Uncovering the McGill Library Lyman Collection: The Lasting Legacy of an Amateur Entomologist

Abstract

This article describes the efforts made by two librarians to retrace and reveal the lost story of a poorly documented special collection bequeathed to McGill University in 1914 by Henry Herbert Lyman, a local amateur entomologist. Lyman’s legacy lives on at the university through the Lyman Entomological Museum and Research Laboratory and the entomological literature collection, known as the Lyman Collection, housed at the Macdonald Campus Library. University archival materials, library records, and historical accounts of the museum and its literature collection helped trace the history and various moves of the collection and allowed us to identify those materials likely to have belonged to Lyman originally. The collection was analysed to determine its uniqueness within Canada as compared with a selection of comparator academic libraries.