The BRIT research library, with more than 75,000 volumes, is an extensive and exhaustive collection of botanical, particularly taxonomic, books and journals. It is especially valuable in researching the historical aspects of botany and is a valuable tool assisting the modern researcher. The personal collections of Dr. Lloyd H. Shinners and Dr. Eula Whitehouse formed the nucleus and today comprise a major portion of the library.
Housed in a special room where temperature and humidity are carefully controlled are centuries-old encyclopedic works, floras, monographs, and reprints. Journals and serials are kept in an adjacent room. Twentieth century holdings include biographies and works in botany, gardening. The library contains basic reference works in systematic botany, including such standards as Index Kewensis, Index Londinensis, The Bradley Bibliography, and the printed catalogues of such great libraries as the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Lindley, and the Arnold Arboretum.
The library is especially rich in the taxonomic literature of botany and horticulture in the last half of the 18th and 19th centuries. That period is considered the "Golden Age" of gardening in its broadest sense. It was also the Golden Age of gardening literature, and many of these works are literary classics in their own right.
The 16th and 17th centuries represent an era of the unfolding of botany and horticulture, of their development and refinement from the medieval arts and crafts of medicine and agriculture. This is the time of the classic herbals, of tomes of Materia Medica, and of dainty, specialized books on the art of perfumery. The great explorers and their voyages and expeditions were of this period, and the library includes many volumes treating these subjects.
