In the 1930s in Kentucky, women on horseback delivered library books, traveling over 100 miles per week, as part of a WPA initiative to increase employment and literacy.
Read the full article at Atlas Obscura.
Thanks, Linda Gresham!
Is a lack of a shenanigan a shenanigan? The Forest Grove, Oregon police log for August 2, 2017 states:
* A woman contacted police to report that library staff members were worshiping Satan. Officers found no explicit evidence of occult activity occurring at the library.
Thanks, Joan Petit!
In the spring of 2017, Special Collections acquired five editions of Dante’s Commedia for use alongside the 1491, 1536, and 1822 editions (and others) already in our teaching collection.
Above, images from a facsimile of the 14th century “Dante Gradenighiano,” named for Giacomo Gradenigo, the man who curated, copied, and commented on this version of Dante’s Commedia. Gradenigo’s name appears in an acrostic on the front pastedown of the book (not shown).
The 1568 edition, edited by Bernardino Daniello and published in Venice by Pietro da Fino, has an inverted wedding cake illustration of Hell prefiguring the one in our 1822 edition.
The 1575 edition, published in Lyon by Guglielmo Rouillio, has the commentary of Alessandro Vellutello.
The 1596 edition, published in Venice by Bernardo Sessa, is edited by Francesco Sansovino and contains two full commentaries: both Alessandro Vellutello’s and Christopher Landino’s.
The 1928 Nonesuch edition, published in London, was limited to 1475 copies and has text in Italian and English. It contains 42 illustrations after those of Sandro Botticelli (that is, the illustrations are based on Botticelli’s but are not perfect reproductions).
Also available in both Special Collections and the general library collection: comic book versions by Hunt Emerson, Christos Gage, Seymour Chwast, and Stefan Petrucha.
Not so much a shenanigan as an inaccuracy, and also not so much a shenanigan as a hellish montage of bedpans, shit, and gagging…
On the premiere episode of the seventh season of Game of Thrones, Samwell Tarly is a lowly book-reshelver and bedpan-emptier in the Maesters’ medieval-style library with chains on the shelves. Nice work, GoT, except your chains are completely non-functional, as this article explains.
Of course, if GoT had shown the chains doing their jobs — keeping the books secured to their shelves — then Sam wouldn’t have had any reshelving to do (and we would’ve had to witness even more bedpan-emptying, which, honestly, would’ve killed me). And more important (spoiler alert), he wouldn’t have had any chance of stealing a book out of the Citadel library and thereby, perhaps, saving everybody in the Seven Kingdoms from certain death at the hands of the White Walkers.
This PBS video shows functioning book chains.
Thanks, Lynne M. Thomas!
Special Collections has moved from Tutt South to the newly renovated Tutt Main (soon to be just plain Tutt). We are currently open by appointment only, hoping to return to regular hours by August 1 or earlier.
It was quite an odyssey getting the books and other materials, including a huge heavy map case, from one building to the other.
Special Collections Coordinator Amy Brooks managed 90% of the move while Curator Jessy Randall was cleverly out of town on a long-planned vacation.
Huge thanks to Amy, Tutt South wranglers Lesley Mackie and Diane Westerfield, and book escorts Sarah Bogard, Chris Curcio, Julia Drescher, Nicole Gresham, Lisa Lister, Annette Magneys, Mike McEvers, Courtney Morgan, Jeremy Nelson, Daryll Stevens, Claire Trissel, and Pam Willock. We could not have done it without each and every one of you. Congratulations to these hard workers and the PSI book movers on a successful and safe move!
Images above show anonymous graffiti written during the move on walls in the soon-to-be-demolished Tutt South. Amy was too tired to even notice:
Pictures of our new digs to come when it’s a bit more photogenic than it is now. Our current view looks like this:
All photos by Tutt Library staff.
Colorado College Special Collections lent 27 postcard collages by Mary Chenoweth to the Colorado Springs Fine Arts Center this year.
The postcards were donated to CC by Peggy Marshall and Mike Duffy and dated 1980s-90s. They were on display at the FAC from February 18 – May 21, 2017.
The exhibition was fantastic! The postcards were hung from the ceiling and sandwiched inside plastic so that viewers could see both sides.
The East Bank Regional branch of the Jefferson Parish Library in Metairie, Louisiana is currently displaying these excellent book cover quilts and more. All photos are by Laura Albana Hoffpauir.
This sculpture by George Segal sits on a bench at the Milton S. Eisenhower Library at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. An anonymous sestina was recently found in its hands:
Dearest Muse,
I do not invoke but address you,
For I wish to thank you for your watch
Over this humble (or not so) university library
Where thousands and I have spent hours in study.
Please accept this work.
O, I cry to passerby—have you seen her? Have you come inside? Have you
Paid a salute for a blessing on your work
From the Muse of the Milton S. Eisenhower Library?
There she sits by the door to the quad, a study
In worn marble on a plain iron bench. She keeps watch
Over all those who enter her domain. (They smile. Do I amuse?)
She wears a watch
And goggles pushed up into her hair—a practical Muse.
I imagine she has come fresh from diving, some study
Of fantastic ocean creatures or slowgrowing plankton—the steady work
Of science as it takes the world and me and you
Forward, sometimes through this library.
Students, teachers, passerby—there is so much to do in a good library.
Sometimes you can even get done your work.
More often you are caught in the endless flood of work, study,
Essay, friends, study, and the sun rises but not on D-level and you stare into dead space and muse
That somewhere out there is the world (you’re bad at it) and friends (who all got this assignment done like competent people) and food (you don’t recall the taste of strawberries, nor the sound of water, the touch of grass…) and you, in the dark, useless, last, you—
Rest. Restore. A library has comfortable chairs, and the Muse will keep watch.
There is merit, too, perhaps more in lighter study:
Humanity in its prime, learning and laughing as they amuse
Themselves and each other at their work.
In a word: people-watch!
Joining with near-stranger to work a project, emerging from the depths to unforeseen companionship, you
Will find no purer kinship than in a university library.
And what they build—oh, the works!
Endocrinal Effects of Neural Synapse Protease to Satanism in Dungeons & Dragons: A study;
Blueprints for a rocket, a solar shade, a perfect clockwork watch;
Essays and stories and poetry, the architecture itself for a whole new library—
For inspiration, above all, is the gift of a Muse.
Thanks, Esau Katz, for bringing this to my attention!
Clever idea by Anotrey. Thanks, Lorena Stabins and Staying Cool in the Library!
This display of books (“Ivanka Trump: Rewriting the Rules for Success” was put together in a bookstore (possibly in California?) by a librarian (according to the “inside knowledge” of a Facebook commenter). Titles in the display include Children of the Self Absorbed, Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents, and No More Narcissists!
Thanks, Simona Mkrtschjan!