This collection is the archives of the Orsetti family, citizens of Lucca, Italy. In the 1640s, the Orsetti family came into moderate prominence and began acquiring land-holdings in the environs of Lucca, including a large part of the assets of the hospitaller order of Altopascio, and the Diodati palazzo in Lucca. The family traded in farm-produce raised on their own villa-properties. One branch of the family set up a silk and cloth business which carried on extensive foreign trade from 1695 to at least 1744. The Orsetti family married into important families (e.g. the Guinigi, Conti, Diodati), and indulged in law-suits. The family also collected art, books, and furniture, and the Orsetti family became nobility.

The Orsetti archives contain a fair amount of material earlier than the 1640s, including material related to the earlier history of their lands and tenants as well as the families into which they married. Most of this early material exists as copies made in the 17th century.

[Information taken from Ann Hyde's notes on the collection as a former curator in Special Collections at the Spencer Research Library.]

Joseph Rubinstein worked as the first curator of the Department of Special Collections at University of Kansas (KU) Libraries from 1953 to 1963. After he left KU, Rubinstein began working in the Rare Book trade and worked closely with Bernard Rosenthal, a friend and fellow bookdealer in San Francisco.

In 1970, a colleauge in Europe made Rosenthal aware of a possible sale of the "Guinigi Orsetti" archive, who, in turn, asked Rubinstein to visit Lucca to assess the collection. After Rubinstein recommended purchase, he, Rosenthal, and Alexandra Mason, the head of Special Collections at the Kenneth Spencer Research Library, engaged in a multi-year correspondence to set a price and secure funding to purchase the collection. After Rubinstein's death in 1973, Rosenthal revised the collection description and continued negotiations with the University of Kansas. When the Orsetti family papers finally came to Spencer Library the following year, the collection was named in honor of Joseph Rubinstein, the first Special Collections curator at KU Libraries.

[Information taken from Whitney Baker's sabbatical project "Keeping the Books: The Rubinstein Collection of the Orsetti Family Business Archive."]