Library Blogs

The University of Michigan Library pledges to update its major websites to use secure (HTTPS) connections between the servers and web browsers by December 2016.

Are you living in an apartment for the first time and wondering what to fix for dinner? Come to the library for cookbooks geared to college students or novice chefs.

Jade Dragon Mountain is a beautifully-written mystery set in 18th century China. Exiled imperial librarian Li Du investigates the murder of a Jesuit astronomer in a city on the border between China and Tibet.

Guest post from Allison Donnelly, a 2016 U-M graduate and student intern at the library's conservation lab, describing her work on a recently acquired seventeenth-century Latin phrasebook!

In 1824, Mary Randolph poured a lifetime's worth of experience as manager of a grand estate into a single unassuming volume of recipes and household hints. Arguably America's first regional cookbook, The Virginia House-wife represents decades of changing fortunes and evolving palates for the Randolphs, and indeed the whole country, in the years immediately proceeding the Revolutionary War.

DCU has a new, A1-sized V-cradle scanner for digitizing tightly bound books. This post examines the need, research, and choice of scanner we purchased.

Around 1511, the Dutch Catholic humanist, Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466-1536), began working on an edition and Latin translation of the Greek New Testament, for which he thoroughly compared the text of several Greek manuscripts with Jerome's fourth-century Latin translation of the Bible, the so-called Vulgate.

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

This unusual historical novel tells the story of the 17th century painter Artemisia Gentileschi, one of the first women to have a successful career as an artist. The author intersperses Artemisia's story with her own experiences in Florence during World War II, and creates a dialogue between herself and Artemisia.

The Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive (JBLCA) at the University of Michigan Special Collections Library documents American culinary history, defined broadly to include both influences upon American foodways and the influence of American culinary practices elsewhere. The recent acquisition of a small cookbook collection formerly belonging to Colonel Karnig “Carl” Mahakian (1926-2015) contributes to JBLCA's strength in immigrant culinary traditions and charity cookbooks.