Beyond the Reading Room

Join us next week for our first Third Thursdays at the Library open house, exploring material from the Labadie Collection!

The Clements Bookworm: A Library Looks at Audubon, Both His Birds and His Background, Gregory Nobles, October 20, 2023, 10-11am

Moderated by Marieka Kaye and Caitlin Pollock of the U-M Library, Gregory Nobles will discuss the legacy of John James Audubon (1785-1851) as both a brilliant artist/naturalist and unrepentant slaveholder, inviting us to explore the connection between the personal background of this flawed figure and the continuing impact of his remarkable art.

Another installment in our series of posts on conservation work for pop-up and moveable books, this time from Katarina Stiller, summer 2023 Baker Fellow at the U-M Library's conservation lab

Shanah tovah pop-up cards from the Jewish Heritage Collection are now digitized and available at the Jewish Heritage Collection Digital Archive. 

You are all cordially invited to the upcoming exhibit of a selection of manuscripts and early printed books from the 15th to the 17th centuries that were illustrated with illuminations and woodcuts. The display will open in the Hatcher Gallery Exhibit Room (Hatcher Library North) on September 6, 2023.

We are extending the current pause on duplication services until January 2, 2024. We recognize the inconvenience this may cause for those who rely on the option to request scans of collection material for their research and scholarship, and for publication. There are several alternative options for accessing our materials during this time.

Welcome to the University of Michigan Library’s Book Arts Studio, a place for students, faculty, and the community to learn and practice the craft of letterpress printing, offering the opportunity to engage in other related activities, such as bookbinding and the book arts.

Guest post by Brian Bocking, Heid Fellow, on his research in the Harry Alverson Franck Papers. Brian is Professor Emeritus of the Study of Religions at University College Cork (Cork, Ireland).

Join us on Thursday, 11 May 3-5 pm for a panel honoring the impact of collector, donor, and adjunct curator Janice B. Longone (1933-2022) through her work building the renowned Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive (JBLCA). The JBLCA encompasses more than 25,000 items including 19th and early 20th century cookbooks, charity cookbooks, immigrant cookbooks, food-related advertising ephemera, and restaurant menus.

Cookbooks can reveal so much about the time in which they were written through their recipes and their authors. For instance, many cookbooks were written for a particular audience, most often women because historically they were the ones cooking or keeping up in the kitchen. In the 20th century, more and more cookbooks were published that sought to bring cuisines of the world to American housewives. The Chinese-Japanese cookbook (1914) is an early example of one.