Posts Tagged ‘Libraries’

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Duke University Receives Collection of Extremist Literature

Tuesday, April 30th, 2013
A few items fro the collection (via Duke Today)

A few items fro the collection (via Duke Today)

The Southern Poverty Law Center‘s Intelligence Project, which monitors and reports hate and extremist groups in the U.S., has donated its 30 year collection of extremist materials to the David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Duke University. The 90 boxes of periodicals, pamphlets, flyers, and other documents will be added to the Library’s Human Rights Archive. The mission of the Human Rights Archive is to “identify, collect, and provide access to materials generated by organizations and individuals working within and having significant social impact on the field of human rights.” This donation will be a significant addition to the Library’s already extensive collection of American social movements and its collection on Ku Klux Klan materials that documents the group from the 1860s to the present day.

The SPLC’s collection extends beyond the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazis, including materials on (more…)

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Joel Silver Appointed Director of Lilly Library

Friday, April 5th, 2013
Joel Silver (image via Indiana University)

Joel Silver (image via Indiana University)

It was announced in March that Joel Silver was appointed as Director of one of the country’s foremost rare book libraries, Indiana University’s Lilly Library. The Lilly Library houses over 400,000 rare books, 150,000 pieces of sheet music, and 7.5 million manuscripts. Some of the highlights include the New Testament of the Gutenberg Bible; the first printed edition of Canterbury Tales; George Washington’s letter accepting the presidency; and the personal papers of Orson Welles and Sylvia Plath.

Silver has been with the Lilly Library since 1983, working in a number of different capacities: operations manager, curator of books, associate director to former Lilly director Breon Mitchell, and interim director for two independent appointments. He is also an adjunct associate professor and director of the special collections specialization in the IU School of Library and Information Science and an adjunct faculty member in the Department of English.

Silver has also published a great number of articles, books, and exhibition catalogs; he lectures at and leads rare books seminars; and he (more…)

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David Rubenstein Donates $10M to Mount Vernon Library

Tuesday, February 26th, 2013
David Rubenstein, the donor, at the 2009 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting (via Wikipedia)

David Rubenstein, the donor, at the 2009 World Economic Forum Annual Meeting (via Wikipedia)

Last May I posted about the construction of the Fred W. Smith National Library for the Study of George Washington, a research library that will act as a repository for Mount Vernon‘s vast collection of books, manuscripts, and archival materials and will include a wing that replicates Washington’s own library. Mount Vernon has been raising funds for the construction and maintenance of the library, making it the only presidential library to be built and  sustained without government funding.

The library is thrilled to announce that due to a $10 million donation from David Rubenstein, it has now exceeded its original fundraising goal of $100 million dollars and is on track to open in September. Rubenstein is a co-founder and co-CEO of the private equity firm the Carlyle Group and Chairman of the Kennedy Center in addition to being a devoted philanthropist. He has a particular fondness for Washington and has enjoyed visiting Mount Vernon since he was a child.

Rubenstein characterized his gift as “patriotic philanthropy”, saying that he tries “to give back to things that remind people of American history.” (Cheers to that!) In 2007, Rubenstein purchased the last privately owned copy of the Magna Carta for $21.3 million and put the document on public display at the National Archives in Washington, DC.

Mount Vernon’s president and CEO (more…)

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Rare Medical Texts & Manuscripts at NY Academy of Medicine

Thursday, November 29th, 2012

I’ve been taking a fabulous course on rare books through NYU SCPS and the greatest part about it is that each session features a guest lecturer and/or a trip. We have visited the Morgan Library & Museum, Christie’s auction house, a rare bookseller’s store (thanks for having us, James Cummins Bookseller!), and the New York Academy of Medicine. One of the best aspects of living in NYC is that you are constantly discovering new places and things, whether they are new to the city or just new to you. The latter was the case for me when I ‘discovered’ the New York Academy of Medicine’s Library.

The Academy was founded in 1847 by a group of prominent physicians whose aim was to advance the art and science of medicine, maintain a public medical library, and promote public health and medical education. The NYAM’s efforts led to the creation of the city’s first sanitation and public health departments and over the years the Academy has become “the vanguard for urban health.”

The NYAM’s library had already amassed more than 6,000 volumes when it was opened to the general public in 1878 (it was originally intended for fellows of the Academy). Over the years, the library’s collection grew, largely through personal and institutional gifts, and historical texts became a central focus. Today, the library’s holdings contain 32,000 rare volumes dating from the 15th (more…)

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Hemingway Collection Donated to the University of South Carolina

Thursday, September 27th, 2012
Ernest Hemingway writing

Ernest Hemingway at his writing desk during an African safari, 1953 (Photograph by Earl Theisen image via John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum)

An extensive Ernest Hemingway collection compiled by a Mississippi physician was donated to the University of South Carolina Columbia and put on display at the Ernest F. Hollings Special Collections Library for a special showing earlier this week.

Edgar Grissom, the 70-year-old collector and donor, has worked for more than 50 years in his quest to compile all of Hemingway’s English-language publications. He likened his pursuit to “an Easter egg hunt”, but now, at the end of his journey, he is delighted to assert that he has “the most complete collection of [Hemingway's] primary works in existence.”

William Rivers, chairman of USC’s English department, agrees. “It provides a tremendous resource. It makes writing real in a very powerful way,” Rivers said. “There is no other place in the world (more…)

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Newberry Library Celebrates 125 Years With Exhibition and Special Events

Thursday, September 20th, 2012

Chicago’s Newberry Library is celebrating its 125-year anniversary with a wonderful  exhibit, The Newberry 125, and a number of special events. The Newberry 125 showcases 125 unique items from the library’s holdings that “best represents the Newberry’s mission, its record of collection development, and the community of learning it has engendered throughout a 125-year history.”

Founded by a $2.2 billion endowment in 1887, the Newberry was established as a free, public library in Chicago with the mission to”provide relevant research and learning opportunities for the public of Chicago and beyond.” It quickly became involved in educational programs for the public, and in 1897 the library began to focus building an exemplary collection on the humanities. In the 1940s, fellowships for advanced research and scholarly conference were introduced and they quickly became a major feature of the Newberry. The library opened four specialized research centers in the 1970s.

The exhibition is immense, housed in all three of the library’s galleries, and features a wide array of interesting items in a variety of mediums. It displays the Newberry’s “most immediately awe-inspiring and most utilized, consulted, pored over” items. The original unbound printed instantiation of Voltaire’s Candide, correspondence between a slave and his freed wife, letters from Hemingway, and the items in the gallery after the jump represent only a small portion of what the exhibition has to offer. (more…)

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Pay Phone Libraries

Monday, September 10th, 2012
Manhattan Pay Phone Library

One of Mr. Locke’s pay phone libraries (via his blog)

John H. Locke, a Manhattan architectural designer, has found a unique use for NYC phone booths: turn them into libraries.

With the advent of cell phones and smart phones, the use of public telephones has taken a nosedive in recent years but 13,000 still remain on city streets. In July, the Department of Information Techonology and Telecommunications began soliciting the public for ideas of what to do with the remaining booths once contracts expire in 2014.

Mr. Locke is not interested in the city’s initiative, however, but started the project to repurpose the pay phones to benefit city communities. He designed a custom set of bookshelves to fit inside the Titan brand of kiosks last winter. The bookshelves are lightweight and have hooks that allow them to be snapped into place without (more…)

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Writings by Cicero, Milton and Other Rare Books Found in a Hidden Cupboard

Monday, July 30th, 2012
Neil Dickson with his discovery at Watt Library

Archivist Neil Dickson with one of the newfound volumes (image via Greenock Telegraph)

As you’ve seen from some of my previous posts, books can turn up in odd places, even within the confines of a museum, shop, or library. Greenock’s Watt Library in Scotland has recently made quite a discovery within their own walls. Neil Dickson, an archivist, was working his way through the museum’s holdings when he came across an old cupboard, which was obscured by a chest and appeared to have been shut for the last thirty years. Dickson was amazed to see the untouched cupboard and he was dumbfounded when he carefully opened it and saw the books it contained. (more…)

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New Orleans Set to Open Largest Culinary Library in the South

Wednesday, July 18th, 2012
nola fleur de lis

image via clickr

The New Orleans Public Library and the Southern Food and Beverage Museum (SoFAB) have partnered to open the largest culinary library in the South. The two organizations have been in talks about the project since 2010, but the museum had to be “mature enough to acquire a building”, said SoFAB president Liz Williams. The museum currently has over 9,000 cookbooks, menus, recipes, archival documents, and literature about food, all of which will be housed at the new library. In addition, there will be a collection of children’s materials related to the culinary arts, food, and nutrition. Library director Charles Brown said that, once completed, this children’s culinary collection will be the most comprehensive of its kind. Brown also stated the library’s intention to (more…)

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Reverse Psychology Saved a Michigan Library

Wednesday, July 11th, 2012

Last year the city of Troy, Michigan was facing a serious funding deficit and considered closing the town’s public library. Funding to save the library could have been raised through a “minuscule” tax increase, but powerful anti-tax groups in the area joined together to oppose it. That’s when Leo Burnett Detroit, a local advertising agency, decided to support the library by creating a reverse psychology campaign that promoted closure of the library and a subsequent book burning party.  Residents of the town were outraged and the campaign ending up saving the library from closure. Watch below.

via ilovelibraries.org

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