Beyond the Reading Room

Shortly after I completed a blog post arguing that the Special Collections Library holds a book formerly owned by Isaac Newton, another one has just resurfaced from the Le Roy Crummer Collection, part of our rich holdings in the history of medicine.

Our last Fairy Tale Friday recounted Hans Christian Andersen’s The Red Shoes - a story about a girl whose vanity led to the loss of her feet and, ultimately, her life. Footwear features prominently again in today’s fairy tale. However, unlike Karen’s cursed dancing shoes, Aschenputtel finds that her golden slippers are the vehicle of her own reward and of revenge against her cruel stepsisters.

The Special Collections Library Image Bank is a repository intended to capture the digitized images of Special Collections materials in the public domain created for incidental requests — such as those from patrons or from curatorial staff for outreach initiatives.

In culmination of this year’s Poetry at Literati series, Anne Waldman, whose papers are part of the U-M Special Collections Library, will be performing tonight with fellow poet Anne Carson at 7:30pm at Ann Arbor’s Literati Bookstore (124 E. Washington). Anne Waldman is renowned for her dynamic poetry performances, which are intended "to conjure states of mind and possibilities, and to wake people up to poetry as an active condition. As an experience in and of itself."

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

Here is a fascinating story of how we learned that the Special Collections Library holds a volume formerly owned by one of the most important figures in the history of science, Isaac Newton.

On April 16 my colleague Evyn Kropf and I prepared a show & tell presentation of manuscripts and early printed books for the attendees of the symposium, "Speaking the End Times: Prophecy and Messianism in Early Modern Eurasia". In brief, this two-day conference explored the topic of early modern apocalypticism from India to Iberia.

This Wednesday's watermark feature, brought to you by the letter R: watermark in Isl. Ms. 147 (copied before 1431), another of the earliest manuscripts in our Islamic Manuscripts Collection on watermarked paper.

With thanks to the Digital Library Production Service (DLPS), we are happy to announce the launch of a new online collection. John James Audubon's The Birds of America was the founding purchase of the University Library in 1839 and as U-M celebrates its bicentennial, the Special Collections Library and the William L. Clements' Library have jointly purchased Audubon’s The Viviparous Quadrupeds of North America. All of Audubon’s mammals and a selection of the birds are now available online.

What kind of research can you do in Special Collections? Many people may think that using the materials here is only for “serious” scholars who are conducting historical research into specific topics, but the space is open to everyone (and anyone - that means you!) who wants to get their hands on primary sources. Browse some featured items here and ponder what kinds of research questions one could come up with...