Hoose Library of Philosophy: Collections, History, Art & Architecture and Digital Humanities Projects and Resources: FLEWELLING COLLECTION

This information was copied directly from Librarian, Christal Young's Research Guide for HIST100 to learn more please click on the link to go directly to the HIST100 Research Guide. 

Understanding both the history of the discipline you are interested in and understanding the cultural, political, and social era of the particular text you are studying depends on reading and knowing history. History’s major activity is to gather evidence regarding the past, evaluate that evidence within the temporal scope of the period under study, and then access how that evidence contributes to our understanding of that period.

Historical research relies on a wide variety of sources, primary and secondary and oral tradition.

Primary Sources:

• Eyewitness accounts of events
• Oral or written testimony
• Found in public records or legal documents, minutes of meetings, newspapers, diaries, letters, artifacts such as posters, billboards, photographs, drawings, papers
• Located in university archives or special collections, or local historical society collections or privately owned collections

Secondary Sources:

Are scholarly interpretations and critiques of the historical period of interest that you are studying. In the study of modern history the difference between primary and secondary sources are usually clear. In ancient and medieval history this distinction is not so clear.

• Secondhand accounts of events
• Oral or written
• Found in textbooks, encyclopedias, journal articles, newspapers, biographies, media such as film or tape recordings

Oral Tradition:

• Oral testimonies and personal narratives
  • The USC Shoah Foundation Visual History Archive

Flewelling Collection

Professor Ralph Tyler Flewelling, as director of philosophy at USC and with the support of the Seeley Wintersmith Mudd Foundation, began developing the Hoose Library of Philosophy during the mid-1920s. From the first, his plans embraced the acquisition of books possessing a combination of scholarly and bibliophilic qualities; and by the time it was installed in new quarters in Mudd Memorial Hall in 1930, the library contained a modest group of such volumes.

Comprising approximately 2,500 volumes, they include manuscripts, incunabula and such works as Hobbe’s Leviathan (1651), and Locke’s Essay Concerning Humane Understanding (1690).

The Flewelling Collection is currently housed within Special Collections in the Doheny Memorial Library.

To learn more about our Flewelling Collection for research and instructional services please contact me via my contact information located on the far right of this page or  Special Collections.

You may also contact:

Melinda Hayes, Rare Books Librarian
melindah@usc.edu 
(213) 740 5141
DML 205B

Ralph Tyler Flewelling was the head of the School of Philosophy at USC when Mudd Hall was built in 1929. He was an ardent book collecter. He was the author of many books and was one of the leading figures in the personalist movement in American philosophy.

Source: Public Art in LA by Ruth Wallach

A MLIS student, Lisa Crow, did a study of the Hoose Library of Philosophy and shared some of her findings on her blog. 

An excerpt from her study regarding Ralph Tyler Flewelling and his importance to USC, the creation of the Department of Philosophy, and how the Hoose Library of Philosophy was heralded for its collections and contributions to not only the field of Philosophy but to the history of California, of Los Angeles, and the mission of the Hoose Library of Philosophy which is still in place today.