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The Valente Italian Library at Seton Hall University was established in 1997 by Sal Valente. Since then it has grown to more than 29,500 volumes, and continues to expand through a substantial endowment devoted to the acquisition of new and rare books, with a concentration from AD 400 to the present. The collection is one of the most comprehensive in the state of New Jersey and is a major resource for scholars in the New York metropolitan area: significant for research and scholarship in Italian Philosophy, Religion, History, Italian Regional History, Italian-American History, Economic History, Law, Music, Art, Italian Literature and Italian-American culture and history. The Valente Library is open to the Seton Hall faculty, students, and outside researchers.
Highlights of our Collection
This research-level collection of Italian history and literature includes core works such as the Grande dizionario della lingua italiana (the Italian equivalent of the Oxford English Dictionary) and the Fonti per la storia d’Italia (part of a 350 volume set of published fundamental historical documents). Other important monographs include the entire catalogue of the Societa' siciliana di storia patria and a rare first edition of the first printed history of Sicily written by Tommaso Fazello, De rebus siculis decades duae, published in Palermo in 1558.
Banner Image:
Matteo di Giovanni [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
Image at bottom and right are both from the following volume in the Valente Rare Book Collections:
Shottus, F. (1650). Itinerario ouero nvova discrittione de' viaggi principali d'Italia. Roma: Appresso P. De'Rossi.