Beyond the Reading Room

Anecdotes and other notes from the U-M Special Collections Research Center.
Detailed illustration from Audubon's Birds of North America of a nest in a tree with birds sitting around it.

Posts in Beyond the Reading Room

Showing 271 - 280 of 360 items
Alice and Dinah the cat watching the white rabbit run across a meadow
  • Juli McLoone
The Special Collections Library opens a new exhibit this week, "Curiouser and Curiouser!": Exploring Wonderland with Alice. Please join the exhibit curators, Juli McLoone and Angie Oehrli for cookies and coffee to celebrate 150 years of Alice's Adventures in Wonderland today (Wednesday, August 26th) from 4:00-5:00pm in the exhibit gallery on the 7th floor of Hatcher Graduate Library.
Goldman's grave
  • Julie Herrada
The famous suitcase belonging to the anarchist Emma Goldman has found its final resting place in the Labadie Collection, 75 years after its last journey.
Three hats watermark in p.100 Isl. Ms. 337
  • Evyn Kropf
This Wednesday's watermark feature: three hats motifs in watermarked papers from the Islamic Manuscripts Collection. Hats off to a year of monthly Watermark Wednesdays!
Dustjacket illustrated by a boat on a lake surrounded by trees.
  • Juli McLoone
"The Light Princess" by Victorian writer George MacDonald plays on the many meanings of lightness and weightiness. A parody of Sleeping Beauty that delights in puns and word play, this 19th century literary fairy tale also has a more serious side as a reflection on the role of sorrow and grief in emotional maturity.
Lion passant guardant watermark in Isl. Ms. 337 p.12
  • Evyn Kropf
This Wednesday's watermark feature: lion motifs in watermarked papers from the Islamic Manuscripts Collection.
Brewing tanks at the Bergner & Engel Brewing Co., Philadelphia, 1880's
  • Jacqueline L Jacobson
The University of Michigan presents a new online exhibit: The Reflection of Technology in Brewing. This exhibit focuses on the swift changes that the brewing industry underwent from the late eighteenth century to the mid-twentieth century.
Incun. 321 contains a series of treatises printed in the fifteenth century, each of which had been published separately (Special Collections Library).
  • Pablo Alvarez
'Sammelband' is a German term meaning 'anthology', which, in a general sense, bibliographers often employ to describe a bound volume that contains a group of separately published works. Our featured sammelband volume also includes handwritten inscriptions revealing a fascinating provenance story.
Banner watermark at the gutter of p.54 in Isl. Ms. 410
  • Evyn Kropf
This Wednesday's watermark feature is a banner one: watermark in Isl. Ms. 410 (copied in 1487), another of the earliest manuscripts on watermarked paper in our Islamic Manuscripts Collection.
  • Julie Herrada
A 5+ year digitization project resulting in over 2,000 social protest images is now accessible to the world.
Illustrations of the Missisippi River
  • Juli McLoone
Each June, the nonprofit waterway protection and restoration group American Rivers sponsors National Rivers Month to spotlight the more than 250,000 rivers and streams throughout the U.S. Approaching the celebration from a literary angle, today's post shares 18th and 19th century descriptions of river journeys. Read on to see America’s rivers through the eyes of John Bartram, Henry David Thoreau, and Mark Twain.