STARTED OFFICIALLY IN 1918 with a donation of around 9,500 books, 1600 pamphlets and 550 manuscripts, the Charles W. Wason Collection on East Asia (http://asia.library.cornell.edu/ac/Wason/index) is among the top East Asian library collections in the country. Originally named the Charles W. Wason Library on China and the Chinese, the backbone of the collection began as the private library of the late Charles W. Wason (Cornell class of 1876), a railroad magnate based in Cleveland.

This Gateway is the central electronic access point to the more than 7,000,000 volumes, 7,000,000 microforms, 65,000 cubic feet of manuscripts, and 400,000 other materials held by Cornell University Library that place it among the ten largest academic research libraries in North America. Cornell acquires all books published by university presses in the English-speaking world, the output of some 140 American trade publishers, complete sets of thousands of scholarly series from around the world, and more than 60,000 periodical and newspaper titles.

The Fiske Icelandic Collection, located in the Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library, is the largest repository of works on Iceland and on Nordic medieval studies in North America. The collection, which Cornell University Library acquired in 1905, contains over 32,000 titles in a variety of European languages and in diverse media, from vellum and paper manuscripts to CD-ROMs. The Fiske Icelandic Collection is particularly rich in printed works of contemporary Icelandic belles lettres, medieval sagas, and literary criticism of the latter.

International Veterinary Information Service (IVIS) is a not-for-profit organization that provides information to veterinarians, veterinary students, and animal health professionals worldwide. The IVIS website provides free access to original, up-to-date publications organized in electronic books edited by highly qualified editors, proceedings of veterinary meetings, short courses, continuing education, an international calendar of veterinary events, image collections, and much more, all with the help of private and corporate sponsors.

The Reference Department and Instruction Division is a team made up of librarians, reference assistants, and support staff working together to provide effective services to the Cornell community. They assist users in finding information, recommending sources for research, suggesting research strategies, and helping users navigate a wide array of electronic and print resources.

The Collection includes materials published both in the Middle East and in Western Europe and the United States about the Middle East and Islam, including over 40,000 books, serials, government documents, and audiovisual materials, housed mainly in Olin Library.

The Slavic and East European Collections contain over 300,000 volumes, both in vernacular languages of the area and in Western European languages. East European language holdings are about 56% Russian, 13% Polish, 8% Czech and Slovak, 10% Serbian, Croatian, and Serbo-Croatian, 5% Ukrainian and Belorussian. The remaining 8% consists of Bulgarian, Hungarian, Romanian, and other Eastern European languages. The overall collection grows by more than 10,000 items per year.