Library Blogs

26 Songs in 30 Days: Woody Guthrie's Columbia River Songs and the Planned Promised Land in the Pacific Northwest provides a history of folksinger/songwriter Woody Guthrie's month-long position with the Bonneville Power Administration creating songs about the Columbia River, Grand Coulee Dam and other topics related to the electrification of the Pacific Northwest.

Before the 21st century marriage equality campaign, how did LGBT individuals frame their own relationships against the backdrop of a hostile society? Delving into the Joseph A. Labadie Collection, a pioneering record of American social and political protest movements, uncovers some surprising answers.

We now have several new Atari 7800 games available! They all come with boxes in near mint condition which feature the box art of the era, so we thought we'd share a few examples with you. Enjoy!

The University of Michigan Library replaces roughly 1/4 of our computers every year. It is a long and complicated process when one considers the number of library staff and the number of computers (both in office and public areas where staff machines are used) involved.

This year we use a locally developed tool to streamline the process.

This Wednesday's watermark feature: scissors motifs in watermarked papers from our Islamic Manuscripts Collection.

Here Be Dragons is an epic historical novel set in thirteenth-century England and Wales. Llewelyn ab Iorwerth, Prince of North Wales, is married off in a political alliance to Joanna, illegitimate daughter of King John of England. Against all expectations, and in spite of an almost twenty-year difference in their ages, they fall in love. But when Joanna's father decides he wants to make Wales part of his kingdom, Joanna's loyalties are torn between the two men she loves most, her father and her husband. Penman paints a complex picture of both societies, the English (or, rather, the Norman-French) and the Welsh, and she draws you so deeply into her world that you don't want to leave.

The first Friday in June is National Doughnut Day! We have items across our collections that feature this delectable treat...

We are very pleased to announce a new online exhibit from the Special Collections Library: Shakespeare on Page and Stage: A Celebration. It is a virtual record of the physical exhibit that took place in the Audubon Room of the Hatcher Library from January 11 to April 27, 2016. As the title playfully suggests, the exhibit is a historical journey through different versions of Shakespeare’s plays as they were edited for publication or interpreted for the stage.

In a Dark, Dark Wood, author Ruth Ware's debut novel, is a very suspenseful mystery. Nora, a reclusive writer living in London, reluctantly attends a party to celebrate the marriage of Clare, a friend she hasn't seen for ten years, in a creepy glass house surrounded by woods in the north of England. The party goes disastrously wrong and someone ends up dead. Nora wakes up in a hospital room, with no memory of what happened. Is she a suspect or a victim? Will she regain her memory in time to figure out what happened?

The Murder of Mary Russell is the latest volume in Laurie R. King's long-running series featuring an older Sherlock Holmes and his young wife Mary Russell. This entry in the series focuses on Mrs. Hudson, Holmes' housekeeper, and tells the story of her childhood as a thief and con artist in Victorian London, and of her first meeting with Holmes. I will not give away what the title means.