Must Love Dogs

If you’ve ever visited the Special Collections Research Center, you may have learned that we hold the second largest collection of books about dogs in the United States, second only to the American Kennel Club. I love dogs and thought it would be fun to write a series of blog posts highlighting the dog book collection. This brief introduction to the collection will be the first.

Peter Chapin bookplate The collection began with the donation of over 3,000 volumes and a modest endowment by Howard M. Chapin in 1937, officially establishing the Peter Chapin Collection of Books on Dogs. Peter Chapin was Howard’s cocker spaniel, whose picture is on the collection’s bookplate. In 1988, the collection grew by over 6,000 volumes with the donation of Murray and Shirley G. Horowitz’s collection of dog books. The addition of this collection resulted in what we now refer to as the Chapin-Horowitz Collection of Cynogetica. This is an evolving collection, with new additions added each year.

Stay tuned for more!