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Beyond the Reading Room

Anecdotes and other notes from the U-M Special Collections Research Center.
Detailed illustration from Audubon's Birds of North America of a nest in a tree with birds sitting around it.

Posts in Beyond the Reading Room

Showing 1 - 10 of 397 items
Blue and green mottled book cover with the title in black letters
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  • Juli McLoone
Recipe of the Month: Gingerbread Cake (1922)
The Janice Bluestein Longone Culinary Archive holds more than 2,400 community cookbooks from across the United States, ranging in date from 1871 to 2021. This month’s blog post features two gingerbread cake recipes from The Cook Book of the Woman’s Club in Franklin, New Hampshire, published in 1922.
lions and dragon in combat, configured like an ouroboros, surrounded by lines of persian poetry
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  • Evyn Kropf
Invisible gifts, strings attached: an investigation into a Qajar fingernail album
This post is by Remy Djavaherian (BA in Middle East Studies / Persian Visual Culture, University of Michigan, 2025), drawn from his work with an album from the Islamic Manuscripts Collection.
Slide depicting three books on rum, Coffee, and Taverns, with small inset headshots of authors, and a series title "Drinking the Revolution" along the bottom
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  • Juli McLoone
Drinking the Revolution: A Lecture Series
The William L. Clements Library; the University of Michigan Library, Special Collections Research Center; and the U.S. at 250 program invite you to join a three-part series titled "Drinking the Revolution," exploring the role of beverages in Revolutionary America and the Early Republic. The first lecture will take place on Thursday, Jan. 22nd, 4-5:30pm in the Hatcher Gallery. Join us in person or via zoom.
Rectangular covers and pentagonal flap with bands of colorful floral vegetal designs surrounded by brown leather frame boarders
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  • Juli McLoone
Book Cloth: From Textile Bindings to Fashionable Fabric Samples
Join us this Thursday, January 15th, between 4-6p for our first Third Thursdays at the Library event of the semester!
Hematite Uterine amulet
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  • Pablo Alvarez
A New Exhibit: Materia Magica: Materiality and Ritual in the Greco-Roman World
We are pleased to announce the opening of this exciting new exhibit at the Hatcher Gallery Exhibit Room! Explore a diverse array of Greco-Roman artifacts which were created to communicate with and call upon various unseen, supernatural forces for aid and protection. When? January 9-April 30, 2026.
colorful painted landscape scene with beach, boats and cargo at water's edge, boats, and rainbow over the sea
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  • Juli McLoone
A Few of Our Favorite Things
Join us this Thursday, December 18th, between 4-6p for our final Third Thursdays at the Library event of the semester!
Cookie sheet with dark brown cut-out cookies in the shape of trees and gingerbread men on it
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  • Juli McLoone
Recipe of the Month | Librarians in the Kitchen: Baking 19th Century Cookies from Scratch
In Special Collections, our books don’t leave the building, but sometimes the recipes sneak out for a trip to the kitchen. Last week, the U-M Library Art Alliance, the William L. Clements Library, and the Special Collections Research Center teamed up with Student Life Sustainability for a small, hands-on staff event, where we brought two nineteenth century cookie recipes to 21st century tastebuds. 
woman sitting on a man's back on a set with cameras and director's chair
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  • Katie Marie Jones
Ezra Stone: The Busiest Man in Hollywood
Join us this Thursday, November 20th, between 4-6p for our next Third Thursdays at the Library event of the semester!
array of square and rectangular images of collection material with handwritten text, photographs, and illustrations of various kinds
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  • Martha O'Hara Conway
Applications Open: Special Collections Research Fellowships
The current application cycle is now open for fellowships available to researchers whose work would benefit from onsite access to our special collections!
Two bowls of sliced, cooked apples. The apples on the left are bright yellow; the ones on the right are a paler color.
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  • Juli McLoone
Recipe of the Month: Fried Apples from Miss Parloa (1897)
Miss Parloa was a household name in late 19th century America. As the author of numerous well-known cookbooks, teacher of cooking schools in Boston and New York, and the domestic editor for The Ladies’ Home Journal, Maria Parloa rose far above the obscurity of her origins as an orphan and domestic servant. Her recipe for fried apples is a winner, especially if you can obtain Northern Spy apples!