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Cooper Librarian Awarded Mellon Fellowship

POSTED ON: April 21, 2026

Cooper rare books collection

Items to be added to the planned Rare Book Collections of The Cooper Union Library (counterclockwise): Peter Cooper’s personal and signed 1863 copy of Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America; Adriaan Vlacq’s (1738) Tabulae sinuum, formerly owned by Julius Port EE’40, gift of the Port Family; and “Sarah Cooper” embossed Collection of hymns for the use of the Methodist Episcopal Church (1842).

The Cooper Union’s Engineering and Science Librarian, James Edward Malin, has been chosen for the 2026–28 cohort of Junior Fellows for the Andrew W. Mellon Society of Fellows in Critical Bibliography (SoFCB) at Rare Book School. SoFCB is a community of scholars working to advance the study of texts, images, and artifacts as material objects.

James Edward MalinMalin was selected as one of the ten members welcomed by the society each year. Through the non-residential fellowship program, which is supported by a $1 million grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, new SoFCB members participate in a variety of activities, including classes on book history and bibliography, symposia and seminars on critical bibliography, and “field schools”—targeted visits to major special collections, antiquarian bookstores, conservation labs, auction houses, and private collections in New York City.

With a master’s degree in food studies from New York University, Malin has pursued scholarship in food history that has informed his work at Cooper. Through the support of the SoFCB community and Rare Book School, he plans to focus his time as a fellow on the development and launch of The Cooper Union Library's first-ever Rare Book Collections. These will include materials owned by members of the Cooper and Hewitt families—which will expand the Cooper Union Archives and Special Collections' related holdings—as well as a collection on the history of engineering education that will help trace the institution's own pedagogical origins.

James is not the first member of The Cooper Union's community to become an SoFCB Junior Fellow. Eilin Pérez, visiting assistant professor of history in the Humanities and Social Science, was awarded the Fellowship in 2020 and was elected a Senior Fellow in 2022. He currently serves on the program's Diversity and Outreach Committee. 

Read more on The Cooper Union Library’s blog.

More News from The Cooper Union

  • Founded by inventor, industrialist and philanthropist Peter Cooper in 1859, The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art offers education in art, architecture and engineering, as well as courses in the humanities and social sciences.

  • “My feelings, my desires, my hopes, embrace humanity throughout the world,” Peter Cooper proclaimed in a speech in 1853. He looked forward to a time when, “knowledge shall cover the earth as waters cover the great deep.”

  • From its beginnings, Cooper Union was a unique institution, dedicated to founder Peter Cooper's proposition that education is the key not only to personal prosperity but to civic virtue and harmony.

  • Peter Cooper wanted his graduates to acquire the technical mastery and entrepreneurial skills, enrich their intellects and spark their creativity, and develop a sense of social justice that would translate into action.