Beyond the Reading Room

On behalf of the University of Michigan Library, we would like to express our gratitude to Samuel L. Chappell (B.S. 1969) and Roberta J. Chappell (B.S. 1967) for their generous gift that allowed us to acquire a manuscript and an early printed book for our military history collection. Since their graduation from the U-M, Sam and Bobbie have kept in touch with the Library in various ways, including generous donations to advance our academic mission.

On Friday, February 12th, the U-M Library hosted its third annual Douglass Day celebration in honor of Frederick Douglass, 19th century American abolitionist, author, and orator. This year the event highlighted the life, legacy and work of Mary Church Terrell with a lecture from Dr. Shelley Haley followed by transcription, digital art-making, and socializing over baked goods!

Join the Special Collections Research Center on February 9, at 4:00pm, for the second of our Winter 2021 After Hours events: "Broadside and Lotus: Black-Owned Presses in Detroit." Please register at the link provided in the blog post below.

We are very pleased to invite you all to the third session of a series of virtual encounters on various aspects of book history. On this occasion,
our webinar is devoted to textual editing and criticism. Our speakers will discuss innovative approaches to digital technology and scholarship in the edition of literary texts, ranging from Chaucer to James Joyce.

I am very excited to announce the publication of the first volume of a two-volume catalog describing the extensive collection of Greek manuscripts at the University of Michigan Library. Authored by Dr. Nadezhda Kavrus-Hoffmann, this fully illustrated catalog describes the largest collection of Greek manuscripts in America, which consists of 110 codices (bound manuscripts) and fragments ranging from the fourth to the nineteenth century.

We are very excited to re-launch online our open houses in the Special Collections Research Center! As part of the After Hours series, we have arranged an extraordinary line-up of events for the Winter Semester. Before the pandemic, on the second Tuesday of each month during the academic year, we organized physical displays of themed selections from our collections. Now we are committed to continue this tradition of open houses in the virtual world. All are welcome to join us from the comfort of your home or office to chat with a curator and learn about our collections.

We are pleased to announce the launching of a new online exhibit: "Sacred Hands." This virtual display highlights an extraordinary selection of manuscripts containing the sacred texts of the three Abrahamic religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It includes manuscripts that are highly treasured for their textual and artistic value, such as a tenth-century Torah, the earliest known papyrus of St. Paul's Epistles, early illuminated Byzantine manuscripts of the Four Gospels, and a wide selection of manuscripts containing the Qur'an.

We are very pleased to announce that the video of the Webinar on book history in the Philippines (1850-1950) that we hosted last October is now widely available.

We are very pleased to invite you all to the second session of a series of virtual encounters on various aspects of book history. On this occasion, our online meeting is devoted to several issues regarding book production, the press, and readership in the Philippines under different administrations between 1850 and 1950.

We are very pleased to announce that the video of the Bookbinding webinar that took place on July 6 is now available. It was the first session of a series of virtual encounters on book history organized by the University of Michigan Library and Universidad Complutense de Madrid.