News and more from ZSR’s Special Collections & Archives
On May 25, 1921, Katharine Smith Reynolds’ school on the grounds of Reynolda House produced a dramatic version of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s epic poem The Song of Hiawatha. The passion play was arranged by F. E. Moore of Middletown, Ohio, and was photographed by the Holladay Studio of Durham, North Carolina. Children from the school... Continue reading “Reynolda School Hiawatha Photographic Album Now Online” ›
Volumes have been written on the subject of the struggle between England and America. Men of all ranks have embarked in the controversy, from different motives, and with various designs; but all have been ineffectual, and the period of debate is closed. Arms as the last resource decide the contest; the appeal was the choice... Continue reading “Common Sense, by Thomas Paine (1776)” ›
Text page from the first edition of Ulysses The publishing history of James Joyce’s Ulysses is itself a complicated odyssey. Joyce began writing Ulysses, a modernist novel detailing one day (16 June 1904) in the life of Dubliner Leopold Bloom, in 1914. By 1918 he was sending typescript chapters to Ezra Pound to be published... Continue reading “Rare Book of the Month: Ulysses, by James Joyce (1922)” ›
This weekend, my wife, Kathie and I took a workshop at Asheville Bookworks. This is a center for bookmaking, paper making and letterpress printing located in West Asheville. Bookworks is a large open factory style building that has been converted into a workshop. There is a large paper-making room in the rear. The main work... Continue reading “Coptic Binding Workshop @ Asheville Bookworks” ›
Although it has been a while since the students from Mount Airy came on a tour of the Rare Books reading room, and the rest of the library, I have not forgotten about the video I made to record the occasion. Gretchen has been helpful in guiding me in my video editing, and hopefully my... Continue reading “Young scholars tour the library” ›
As I have been re-cataloging books in rare, I have come across many titles that even though they have call number slips in them, have no record for them in the catalog. It has gotten to the point when I am more surprised when a book is actually in the catalog than when it isn’t.... Continue reading “Finding cool things” ›
ZSR Library is fortunate to have a personal collection from influential but lesser known Italian director, Giuseppe De Santis. De Santis worked with a number of well-known actors and actresses including Peter Falk, Yves Montand, Claudia Cardinale, Silvana Mongano and Marcello Mastroianni. The Giuseppe De Santis Papers are housed in the Department of Special Collections... Continue reading “The Giuseppe De Santis Film Stills Collection” ›
This is Preservation Week. April 24-30 is designated by the American Library Association as Preservation Week. The idea of having Preservation Week is to call attention to the value and care for our cultural resources. Many institutions have crumbling collections with no plan or resources to care for them. The week gives everyone an opportunity... Continue reading “Preservation Week” ›
“We have yet had no genius in America, with tyrannous eye, which knew the value of our incomparable materials, and saw, in the barbarism and materialism of the times, another carnival of the same gods whose picture he so much admires in Homer; then in the middle age; then in Calvinism. . . .Yet America... Continue reading “Leaves of Grass, by Walt Whitman (1855)” ›
Many people are very familiar with the StoryCorps project whose mission is “to provide Americans of all backgrounds and beliefs with the opportunity to record, share, and preserve the stories of our lives.” Since 2003, over 60,000 participants have recorded 30,000 interviews. We’ve listened to them on NPR, but the archive for all of these... Continue reading “StoryCorps: A New Digital Collection” ›