The modernist movement of the beginning of the 20th century is the usual subject of my blog entries and, to be honest, the subject that I am attracted to the most. However, my recent discovery of D.A. Rovinskii’s seminal work on the Russian lubok drew my attention to some of the themes and colors from the 17th century that were later borrowed by modernists hundreds of years later.

Lubok (plural Lubki) is a kind of Russian folk print that first appeared in the 1600s as an affordable replacement for an icon or a religious text. Similar in look and intention to the modern comic strip, it is characterized by a large, brightly colored picture with a short caption or story on top or the bottom of the page. The subject matter for approximately the first hundred years was exclusively religious, after which it became a convenient and cheap way to distribute information, stories with morals, and propaganda by the 18th century. The simplicity of the primitive wood print style and the limited number of colors (only red, green, purple, and yellow were used) allowed a wide and affordable distribution of satire and propaganda. The style afforded the artists to relate the message with extremely bright colors and skewed perspective (often more important figures are disproportionately larger than others). The style also made it easier to depict several time periods in the same print, picturing the hero doing several different things at once, or in the case of the icon prints of Virgin Mary, many similar images on the same page with different captions. In many cases, the composition and the simplicity of the drawing was dictated by the technique of woodblock, forcing the images to be more clear and expressive. The later lubok artists implemented the use of copper plates, allowing more detail and more text. However, some lubok experts don’t regard these as true to the style and lacking in expression and compositional clarity. Also, when these more elaborate prints were colored by the same peasants as the simpler woodblocks, the coloring quality decreased and often large areas were painted without regard to lines or designs of the print.

Although lubok as a method of distributing information or icons lost its popularity in the 19th century with the advancement of lithography, lubok as an art style still survives. Many aspects of the primitive folk style were incorporated by the 20th century modernists into their own illustration and stage design work. Natalia Goncharova, one of the most important artists in the modernist movement, was an active proponent of getting back to the roots of Russian art – icon painting and lubok. It is also often used in contemporary illustrations of children’s books as the representative primitive folk style of illustration. The importance of lubok in Russian culture and art cannot be overlooked. My recent discovery is a testament to this importance.

Rovinskii’s Russkiia Narodnyia Kartinki (Russian Folk Pictures) from 1881 remains one of the seminal works on Lubok, a phenomenon about which relatively little has been published. It consists of five volumes of text and an oversized folio “atlas” of stunning prints, some of which are so large, they are folded several times in order to fit into the folio. I have consulted the text in the past, without realizing what a treasure its supplement represents.  It contains only the earlier religious prints, but one can trace the changes between the woodblock and copper plate techniques, as well as the amazing consistency of color. The most surprising thing about this folio though for me was the brilliance of color. Because it is one of the defining characteristics of lubok, I expected bright colors, but not this extent of their saturation and brilliance. If you, too, are interested in lubok, you can view both, the 5 volume set by Rovinskii and the supplement folio of prints in the reading room of Special Collections.

Masha Stepanova

Slavic Librarian

As of Friday April 16, 2014, the portal to our digital collections is now http://digital.lib.miamioh.edu/.

Digital Collections homepage

On behalf of Special Collections and the Center for Digital Scholarship, I am excited to announce the launch of our new digital collections portal. The new website is the end result of a long migration process of collections divided across instances of DSpace and CONTENTdm version 4.3 into a single, up-to-date instance of CONTENTdm 6.6. In addition to a variety of new features, the new instance is based on a significantly improved platform to allow for better searching and viewing of the items in our digital collections.

List of currently available collections

In total, our digital collections hold roughly 90,000 items, shared between over two dozen collections. These collections include:

• Bowden Postcard Collection Online
• Civil War Diaries
• Folios of William Shakespeare
• Freedom Summer Audio/Visual and Freedom Summer Text Collections
• Frank Snyder Photograph Collection
• Miami Stories Oral History Collection
• Miami Student Newspaper
• Shields Trade Card & Advertising Collection

The migration project began over a year ago and was spearheaded by John Millard, the Head of the Center for Digital Scholarship, and Elias Tzoc, the Digital Initiatives Librarian. From Special Collections, I have been collaborating with them to migrate and update the information about our collections that have been digitized. The project had several stages, each with their own unique set of challenges, including coordinating import/export tools from different platforms, updating image files to current standards, and preparing for a seamless-as-possible transition to a new platform.

This migration also comes ahead of Miami University’s domain name overhaul – migrating from the muohio.edu domain name (which will be defunct June 1st of this year) to the newer MiamiOH.edu. As a part of this, we are working to ensure that citations to our digital collections elsewhere on the web are ready for the migration and domain name change. One of the biggest current challenges in this is updating the links in our Flickr collections that lead back to the full objects and metadata records in CONTENTdm. Earlier this year, Miami University Libraries’ digital collections officially joined the Flickr Commons. Since then, I have been tracking the changes in views of both our Flickr account and their comparable collections in CONTENTdm. I have been thrilled to note the significant increase of both, but it has become clear to me that when it comes to access, there is no competition – the increase of views of the Bowden Postcard Collection Online in CONTENTdm is outnumbered fifteen times over by the views on Flickr. While the Flickr collection only shows the front of the card and a limited version of the metadata found in the CONTENTdm collection, the number of views is undeniable evidence of the importance of social media platforms for access in the modern world of information.

Page from Thomas B. Marshall’s diary

Another exciting part of this migration is the relaunch of our Civil War Diaries online collection. These diaries include three kept by Miami students and three by local Ohio community members who took up arms to fight for the Union. The diarists, all of whom served as members of the Ohio Volunteer Infantry, record their impressions and experiences on a variety of topics, including their interrupted college studies, the daily life of a soldier, military engagements and news from the home front. In the near future we will be also relaunching our digitized Samuel Richey Collection of the Southern Confederacy, as well as digitizing and making available new materials related to the American Civil War.

Studio 14 host Rick Ludwin

Finally, I am pleased to announce the completion of our newest digital collection: the Studio 14 Archives. This collection features digitized copies of the variety show produced by Miami students under the oversight of Dr. Bill Utter, from 1968-1970. The two-inch wide quadruplex videotape originals were kept by the show’s producer, Miami alumnus Rick Ludwin, who had them digitized and donated them to Special Collections so that we might be able to make them publicly available online. Special Collections continues to enjoy an ongoing relationship with Mr. Ludwin, who spoke at Special Collections’ first Annual Lecture Series. In addition to being a Miami alumnus, Rick Ludwin was also VP at NBC, where he is remembered for backing a new show called Seinfeld. The Studio 14 episodes in this collection feature a wide range of sketch comedy, musical performances, and famous guests. Happy viewing!

Marcus Ladd

Special Collections Librarian

I’m a sucker for a book with a fancy provenance and I’ve written about some of my favorites in our collections here and here.  And since it’s always nice to end the work week on a high note, I thought I’d indulge myself once again by writing a blog post on another book I found while cataloging pre-1800 titles in our backlog.  The book is a rather commonplace devotional work on the subject of contentment, entitled The Art of Contentment.  The book was published “At the Theater in Oxford” in 1689 and is attributed to the English clergyman Richard Allestree (1619-1681).  Allestree was a prominent Royalist and supporter of the High Church tradition in the Anglican faith. According to modern scholarship, he also penned the extremely popular English Protestant devotional work, The Whole Duty of Man, first published anonymously in 1658 at the end of Oliver Cromwell’s rule.

Art of Contentment, 1689

Jemima, Duchess of Kent’s bookplate dated 1710

Thomas Philip, Earl de Grey’s bookplate

As part of the cataloging of an early printed work, or any item in special collections for that matter, it is important to include copy-specific provenance information (if it exists) in the catalog record, such as manuscript signatures, inscriptions, library stamps, or bookplates.  This book had two striking armorial bookplates, one belonging to “Jemima Dutchess of Kent” dated 1710, and another early nineteenth century bookplate belonging to “Thomas Philip Earl de Grey, Wrest Park.”  After recording this information in the record, I did a little investigating just for fun to see who these members of the English nobility were…

Jemima Crew by Charles D’Agar in the National Trust, Calke Abbey

Jemima Crew (1675-1728) married Henry Grey, 1st Duke of Kent, and they had six children, before she died and he remarried in 1729.  Her portrait shown here was done by prolific portrait artist Charles D’Agar.  Since the Duke had no surviving children at the time of his death, his titles eventually became extinct, but it is clear that this book (and another in our collection by the same author with the same bookplates) remained at his country estate near Silsoe in Bedfordshire in the east of England.  Wrest House, shown here in an engraving from 1708, would have been where Henry and Jemima raised their young children in aristocratic splendor.

Wrest House, 1708

Thomas de Grey, 2nd Earl de Grey (1781-1859), whose bookplate adorns our book as well, eventually inherited the estate and rebuilt the house between 1834 and 1840.  An aside for fans of the popular BBC show Downton Abbey who might be interested to know that there really were historical Lord Granthams: due to a title inherited from his father, de Grey was known as Lord Grantham for most of his life.  de Grey was a Tory statesman who served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland from 1841-1844.  The Wrest Park estate contains gardens that were originally designed by George London and Henry Wise for Jemima’s husband, Henry Grey, in the early eighteenth century, and later modified by the famous landscape architect Capability Brown (1716-1783).  Shown below is the restored library at Wrest Park, now open to the public, where this book may have once sat on the shelf.

Thomas de Grey, Earl de Grey

Wrest Park today

Wrest Park library today

Many ask how books like this, once owned by duchesses and earls living on luxurious estates centuries ago, end up in academic libraries here in the United States.  Many estates went bankrupt in the early twentieth century as the power and influence of the British aristocracy began its rapid decline and the contents, including libraries, of homes like Wrest Park were sold to pay debts.   These books would often end up in the stock of auction houses, antiquarian booksellers , or private collectors.  Many of Miami’s early printed works were collected by either Marcus Selden Goldman, a Miami alum and literature professor at the University of Illinois, or Howard Robinson, a Miami literature professor, both of  whom later donated their collections to the Libraries. However, there is a Miami University connection to Wrest Park that, if pursued further, might shed more light on another chapter in this particular book’s story.  Whitelaw Reid, who graduated from Miami in 1856, was the United States Ambassador to the United Kingdom between 1905 and 1912.  During his tenure as ambassador, he often “rented” Wrest Park during the summers.  Is it possible that Reid himself purchased some of the Wrest Park library?

Linking the physical book to its historical “journey” from printer to owner(s) to library shelf has always been one of my favorite aspects of working with rare books and I like to take every opportunity I can to highlight the rich early print materials in the Walter Havighurst Special Collections.

Kimberly Tully
Special Collections Librarian

This week’s post is by a guest writer, John Bickers.

My name is John Bickers and I’d like to tell you a little bit about myself. I’m currently a senior at Miami University as well as a citizen of the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma. As an employee of Special Collections I work solely with the Myaamia Collection and any other materials related to Myaamia people. My current positions was created by Special Collections and the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma in order to organize the materials housed here at Miami University and make them more accessible to Tribal members and other researchers that may be interested.

I was invited to contribute a post this week about the Myaamia Collection, a project that I have been working on for over a year now. In a collaboration between the Miami Tribe of Oklahoma and Miami University many texts relating to the tribe are stored here at Miami University. In addition to published materials, the Collection includes three manuscript collections donated by different individuals: the Turtle-Wells Family Papers, the Godfroy Family Papers, and the Luke Scheer Papers. The former two are Myaamia families that still exist today and the latter was an amateur historian who collected many documents related to Myaamia and other Native peoples.

Eepiihkaanita, also known as William Wells

The Turtle-Wells family descends from a Myaamia war leader Mihšihkinaahkwa, also known as Little Turtle, and his son-in-law Eepiihkaanita, also known as William Wells (pictured to the left). Mihšihkinaahkwa and Eepiihkaanita were Myaamia men who fought in the Northwestern Indian Wars of the 1790s and after the Treaty of Greenville (1795) became advocates for peace with the Americans. This particular collection mainly contains documents created by or pertaining to Eepiihkaanita’s son-in-law James Wolcott and his son William Wells Wolcott. Soon after James Wolcott’s marriage to Eepiihkaanita’s daughter, Amehkoonsihkwa, or Mary Wells, the family moved to the area of Toledo, Ohio. Both James and William worked as lawyers as well as holding other political positions. The largest section of this collection is a legal document created by William Wells Wolcott in 1894. By this time their family had been so geographically separated from other Myaamia people that they had been removed from the tribal rolls as citizens. The purpose of this document was to establish their ancestry as Myaamia people and convince the United States government to re-add the family onto the Myaamia annuity rolls and give them the money due to them as Myaamia people.

Waapanaakikaapwa, also known as Gabriel Godfroy

The Godfroy Family Papers have a special meaning for me. My grandfather, Kenneth Hunter, and I donated this particular collection. It primarily contains documents that were in the possession of his grandfather, Waapinaakikaapwa or Gabriel Godfroy (pictured at right). As an adult, Waapanaakikaapwa was a prominent Myaamia leader in the area of Peru, Indiana. As a leader he often represented Myaamia people in legal situations. For example, one document is a legal document signed by several Myaamia people giving power of attorney to a couple Myaamia people, including Waapanaakikaapwa.

Along with documents that relate directly to my family, there are also several documents relating to the descendants of a Myaamia leader Pinšiwa, aka Jean Baptiste Richardville. Pinšiwa was the nephew of Mihšihkinaahkwa and succeeded his uncle, Pakaana as akima (leader) of the Myaamia village of Kiikayonki, now known as Fort Wayne. How exactly these documents came into the possession of my grandfather is currently unknown. Waapanaakikaapwa’s elder brother, James R. Godfroy, married Maankoonsahkwa or Archangel Richardville, the granddaughter of Pinšiwa, and his son Šiikwia, or James M. Godfroy, married a descendant of Pinšiwa. It’s possible that these documents came into my family through those channels, but it is presently unknown.

The final collection is half of a collection of work by amateur historian, Luke Scheer, the other half residing in Miami, Oklahoma in the Myaamia Heritage Archives and Museum. These documents are compositions of many primary and secondary sources by Mr. Scheer and organized either chronologically or by family group. His goal was to create a book regarding the descendants of Mihšihkinaahkwa and his sister Tahkamwa, the mother of Pinšiwa. To this end, he also wrote letters to many Myaamia people that descended from these individuals from across the country. This collection then records the words and thoughts of Myaamia individuals from the mid 20th century who may have descendants alive today that never knew this people. As such, it’s a great resource for contemporary Myaamia people to learn more about their families.

I will be graduating this May with a major in History and a minor in Linguistics. Then this fall I will be attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Ph.D. program in Linguistics. At the moment both the Turtle-Wells Family Papers and the Godfroy Family Papers have completed finding aids online and the Luke Scheer Papers will soon follow suit. By the time I graduate I plan to have all our collections stored in the Special Collections organized within the Myaamia Collection. Then as new materials are added to the collection in the future, they will have a pre-existing system that they can be organized into. I have been given a remarkable opportunity at Special Collections and I am honored to have received it. I have been able to do work and go through materials here that I never thought I would. I am very humbled to have the privilege of working with this collection and the people of Special Collections.

John Bickers
Class of 2014

This week I have chosen to highlight some of our astronomy books in Special Collections. The inspiration for this choice came from Neil DeGrasse Tyson’s current television show, Cosmos, A Space Time Odyssey. This series is a follow-up to Carl Sagan’s 1980s, Cosmos, A Personal Voyage. Tyson, like Sagan before him, is making the knowledge about our universe understandable and exciting to viewers.

Alexander von Humboldt had this same desire; to write a popular scientific work that would create an appreciation for science and inspire scientific inquiry. The first volume of his work was published in 1845 and was called Cosmos. It became the biggest scientific bestseller of its age, and was eventually translated into most European languages. Humboldt began his five volume set at the age of 65 but died before he could finish it. Special Collections has three volumes from an 1855 edition, and the fourth volume from an 1860 edition.

One of our earliest books on astronomy is our copy of Sphaera Mundi by Johannes de Sacro Bosco. The author flourished around 1230 a.d. Wikipedia cites Sphaera Mundi as one of the most influential works on pre-Copernican astronomy in Europe. The manuscript was frequently copied and used by Universities for hundreds of years before the invention of the printing press. Our printed copy is dated 1501. This work was one of the most frequently reprinted scientific books of the 15th century.

Another of our early astronomy books is The Celestial Worlds Discover’d, Or, Conjectures Concerning the Inhabitants, Plants and Productions of the Worlds in the Planets by Christiaan Huygens. Huygens (1629-1695) was a Dutch mathematician, astronomer and physicist. He was the first to recognize the rings of Saturn and he discovered the Saturn moon, Titan. He observed and sketched the first known drawing of the Orion Nebula. Huygens also made pioneering studies of the dynamics of moving bodies, and was the leading advocate of the wave, or pulse theory of light. Our copy of this work was printed in 1698.

The illustration of Saturn on the left is from Richard Proctor’s 1865 volume, Saturn and Its System: Containing Discussions of the Motions (real and Apparent) and Telescopic Appearance of the Planet Saturn, Its Satellites, and Rings; the Nature of the Rings; the Great Inequality of Saturn and Jupiter; and the Habitability of Saturn. to Which Are Appended Notes on Chaldæan Astronomy, Laplace’s Nebular Theory, and the Habitability of the Moon; a Series of Tables with Explanatory Notes; and Explanations of Astronomical Terms.

We have a very fragile copy of The Institutions of Mathematicall [sic] Experiments: In Three Parts ; 1. the Constitutions, Power, and Effects of the Planets and Starres ; 2. the Method of Mathematicall Physicke ; 3. the Resolutions of Astrologicall Questions. I could find very little information about this book. Our copy of this book was printed in 1643 in London.

The last book that I want to single out is The History of Astronomy: With Its Application to Geography, History, and Chronology; Occasionally Exemplified by the Globes by George Costard. Our edition was printed in London in 1767. This is the work for which Costard is most known. There are numerous drawings throughout the book. The author’s preface indicates that this work was intended primarily for students.

If you search our collections for astronomy your search will produce eighty-nine titles. Nine of those titles are from our 1841 Collection, the extant books from Miami University’s earliest cataloged library. I mention this because Miami University had one of the earliest Observatories in the United States. The observatory was erected in 1838 and survived for a year or two, until students destroyed the building. The stone pier which was erected to support the telescope still stands today in front of Bishop Hall. It is possible that some of our books may have been used by those early Miami astronomers.

I hope that you will visit Special Collections to see some of these early works on astronomy.

Jim Bricker
Senior Library Technician