Craig Colony Medical Library Collection

This collection includes 190 historic books that formerly belonged to the Craig Colony for Epileptics Medical Library (1896–1988). Located in Sonyea, New York, approximately 70 miles southeast of Buffalo, New York, the Craig Colony (later known as the Craig Developmental Center) was the second public institution dedicated to the care and treatment of America’s epileptic population.

During the mid-1980s, the institution closed as a healthcare facility and planned to liquidate its medical library. UB’s librarians and physicians (faculty of the Jacobs School of Medicine & Biomedical Sciences) collaborated to rescue and preserve as much of the collection as possible.

The grounds of the former Craig Colony are now part of the Groveland Correctional Facility, a medium-security prison managed by the New York State Department of Corrections. The volumes provide significant historical insight into the institution’s intellectual life and the variety of texts collected and used by neurologists who studied epilepsy during the late nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries.

Titles span 36 main subject areas, including anatomy, anesthesiology, cardiothoracic medicine, cellular biology, child care/pediatrics, conference proceedings/reports, dentistry, dermatology, dietetics/food, diagnostics, disease (general), experimental/alternative medicine, gastroenterology, general medical practice, geriatrics, hematology, hepatology, histology, human behavior, law and medicine, medical administration, medical memoir, meteorology, neurology, orthopedics, otolaryngology, pharmacy/pharmacology, physiology, psychiatry/mental health, sexual health and venereal disease, social criticism, surgery, therapeutics, urology, veterinary medicine, and women’s health and gynecology.

Museum of disABILITY History* 

• The Craig Colony for Epileptics

United Society of Shakers, Shaker Library

• Groveland, N.Y., Shaker photograph collection, 1836-1991 (bulk 1836-1892)

New York State Library 

• Mid-Atlantic Mental Institutions Photographs [n.d., possibly ca. 1915]

New York State Archives

• Craig Colony Patient Admission Histories 

* Will re-open in late fall 2025 after its transition to the Kornreich Institute for Disability Studies at The Viscardi Center in Long Island, New York.