Beyond the Reading Room

Preserving the history of labor movements has been core to the Labadie Collection’s mission since its very beginnings more than a century ago. In 2016, two important collections on 20th century labor organizing have been arranged to better facilitate research. The Joyce Kornbluh Collection (3.25 linear ft.) and the Don Stewart IWW Collection (3 linear ft.) conserve evidence of the regular confrontations between workers, corporations, and government throughout the past hundred years.

I am frequently asked by students and faculty: where do our rare book collections come from? While we have purchased many extraordinary books since the early years of the University of Michigan, many of our treasures were bequeathed by grateful alums and faculty. The reasons why they donated these artifacts are often fascinating, revealing little-known stories that shed light not only on the history of our institution but on our country at large. The book featured in this post is a rare seventeenth-century edition and Latin translation of the Homer's Iliad...

A curator's overview of the exhibit “The Florence Flood, November 1966: The Conservation of Books at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale and Beyond.”

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!