Beyond the Reading Room

We are excited to announce a special collaboration between the Special Collections Research Center, the William L. Clements Library, and the students of ALA 264 Much Depends on Dinner. From April 17 to May 8th, you will be able to find culinary history across campus on Diag Boards and Campus Bus Signs. To see all five selected items together, scroll through this blog post or visit the Shapiro Screens (April 16-May 7) on the first floor of the Shapiro Library.

Join us next Friday 14 April 3-5 pm in the Hatcher Gallery for an event with writer and director John Sayles! Sayles will kick off the Bilmes Visiting Filmmaker series by sharing items of interest he discovered while looking through the archives of fellow maverick directors Orson Welles and Robert Altman.

Join the Special Collections Research Center in Hatcher next Tuesday (11 April) at 4 pm for our final After Hours open house of the Winter term, exploring a selection of moveable books!

You are all cordially invited to attend the public lecture, "The Place of Greek Paleography in the Cultural and Literary History of Byzantium." Professor Elena Velkovska (University of Siena, Italy) will help us understand the international significance of the many treasured and valuable Byzantine Greek liturgical manuscripts held in the U-M Library's Special Collections Research Center.

Join us this Wednesday, 8 March, at 4 pm for refreshments, viewing, and casual conversation with the student curators of "Openings: Title Pages in the History of Printed Books"!

Join the Special Collections Research Center in Hatcher next Tuesday (14 March) at 4 pm for our third After Hours open house of the Winter term, exploring a selection of early rare books and prints containing images printed with the technique of relief (woodcuts) and intaglio (copperplate engravings).

The Special Collections Research Center is pleased to announce a new exhibit featuring the title page. Students in a Fall 2022 History Lab class researched and created the exhibit.

The Special Collections Research Center is pleased to announce the installation of new labels contextualizing John James Audubon’s The Birds of America, which is on display in the newly-renamed Hatcher Gallery Exhibit Room. the new labels acknowledge Audubon's role as an enslaver and vocal opponent of abolition, and further contextualize both The Birds and its author within the social and scientific landscape of the 19th century.

Join the Special Collections Research Center in Hatcher next Tuesday (14 February) at 4 pm for our second After Hours open house of the Winter term, exploring materials related to love and romance.

We are delighted to announce an important recent acquisition made possible by Katharine V. Kilgour's generous gift in memory of her father Raymond L. Kilgour: a manuscript containing the texts of a Book of Hours and a Psalter. Written on parchment in Latin and French, it was exquisitely illuminated by one of the leading miniaturists working in Paris in the first two decades of the sixteenth century: Jean Coene IV.