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Research Guides

The Hoover Institution Library Collection

By: Simon Ertz

Collection Materials

The Hoover Institution Library collection features a wide spectrum of historical literature and published sources that complement our archival holdings. Our materials include...

...more than 200,000 books, including thousands of folios and rare editions

...tens of thousands of periodical and newspaper titles

...substantial holdings of historical government publications

...an extraordinarily large collection of ephemeral publications, such as pamphlets, brochures, booklets, etc.

Collection Areas and Languages

The Hoover Institution Library’s materials were collected over more than 80 years and date from the entire 20th as well as the 19th centuries. Sources from Russia/the Soviet Union, Germany, Eastern Europe, and other European countries are among the richest in the U.S. and, in some cases, internationally. There are also significant holdings from the United States, Latin America, Africa, and other parts of the world.

The vast majority of the materials is in Western and Slavic languages. Ca. 70% of HIL materials are in languages other than English. The collection’s major non-English languages are, in this order: Russian, German, French, Spanish, Italian, etc. The Hoover Institution Library’s former collections in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean languages are today housed at Stanford University’s East Asia Library.

Collection Themes

Like our archival collections, the Hoover Institution Library collection covers many of the biggest themes in modern history. Especially expansive are our holdings on World War I and World War II, the Russian Revolution, fascism, National Socialism, communism and socialist movements and regimes. Other prominent subjects include imperialism and decolonization, international relations, organized labor and trade unions, and peace movements.

More generally, the collection provides excellent sources for in-depth and comparative studies of propaganda, ideologies, state policies, political activism, and social and cultural change in modern times.