News and more from ZSR’s Special Collections & Archives
As a librarian, my job is to preserve library materials: books, paper items such as posters or hand printed broadsides, and any other paper materials the library has acquired. It’s rewarding. I take a very old and brittle book, carefully mend the broken joints and torn pages, and restore it to usability. This is good... Continue reading “Our Digital Life” ›
Curious about what sort of interesting items lurk in the Rare Books stacks? A new blog, accessible from the Special Collections page, will highlight a different book from our collection each month. This month’s selection is the 1669 first edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost. Check the blog archives for last month’s Julius Casear quarto. And... Continue reading “Rare Book of the Month” ›
The first issue of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost appeared in 1667. The anti-royalist Milton, blind and near sixty years old, had fallen on hard times in Restoration England, but Paradise Lost fit the apocalyptic mood of a nation that had recently suffered an outbreak of plague, the great fire of London, and defeat... Continue reading “Paradise Lost, 1669” ›
We all use things to mark pages in our books: receipts, slips of paper, brochures, tickets, paper clips, and Post-it Notes. Post-it Notes have an adhesive on them which transfers to the surface it is applied to. This adhesive residue, in turn picks up dirt or other foreign particles and cause them to stick to... Continue reading “This really annoys me!” ›
Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar First Quarto Edition (1684) Eighteen of Shakespeare’s plays were published in quarto editions – individual plays printed in small format – prior to the 1623 first collected edition (first folio) of Shakespeare’s works. Julius Caesar was not published in quarto until much later: the first edition, of which ZSR’s Special Collections holds... Continue reading “Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, First Quarto Edition” ›
Historical records are more accessible than ever. How can you incorporate unique primary resources into your scholarly work? Continue reading “Discovering Archival Resources” ›
It’s the end of the semester and exams are upon us. During this time of the academic year, students begin to return the books they’ve held onto. Many of these books are damaged: waterlogged, dog-chewed, ripped, with broken joints and ripped spines they are generally hurting. Much of the focus for Preservation must now be... Continue reading “End of Semester Repairs Really Stack Up!” ›
Before After Cleaning Continue reading “Before and After Mold Cleaning” ›
A small group of books were recently found in Rare Books with mold on them. We surveyed the area and found everything that looked even remotely moldy. I cleaned them with alcohol and let them air dry. My theory is these books grew mold because they were in a glass covered book case with no... Continue reading “Moldy Books” ›
Give Hugh his due. Once again, artisan/craftsman Hugh Brown has done work that demonstrates thinking outside the box. Special Collections is removing everything from the Rare workroom. This move meant demolishing a perfectly good shelving unit because it was too large to get out of the space. Hugh Brown to the rescue. He executed a... Continue reading “Shelving Unit Transported to Preservation” ›