Beyond the Reading Room

An 8-year project to digitize our Islamic Manuscripts Collection is now finished!

The Liber medicinalis (Book of Medicine) is a medical treatise of around 1,200 dactylic hexameters, traditionally attributed
to the second-century Roman author, Quintus Serenus Sammonicus (d. beginning of 3rd c. AD). It contains sixty-four therapeutic recipes,
divided into two sections: recipes for illnesses affecting individual organs listed from head to toe, and recipes for general ailments like injuries, fevers, fractures and dislocations, insomnia, toothache, and poisoning.

Today we celebrate the final day of Picture Book Month and also the 349th birthday of Jonathan Swift, English satirist and poet, most famous for his authorship of Gulliver’s Travels. In honor of both, this post highlights two picture book editions for children from the Hubbard Collection of Imaginary Voyages.

An unforgettable figure of the anarchist and syndicalist communities, Federico Arcos (1920-2015) was known for his generosity and the unabating commitment with which he pursued his ideals. Friends of the Labadie Collection remember Arcos as a long-time benefactor and collector. Federico and his wife Pura curated in their home in Windsor, Canada, an important library of anarchist books, newspapers, and archives that never failed to impress their many guests. In addition to the many items he endowed the Labadie Collection with, Arcos bequeathed his personal papers, now inventoried.

Last Friday, I was privileged to welcome students from the College for Creative Studies in Detroit to the Special Collections Library. As part of a class on exploring the book, attendees were preparing for an assignment to create a one-of-a-kind artists’ book. The instructor had asked me to find examples of unusual artists’ books with interesting structures, offering me an opportunity to explore new dimensions of Special Collections’ artists’ book holdings.

First published in 1789, Gilbert White’s The Natural History and Antiquities of Selborne describes the history and environment of the parish in eastern Hampshire where he lived for much of his life. The book offers gently reflective accounts of White's observations, structured as 110 letters to two friends - zoologist Thomas Pennant and amateur naturalist Daines Barrington. An immensely popular and influential work in the genre of nature writing, White's writings continue to inspire today.

Don't miss "Of Love and Madness: The Literary History of Layla and Majnun," on display October 7th - February 22nd in the Papyrology Cases on the 7th floor of Hatcher! This exhibit features Persian and Turkish illuminated manuscripts from the Islamic Manuscripts Collection, a couple of Azerbaijani imprints from the general collections, and even a papyrus fragment!

As the only grandchild of Jo and Sophie Labadie, Carlotta Anderson was fascinated by her family's history. She wrote an authoritative biography of her grandfather, researched anarchism, labor unions and Detroit history before the auto industry, and preserved original family documents dating back to the nineteenth century. Anderson was a dear friend of the Labadie Collection and, shortly before her death she donated important papers that are now open for research.

The Special Collections Library is pleased to announce a new online exhibit: "Curiouser and Curiouser!": Exploring Wonderland with Alice. This exhibit features a selection of materials from the physical exhibit celebrating 150 years of Alice, which was on display in the 7th floor Exhibit Space of Hatcher Graduate Library, August 25, 2015 - December 17, 2015.

Shoes (and dancing shoes in particular) return again and again as a central motif of fairy tales - from the glass slipper that declares Cinderella to be the Prince’s ballroom crush to the red hot iron slippers in which Snow White’s evil stepmother is forced to dance till she dies. However, perhaps no fairy tale contains quite so many shoes as “The Twelve Dancing Princesses.”