The Dalton Family Papers include materials from several generations of this family from Stokes County, NC. The Dalton Family papers are frequently used by our patrons in Special Collections. I recently encapsulated about 200 indentures in polyester (mylar) from this collection. Encapsulating a document involves creating two identically sized sheets of polyester which are attached... Continue reading “Preserving Indentures from the Dalton Family Papers” ›
ZSR Special Collections & Archives will celebrate Poetry Month on Thursday, April 16 with a special Library Lecture event. In coordination with the current Special Collections exhibit, W.B. Yeats and his Books, Dr. Jeff Holdridge of the Wake Forest English Department will give a talk entitled “The Sterner Eye: Yeats and the Inhuman.” The lecture... Continue reading “Poetry Month: A Celebration of W. B. Yeats” ›
The Oxford English Dictionary defines a “tacket” as a nail; in later use, a small nail, a tack: a hob-nail with which the soles of shoes are studded. In the case of book preservation, a tacket is a physical connection between a loose board and the book itself with linen thread. I learned to make... Continue reading “Repairing Shakespeare with a “tacket”” ›
2015 marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of William Butler Yeats, one of the most important and influential literary figures of the 20th century. In celebration of the Yeats sesquicentennial, Z. Smith Reynolds Library’s Special Collections department has opened an exhibit of materials from its extensive Yeats collection. William Butler Yeats was born in... Continue reading “W.B. Yeats and His Books” ›
We go to training for a variety of reasons, but often because you may have good basic skills, but need to get to another level. You need someone at a higher skill level to show you the ‘tricks’ that will help you excel and help your work rise to a higher level of accomplishment. Isabella... Continue reading “Preservation Training From Our Friends at UNCG” ›
In November, Claudia Walpole, a textile conservator came to ZSR Library and did a conservation assessment of our Philomathesian banner. The Philomathesians were a literary society on the old campus. Claudia discovered the banner was painted by abolitionist David Bustill Bowser (1820-1900) because she found his name was on a small shard of paint that... Continue reading “Philomathesian Banner Finds a Cozy Home” ›
Special Collections & Archives at ZSR was recently awarded a Preservation Assistance Grant for Smaller Institutions from the National Endowment for the Humanities. This grant will fund a visit by nationally known facilities consultant, Thomas Wilsted, in 2015. Continue reading “ZSR Receives Preservation Grant” ›
If you were a holiday shopper in the 1830s, one item on your list might well have been an annual gift book—an anthology of illustrations, poems, stories, and essays, in an affordable but decorative binding. Several examples of 19th century holiday gift books are now on exhibit in the ZSR Library Special Collections & Archives... Continue reading “A Token of My Affection: 19th Century Christmas Annuals” ›
Modern cooks have it easy. If our Thanksgiving preparations go awry, we have shelves of books to consult for advice, not to mention Google, or, as a last resort, the Butterball hotline. Preparers of the original 17th century feast would have had to rely on oral traditions and perhaps a few handwritten “receipts,” which tended... Continue reading “Modern American Cookery, by Prudence Smith (1835)” ›