Books

The core of our book collection was the personal library of John Vigen Der Manuelian gifted to the ARC in 1989. 

As of 2021, ARC has more than 30,000 books, predominantly in the Armenian and English languages, but also in Arabic, French, German, Iranian, Italian, Russian, Turkish (including Ottoman Turkish), and a few other languages (Figure 1).

Figure 2. and Figure 3. demonstrate the growth of the ARC book collection between 1994 and 2009, and after 2009. In 2009 we introduced the principle of distinguishing between first copies and duplicates in our statistics, which is reflected in Figure 3. 

Subjects

Books in the ARC collection cover broad areas of subjects, including Armenian architecture, arts, civilization, history, language, literature, music as well as more specific subjects such as Armenian artists, authors, composers, the Armenian Church, Armenian diaspora, Armenia or Artsakh / Nagorno-Karabakh, the Armenian Genocide, Armenians in the United States or Armenian-Americans.

Availability

Most of the books in the ARC collection are cataloged and available on the Mardigian Library electronic catalog. Please note that the cataloging of the ARC books is still in progress. If you are not able to find a book in the Mardigian Library catalog, we may still have it in our collection. In such cases, please contact Gerald E. Ottenbreit, Jr. at [email protected] or call the ARC at 313-593-5181 for further information.

Also included in the ARC books collection are volumes reproduced in Microfilm and Microfiche formats. These items are available for in-building use only.

Duplicates

The ARC also has a large number of duplicate volumes for possible exchanges with individuals and other institutions. If you are interested in our duplicates you are welcome to contact Gerald E. Ottenbreit, Jr. at [email protected] or call the ARC at 313-593-5181.