 Although it had received many important books and manuscripts pertaining to the contemporaneous development of science, the American colonies, and ecclesiastical history, it had received only piecemeal historical contributions, such as the Assyrian tablets received in 1855 that founded the Babylonian Collection.Beginning under the librarianship of Andrew Keogh in 1924, the library undertook a purposeful program of collecting rare books, personal papers, and archival works.English professor Chauncey Brewster Tinker mounted a campaign among Yale alumni to purchase or donate valuable items, and early gifts included a complete copy of the Gutenberg Bible, the papers of Gertrude Stein and Ezra Pound, and the papers of James Boswell.