Photo by Peter Barry Chowka, featured on the cover of Alias Papa: A Life of Fritz Schumacher by Barbara Wood.

The Schumacher Center Library is home to Ernst Friedrich Schumacher's personal library and archives, the bulk of which was donated in 1994 by his widow, Verena Schumacher. His collection, consisting of 2,500 books, has been computer indexed and its catalog can be searched online.

The 2,500 volume collection of books, many containing Schumacher’s research notes, and some inscribed by their authors, span a surprising range of topics. In addition to the expected critiques of economics, technology, agriculture, and development, there are equally considerable collections of titles exploring Western and Eastern philosophies, a variety of religious and political thought, psychology, and mysticism. Seven hundred of the titles are in German and the remainder are in English. Schumacher’s own titles, as well as his contributions to volumes of collected essays and more than 200 journal articles, can be separated and searched independently. It is nearly a complete collection, missing only some of Schumacher's books on rural economic development in India.

Further papers, books, and correspondence were donated in 2017 by Barbara Wood, his eldest daughter and biographer. These materials have not yet been cataloged but may be viewed at the Library.​

 


The Schumacher Center Library Catalog

Includes the General Collection, E. F. Schumacher's Library, and the Special Collections

To isolate and search E. F. Schumacher's Collection, search by "call number" and use the special collection keyword SCHUM.


 

Please note that...

The materials in the Library at the Schumacher Center are cataloged using standard Library of Congress Call Numbers.
However, there are the following variations in the call numbers:

EFSchumacher

 

AUTH: former owner of the book contributed to or authored a title
EFSS: standard Library of Congress classification not available for this book.
FAM: book absent from a special collection, in the possession of a family member
OVERSIZ: larger books
P.:  published pamphlets

 

Many of E. F. Schumacher's essays and articles were published in popular economic journals, such as Resurgence, and can be searched using the key term "P. SCHUM AUTH".  German titles have been entered into the catalog according to the following translation spellings:

enter ö as “oe”
enter ä as “ae”
enter ü as “ue”
enter ß as “ss”