Koraes Library possesses a rich collection of books that used to belong to some of the island’s most prominent men. These men managed to gather some extremely precious volumes at a time where books were expensive and hard to acquire.
These books cover a wide range of scientific fields, which reflect both the professional activity and the intellectual interests of their collectors. Some of the books are rare editions, which date back to the first years of book publishing, and are in excellent condition.
The library’s most important collections are the following: the Adamantios Koraes Collection (3,000 volumes), the Ioannis Adreadis Collection (4,300 volumes), the Georgios Mihalinos Collection (2,180 volumes), the Alexandros Votsanis Collection (2,065 volumes), the Ioannis Vouros Collection (1,114 volumes), and the Nikolaos Petrokokkinos Collection (930 volumes). Our library also benefited from other donations from Geortzis and Tarsi Dromokaïtis, Alexandros Pahnos, Leonis Kalvokoresis, Georgios Photeinos, Ioakim Phoropoulos, Konstantinos Amantos and others. Some of Chios’ most prominent personalities donated their entire personal libraries. This is the case of Philippos Argenti (2,000 volumes), Georgios Theotokas (4,000 volumes) and, most recently, Kostas Koukourides. The library’s grantors gave their personal book collections to the library as a token of their love to their homeland and with the view to benefit Chios’ most important cultural institution and future generations.
The Adamantios Koraes Collection
This collection is the pride and joy of our library. Its importance is measured not only by its volume, namely its 3,000 books, but, most importantly, by the fact that it belonged to one of the most enlightened intellectuals of Modern Greece and the founder of this library. The value of Koraes’ library is also measured by the number and quality of Koreas’ numerous annotations. This collection consists of rare and expensive editions some of which remain in pristine condition. “I donate by entire library to the ‘Gymnasion’ of Chios”, Koraes wrote in his will and testamentary disposition. At the time of Koraes’ death, in 1833, Chios’ Middle School (Gymnasion) was not operational due to the devastation that created the massacre of the islanders by Ottoman troops. Koraes’ books and manuscripts had to travel a lot before finally reaching the island of Chios in 1850. Napoleon’s gift to Koraes holds a prominent position within this collection. It is an edition that dates back to 1809-1822 and provides a detailed description of Egypt.
The Ioannis Adreadis Collection
In 1858, a rich merchant and intellectual from Trieste, Ioannis Andreadis, donated to the Library of the School of Chios his entire book collection, namely 4,331 volumes along with nine luxurious and slick cases. In his handwritten will and testamentary disposition, Andreadis mentioned the following: “[…] In addition, my library comprises almost all of Greek and Latin authors, in excellent editions, as well as French, Italian and German authors, whose books are worth mentioning” (Kavvadas 1933: 266). This collection is valuable not only for historical reasons but mainly because it can be proven extremely useful to researchers interested in exploring its treasures.
The Philippos P. Argenti Collection
Philippos P. Argenti’s personal collection, currently kept in the Director’s office, is an invaluable treasure consisting of 2,000 books, manuscripts, and other prints, all of which are nicely bound together or stored in luxurious cases. Philippos Argenti fortune and intellect, as well as his wide education, encouraged him to spend a considerable amount of time and money travelling to places and visiting archive collections, libraries, bookstores and used book shops to unearth precious items. It is worth mentioning that everything written about Chios or everything produced by writers of Chios for over four centuries, namely between 1500 and 1950, are part of the Argenti collection and are kept in impressive bookcases. The classification of these books, made by Argenti himself, reveals a pioneering view of book cataloguing.The collection is a most valuable too l to any researcher interested in the various stages of Chios’ history and civilization.
The Georgios M. Theotokas Collection (1905-1966)
In 1971, the family of Georgios Theotokas, a poet and a politician from Chios, donated to Koraes Library the latter’s collection, desk and bookcases where he kept his books. His collection, currently kept in the homonymous room, is made of 4,000 volumes, some of which contain handwritten dedications. The books in this collection are mainly literary books. Along with their unique usefulness, they are a great addition to our library.
