AD, are written in late Carolingian minuscule. Another is the very codex presented by the historian-inquisitor Bernard Gui to Pope John XXII in 1329. It contains lives of saints, of Roman emperors, and of popes, all composed by Gui. In addition, there are manuscripts of works by Jacobus de Voragine, Peter Lombard, Lanfranc, Raymond of Peñafort, and the Decretales of Gregory IX. Reception of this number of outstanding manuscripts lifts the PIMS Library, already world-famous, into a still higher echelon of research libraries. We are very grateful to the donor for his continuing gifts of outstanding works to us.

In late summer 2007, two new rows of shelving were added to the stack area. As a result, the entire collection had to be shifted once again – the third time in six years. These additional shelves will allow incorporation of the Thomas Collection into the stacks and allows expansion of Library acquisitions for another ten years.

With funding from the Joan and Clifford Hatch foundation and with an advance from the Friends of the Library 2008–2009 special project, we began this year the digitizing of the Institute slide collection. Approximately 5,000 slides, all concerning manuscript hands and illuminations, were digitized and catalogued and have been incorporated into the on-line collection maintained by FADIS (Fine Art Digital Imaging System maintained by the Fine Art Department of the University of Toronto). This was all done under the supervision of Harriet Sonne. We are grateful to the Hatch family and to the Friends of the Library for enabling us to evaluate the process of preservation of, and increased accessibility to, our collection of approximately 60,000 slides.

Early in 2008 the Library received a gift of 690 books, 200 journal issues, and about 2,000 slides – all concerning monastic history and archaeology – from Dr. Gerald Guest. This fourth accession brings the total size of the Guest Collection to about 4,000 books, 1000 journals, 12,000 slides, and many pamphlets, articles, and images of English and Irish medieval monasteries. Visiting all the sites of those monasteries and priories, and collecting books about them, has been an avocation of Dr Guest and his wife Marilyn for about four decades. They have created for us a resource that cannot be matched outside the British Isles.

The Endowment Fund of the Friends of the Library has once again increased our acquisitions budget. Books in hagiography were purchased with a donation from Father Edward Jackman. Additional funds were provided by Lucille Wakelin and Jim Carson. Margot King donated over 400 books from her collection on medieval women’s spirituality, and Dr Gerald Dunlevie gave 260 titles in classics. A large number of books were added from the library of the late Father Armand Maurer, CSB. Other donors of books during the 2007–2008 academic year were T.D. Barnes, J.M. Blazquez, Virginia Brown, James Carley, André Crépin, Lucy Donkin, Martin Dimnik, CSB, Greti Dinkova-Bruun, Barry F.H. Graham, James Hankins, Ann Hutchison, the Janet E. Hutchison Foundation, Edouard Jeauneau, Bernice Kaczynski (for the Journal of Medieval Latin), Leonard Kennedy, CSB, James McConica, CSB, Neil Moran, Erika Rummel, William Sheehan, CSB, Philip Slavin, Brian Stock, Ron B. Thomson, Massimiliano Vitiello, and Jill Webster. I extend my apologies to any donors whose names may have been inadvertently omitted. I am grateful to the staff of the John M. Kelly Library, who continue to provide cataloguing and other services that make it possible for us to facilitate the research of our patrons.

JAMES K. FARGE, CSB
Librarian