The Early Modern Commons

Seconde partie Lisez la première partie de ce blog Repères pour l’identification des provenances L’identification systématique des provenances des œuvres de Voltaire dans la collection de Paulmy reste à mener à bien. Nous mentionnerons...

Première partie La Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal est depuis 1934 rattachée à la Bibliothèque nationale de France, dont elle est aujourd’hui l’un des départements au centre de Paris.  Le cœur de ses collections anciennes est constitué de...

I was honored to deliver the Wing Foundation Lecture on the History of the Book at the Newberry Library on March 3, 2022. The event took place in person after two years of virtual events. I’m grateful to Jill Gage, Custodian of the John M. Wing Foundation...

By Sarah Peters Kernan This summer proves to be an exciting one for anyone seeking recipes-related exhibitions at museums, libraries, and other institutions. Many exhibitions featuring the history of food, medicine, and science are well underway or opening...

In 2019, I spoke with Helen Davies and Alexander Zawacki, Program Coordinators of the Lazarus Project. Since that time, the project has continued to thrive and multispectral imaging has become an increasingly popular methodology for examining manuscripts...

Portrait of the elderly Simon Fraser, 11th Lord Lovat, whole length, sitting on a chair, its back carved with a scallop shell; he holds a book in his right hand with his left hand in his waistcoat. To his right is a small side table with a quill pen in...

By Sarah Peters Kernan For anyone able to safely travel in December or January, several museums have special exhibitions related to the history of food, medicine, and science. In addition to in-person exhibitions, several museums also have created online...

Textiles in Libraries: Context and Conservation The Bodleian’s Conservation and Collection Care team, in collaboration with the Centre for the Study of the Book, is embarking on a year of discovery in the field of Textiles in Libraries. The scope of...

By Sarah Peters Kernan At the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, organizations cancelled conferences and events in staggering numbers. As it became clear that events would have to move online in order to continue, our organizations and institutions did...

Last August I wrote about John Adams’s bequest to the town of Quincy intended to create a school, which would become owner of his extensive library, and a church. As I reported then, it took decades for the Adams Academy to be built, and it never actually...

By Laurence Totelin, with input from Briony Hudson A few years ago, my colleagues Heather Trickey (social sciences), Julia Sanders (midwifery) and I decided to put together a small exhibition on the history of infant feeding, with a focus on Wales where...

A scene in a fashionable library with ladies and gentlemen conversing with attendants at the counters on either side. On the left a woman looks in a book while her male companion converses with a clergyman, as the woman behind the counter consults a book....

The Clements Library at the University of Michigan just announced that it has receiveda $350,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities to digitize…over 23,000 items related to Thomas Gage, a famed British commander-in-chief in the...

This month I’ve listed online events to commemorate the 19th of April, and then more of those, and then another along with two events about tavern culture. And yet here are three more online historical events scheduled in the next week. “Mapping...

Here in Massachusetts we’re still in a race to vaccinate people against the Covid-19 virus even as cases are rising again. The end of the pandemic is in sight, but we need to minimize casualties.Wisely, the local organizations that lead the commemoration...

Yesterday I mused about the possibility that a British political cartoon inspired some elements of the Loyall Nine’s anti-Stamp Act protests in late 1765—in particular, hanging the stamp agents in effigy and dedicating a tree to liberty. That...

For anyone who cares about preserving the papers of important Founders, Valerie-Anne Lutz recounted quite a heart-stopping adventure for the American Philosophical Society in January.Lutz wrote about Benjamin Franklin’s surviving papers:When Franklin...

Welcome to the latest Around the Table! Today we have a chat about the recipes-related collections at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., especially the National Museum of American History (NMAH)! I am delighted to speak with Ashley Rose...

The Harvard University Library has a number of events lined up to spread news of its Colonial North America project.For nearly a decade, the library has been digitizing manuscripts and archival materials from across the system. Thousands of items can...

Earlier this month, the Boston Public Library’s Rare Books and Manuscripts department announced that it had finished scanning its entire card catalogue and uploading the result to the Internet Archive. “With this project now complete,”...