"Michael Psellos addressing the Emperor Michael VII"
ARIT is privileged to be the recipient of an important and unique library in Byzantine studies. Added to our strong existing resources in the Turkish and Ottoman fields, this choice collection of some 4500 volumes of monographs and journals enormously increases the size of ARIT's holdings in the Byzantine area. ARIT's library becomes without question one of the best libraries in Turkey for research into Byzantine literary and intellectual history. Its particular strength lies in textual studies: it will be unparalleled for its collection of Byzantine-period texts, for its catalogues of manuscript collections in libraries around the world, and for its guides to Greek palaeography.
This library is a gift to ARIT given by Douglas Mearns from the estate of Dr. H. Kenneth Snipes, an American scholar of Classical and Byzantine studies. Mr. Mearns felt it particularly appropriate that this invaluable research tool should be housed in Istanbul, the capital of the Byzantine Empire for all of its long existence. ARIT has nearly completed the process of incorporating the collection into its present holdings. The collection is now available to researchers.