With the recent attention garnered by the movie version of Solomon Northrup’s memoir Twelve Years a Slave, it occurred to me it would be a good idea to acquire a first edition of the book for Special Collections. Not to…
A regular series of posts about specific items in the Walter Havighurst Special Collections
With the recent attention garnered by the movie version of Solomon Northrup’s memoir Twelve Years a Slave, it occurred to me it would be a good idea to acquire a first edition of the book for Special Collections. Not to…
The National Alliance of Russian Solidarists (Natsional’no/Narodno Trudovoi Soiuz rossiiskikh solidaristov), or NTS, is one of the least known anti-bolshevik organizations behind one of the most influential movements. Formed as a youth group in Belgrade in 1930, it sustained many…
Many people associate Special Collections with old, rare books. Some know that they don’t have to be old to qualify, but still expect to see books here. I, however, never know what I’ll find in our collection: money, statuettes, novelty…
A recent visit to the Gettysburg National Military Park inspired me to look through our Samuel Richey Collection of the Southern Confederacy for references to Gettysburg. While few letters in the Richey Collection discuss Gettysburg, there is correspondence from some…
mar·gi·na·lia – noun pl \ˌmär-jə-ˈnā-lē-ə\: marginal notes or embellishments (as in a book) We have all seized the white perimeter as our own and reached for a pen if only to show we did not just laze in an armchair…
One of my favorite things about my job is cataloging our rare book collections because I never know what I’ll find when I look between the covers of the books that cross my desk. I’ve cataloged hundreds of early print…
