Library Blogs

Part of the Special Collections Library's Film, Theatre and Television Archives, the Robert Shaye-New Line Cinema Papers contains material on Robert Shaye’s career as a founder of New Line Cinema, producer, director, distributor and actor in Hollywood. New Line Cinema’s famous productions include the Nightmare on Elm Street series, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Austin Powers and the Lord of the Rings movies.

October is the month for apples, and for apple cider. This month's recipe is for a cider cake, a popular pastry found in many of our 19th century cookbooks.

If you’re interested in the history of vaudeville, burlesque, or other 20th century stage performance, these papers might just give you some insight into “what’s happened to the the’tre”…

We are very pleased to announce that the online exhibit, Puzzle Me This: Early binding fragments from the U of M Papyrology Collection, is now available to the public.

Relevance is a complex concept which reflects aspects of a query, a document, and the user as well as contextual factors. Relevance involves many factors such as the user's preferences, task, stage in their information-seeking, domain knowledge, intent, and the context of a particular search. Tom Burton-West, one of the HathiTrust developers, has been working on practical relevance ranking for all the volumes in HathiTrust for a number of years.

Don't miss "Pearls of Wisdom : The Arts of Islam at the University of Michigan," on display October 15th - December 21st at the Kelsey Museum of Archaeology! This exhibition features a number of items from the Special Collections Library, including manuscripts from our Islamic Manuscripts Collection and a couple of magic bowls from our Historic Scientific Instrument Collection.

Meet Laura. She spent her summer doing research in the Special Collections Library, and I was able to talk with her for a few minutes on her last day about her experience.

Here is our list of most popular games during the month of September. Xbox 360 in clearly still more popular than Xbox One, although one of the Xbox One's games did top out the list. FIFA games of every flavor dominate the list with four entries, and I'm sure the newly acquired FIFA 15 will make an appearance next month. That's right: as of yesterday we have FIFA 15.

Nestled in the nearly 800 boxes that comprise the Robert Altman Archive here at the University of Michigan’s Special Collections Library is a treasure trove of materials from his 1980 film Popeye, which featured Robin Williams as the mumbling, spinach eating sailor. Over the last two months since the unexpected passing of Williams, numerous magazines, websites and blogs have paid tribute to the departed comic genius. Chief among them is Eric Spitnagel’s piece for Vanity Fair’s Hollywood entitled Popeye is the Best Movie Robin Williams Ever Made. While many may gasp at Spitnagel’s judgment, his witty and humorous remarks demonstrate the loyalty certain Williams fans feel towards a film that is often maligned rather than rejoiced.

Don't miss the Hispanic Heritage Month digital exhibit on display, October 5 through October 12, in Bert's Study Lounge in the Shapiro Undergraduate Library showcasing images from materials found in the Special Collections Library.