Special Collections Blog
August 04, 2008
Tibet Digital Collection is Cool Site for August
UWM Libraries at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee presents TIBET – From the Collections of the American Geographical Society Library.
This digital collection presents a selection of historical maps and photographs of Tibet from the holdings of the American Geographical Society (AGS) Library. The collection includes a unique set of 50 photographs of central Tibet and Lhasa taken by two Mongolian Buddhists, G. Ts. Tsybikoff and Ovshe Norzunoff, who visited Tibet in 1900 and 1901. The photographs represent the first photographic images of Potala Palace in Lhasa and other Tibetan monasteries. In addition, over 800 images of Tibet have been drawn from the extensive photographic collection of Harrison Forman. Photojournalist and explorer, Forman undertook three expeditions to remote areas of northern Tibet between 1932 and 1937. The photographic collection is supplemented by four plans of the city of Lhasa and six historical maps of Tibet selected from the map collection of the American Geographical Society Library.
Posted by jgreen at 11:23 AM
July 02, 2008
So This is Florida!
Broward County Libraries Division's Bienes Museum of the Modern Book: The Dianne and Michael Bienes Special Collections and Rare Book Library, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, is pleased to announce the opening of: "So This Is Florida: An Exhibition of Decorative Book Bindings and Book Jackets, 1873-1999, June 21-October 6, 2008
http://digilab.browardlibrary.org/sothisisflorida.html
The seventy Floridiana books and pamphlets on exhibit from the collections of the Bienes Museum of the Modern Book chronicle the evolution of American book design and publishing from 1873 to 1999.
The exhibition begins by showcasing gracefully designed pre-dust jacket decorative cloth bindings from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. A few decades later, in the 1920s, paper dust jackets begin to dominate. For the next twenty years the dust jacket gains more marketing prominence while decorative cloth bindings become less noteworthy. By the 1950s-1960s the dust jacket has won the publishers' visual battle for the reader's eye and the illustrated publishers' cloth and paper bindings practically disappear. The exhibition closes with predictably triumphant, wildly colorful and exuberant paper dust jackets from the 1970s-1990s.
Some of the well known authors in the exhibition who have written eloquently, and occasionally, ineloquently, about Florida are: Harriet Beecher Stowe; Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings; Stephen Foster; Munroe Kirk; Carita Doggett Corse; Dee Dunsing; Don Blanding; and Tim Dorsey; and among the subjects they have covered range from Florida fiction and literature to children's books; satires and parodies; mystery and crime novels; travel and retirement guides; how-to and recreation books; poetry; and cookbooks.
In one way or another, all of the exhibited books are about the endlessly fascinating and complex State of Florida. Florida is defined in many ways: it is neither the North nor the South; it is a land of boundless opportunity; it is a land of perpetual boom and bust; it is a land of new beginnings; and it is a land of perpetual youth and beauty. From utopia seekers in the later part of the nineteenth century, to unbridled and unscrupulous capitalists of the first part of the twentieth century, and to the hordes of twenty-first century European and Latin American tourists, the state has been a magnet for those searching for new visions and new possibilities.
Posted by jgreen at 04:07 PM
June 02, 2008
Cool Site for June 2008
To celebrate the reopening of their 1916 galleries this month, the Cleveland Museum of Art archives has mounted a three month “collection in focus” featuring the history of the museum on their website at http://library.clevelandart.org
Enjoy learning about the founders of the Cleveland Museum of Art, take an architectural tour of the museum, or see the 1916 Inaugural Exhibition.
Posted by jgreen at 01:14 PM
May 08, 2008
Publishers Bindings Online, 1815-1930: The Art of Books
In September 2003, The University of Alabama, University Libraries, in partnership with the University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries, received an IMLS National Leadership grant to create the digital resource, Publishers' Bindings Online, 1815-1930: The Art of Books (PBO).
All academic libraries have within their holdings books bound in 19th century decorative bindings. These materials are significant in their place within the fabric of American history and culture, but efforts to present these bindings in a collection that is representative of the era as a whole and to make them available virtually, via the World Wide Web have been limited.
PBO, a significant digital collection of decorative bindings, along with a comprehensive glossary and guide to the elements of these objects, will strengthen the growing interest in and create broader awareness for this “common” object called the book.
Decorative bindings cover many of the books that people have in their homes today, but their owners are often unaware of their cultural and historical significance. These bindings reflect not only social and cultural history, but bibliographic history as well.
PBO expands awareness of the book as artifact and of the role decorative bindings play in providing a window into historical, cultural, and industrial period of 1815-1930. This project increases the awareness of the general public about the importance of publishers' bindings as reflections of historical events, art movements, and the evolution of commercial binderies.
The project will also afford students, teachers, binders, and scholars in many different areas the opportunity to study up to 5,000 decorative bindings from two different physical collections in a single, virtual location.
One can look upon this project as developing a model that other repositories can use with their own collections. PBO greatly broadens a relatively unexplored scholarly field. This resource will encourage interested parties to look at their own collections, and to gain an understanding of design movements and trends both within the United States as well as abroad, comparable to Jugendstil in Germany, Art Nouveau in France, Arts and Crafts in England, and Glasgow School in Scotland.
The additional resources and scholarship that are developed through the PBO project will serve a myriad of users.
[Taken from About the Project, Publisher's Bindings Online]
Access PBO http://bindings.lib.ua.edu/index.html
Posted by jgreen at 10:17 AM
April 08, 2008
MOCA Exhibition Archive
The Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, has created an exhibition archive. This was a multi-year effort funded by a large Getty Foundation grant. One can find exhibition descriptions, lists of archived files generated by the curatorial department, and images of many shows and performances. The documentation includes virtually everything MOCA ever produced between 1983 and 2003.
To access the MOCA Exhibition Archive, go to http://www.moca.org/archive
Posted by jgreen at 01:38 PM
March 07, 2008
Black Grooves
Black Grooves is a music review site hosted by the Archives of African American Music & Culture (AAAMC) at Indiana University. Their goal is to promote black music by providing readers and subscribers with monthly updates on interesting new releases and quality reissues in all genres─including gospel, blues, jazz, funk, soul, and hip-hop-as well as classical music composed or performed by black artists. They feature reviews of some of the best new discs and DVDs, with an occasional book or news item thrown in for good measure. An extra effort is made to track down releases by indie, underground, foreign, and other small labels that don’t get covered in the mainstream media. The primary focus will be on African American music, but they say they are happy to cover anything else that’s sent their way, from Afro-pop to reggae.
Posted by jgreen at 01:07 PM
January 31, 2008
Dying Speeches and Bloody Murders
Dying Speeches and Bloody Murders: Crime Broadsides Collected by the Harvard Law School Library
http://broadsides.law.harvard.edu/
Just as programs are sold at sporting events today, broadsides -- styled at the time as "Last Dying Speeches" or "Bloody Murders" -- were sold to the audiences that gathered to witness public executions in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Britain. These ephemeral publications were intended for the middle or lower classes, and most sold for a penny or less. Published in British towns and cities by printers who specialized in this type of street literature, a typical example features an illustration (usually of the criminal, the crime scene, or the execution); an account of the crime and (sometimes) the trial; and the purported confession of the criminal, often cautioning the reader in doggerel verse to avoid the fate awaiting the perpetrator.
The Library's collection of more than 500 broadsides is one of the largest recorded and the first to be digitized in its entirety. The examples digitized here span the years 1707 to 1891 and include accounts of executions for such crimes as arson, assault, counterfeiting, horse stealing, murder, rape, robbery, and treason. Many of the broadsides vividly describe the results of sentences handed down at London's central criminal court, the Old Bailey, the proceedings of which are now available online at http://www.oldbaileyonline.org.
Conservation and digitization of the broadsides was made possible by a generous grant from the Peck Stacpoole Foundation, a charitable endowment for the support of genealogical, local history, and other museum and library collections.
Posted by jgreen at 04:57 PM
January 03, 2008
Print Collection of Göttweig Monastery Brought Online
The print collection of Göttweig Monastery is Austria’s largest private collection of historical graphic art. The digitization of the collection is a project developed by the Department of Image Science at Danube University under the direction of Prof. Dr. Oliver Grau and conducted in cooperation with the Göttweig Monastery. On November 7, 2008, the state-of-the-art, entirely web-based database was made accessible to the public, and the first segment is now available at www.gssg.at
The collection of prints at Göttweig Monastery, which itself was founded in 1083, is based on acquisitions made by various monks since the 15th century. The first report of graphic art kept in the monastery dates back to 1621, with an archive record that mentions a number of “tablets of copper engraving” (“Täfelein von Kupferstich”). The actual act of founding the collection is attributed to Abbot Gottfried Bessel whose systematic purchases in Austria and from abroad added a total of 20,000 pieces to the collection. Reaching to the present day, the print collection at Göttweig Monastery has grown to be the largest private collection of historical graphic art in Austria with more than 30,000 examples.
The curator and Benedictine monk, Prof. Dr. Martin Lechner continues to expand the collection with additions of historical prints. In summer 2002, the collection was made available to the Department of Image Science at Danube University for research and study purposes. Simultaneously, the digitization project was launched which culminated in the opening of the online database. This latest supplement to the department’s online content and services offers a representative selection of the collection’s examples, showcasing a variety of craftsmen, genres and techniques and thus opening up new research opportunities. For academic purposes, all of the database’s assets may be used free of charge and are also employed in the department’s teaching. A fee is requested only for commercial uses of high-resolution images as well as for reproduction licenses.
The Department of Image Science’s digitization center at the Göttweig Monastery uses the latest technology to scan paintings and prints from the collection (up to 72 million pixels). Newly digitized material is continually added to the database, which can be searched using an innovative interface, and search results can be forwarded directly to researchers via email. Past exhibitions of the Monastery’s print collection are gradually integrated into the database and can be accessed as a virtual exhibition online. The first exhibition “Under Your Shelter” was dedicated to representations of the Virgin Mary from the Monastery’s collection.
VIRTUAL EXHIBITION
“Under Your Shelter - The Image of Mary in Göttweig” was curated by Prof. Dr. Martin Lechner and Mag. Michael Grünwald. It offers a comprehensive view of the history and background of the worship and adoration of the Virgin Mary. In four chapters, the exhibition introduces the visitor to the tradition of images of Marian Grace and its typology, drawing on numerous examples from Austria, Bavaria and other countries formerly belonging to the Austrian empire. The genre
“Marian life” is explained and illustrated by both single prints and print series. Finally, the close relationship between Mary and the saints of various convents is elaborated and explored.
Further inquiries:
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Oliver Grau (project director)
Head of the Department for Image Science
Danube University
Dr.-Karl-Dorrek-Strasse 30
3500 Krems, AUSTRIA
oliver.grau@donau-uni.ac.at
www.donau-uni.ac.at/dbw
Mag. Christian Berndt (project coordinator)
Department for Image Science
Graphik.Online@donau-uni.ac.at
Posted by jgreen at 02:57 PM