Create Gest_Library.md

archival-systems-fellows/processing_exercise/sources/Gest_Library.md

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+From Alexander Leitch, A Princeton Companion, copyright Princeton University Press (1978):
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+Gest Oriental Library, The, which has been administered by the University since 1937, is one of the Western world's greatest Chinese collections. It includes among other treasures several thousand fine and rare editions that were printed before the Gutenberg Bible, and one of the world's three complete sets of the original 1728 edition of the famous 5,000-volume Chinese Encyclopedia. The Library's two thousand volumes on medicine constitute the largest collection of traditional Chinese medical books outside China and Japan.
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+This extraordinary library was founded by Guion M. Gest (1864-1948) and I. V. Gillis (1875-1948). Gest, a Quaker in religion and an engineer by profession, suffered from glaucoma. On a business trip to China, he met Gillis (then a naval attach� at the American embassy in Peking), who persuaded him to try an old Chinese eye remedy. Although this medicine did not cure the glaucoma, it gave Gest some temporary relief and led him to commission Gillis to buy Chinese books on medicine for him. Gest later extended his interest to other fields and for thirty years impoverished himself to provide Gillis with the funds required to indulge his love of books. In the end, his library numbered some 100,000 volumes.
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+In 1937, the Institute for Advanced Study, with help from the Rockefeller Foundation, acquired the Gest Library and housed it in a University-owned building at 20 Nassau Street. In 1948 the Institute transferred custodianship to the University and the collection was moved to Firestone Library. In 1972 the collection was moved to Palmer-Jones, the home of the Department of East Asian Studies. The University's East Asian Collections, which include the Gest Oriental Library, now total three hundred thousand volumes in the East Asian languages, in addition to the University's holdings in Western languages, making it one of the five largest East Asian research collections in the Western world.

archival-systems-fellows/processing_exercise/sources/acquisition.md

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+## Source of Acquisition
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+The material was purchased from Mr. Gest in August 1948. It was logged with accession #AM 13719.
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+We know that Mr. Gest acquired the collection from one Felix Limongi. Limongi in turn acquired many of the papers from the offices of the New Orleans law firm Durant & Hornor, though he may have added some material from other sources. A note left by Limongi states that he came across the Marie Claire Chabert records sometime before March 1926 while collecting postage stamps, though it is unclear from available documentation if he also acquired them via Durant & Hornor.
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