Special Collections Roundup

Tuning in for World Television Day

For World Television Day, the Smithsonian highlights the 100 top television-related items from its collections, including a pair of sneakers that Fred Rogers slipped into on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood.

Cunard’s “Around the World Cruise” Centenary

Delve into the University of Liverpool’s Cunard archives on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the first passenger cruise liner to circumnavigate the globe.

Renewed Meaning: Exploring Madison’s Constitution Debate Notes

Library of Congress staff are using multispectral imaging to delve beneath the strikethroughs in James Madison’s notes from the 1787 Constitutional Convention.

NMAAHC Debuts Freedmen’s Bureau Search Portal

Access to the records of the Freedmen’s Bureau, created by Congress during Reconstruction to support newly emancipated African Americans, providing a vital source of Black history and genealogy in the 19th century.

Student Book Collecting Prizes: Dates and details

Links to a number of book collecting competitions for students, including Harvard’s own Hofer Prize.

Floating Phantoms: A. G. Mayer’s Medusae of the World (1910)

Public Domain Review highlights a beautifully illustrated work on jellyfish, available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library.

Of No Small Account: A Lilliputian-sized Diary from World War I

As a young printer drafted into World War I in 1917, Irving Greenwald knew something about making the most of a page. He did just that to an astonishing degree in this 5 inch-high pocket diary.

New initiative will make Cather’s manuscripts available online

An NEH grant will enable the Willa Cather Archive to digitize 4,000 pages of manuscripts from it’s holdings and those of 19 other repositories.

Inside My Favorite Manuscript
Launching November 15th, a new podcast from Dot Porter of the Schoenberg Institute at Penn. The first episode features guest Allie Alvis of Type Punch Matrix Books. I can’t wait to hear it!

The expenses of Queen Eleanor of Castile
As part of its ongoing Medieval and Renaissance Women digitization project, the British Library has digitized a manuscript documenting the expenses of Queen Eleanor of Castile from September 1289 to December 1290.

Fancy things: Cataloguing the Tercentennial Collection
The Bodleian reopens some of the presents it got for its 300th birthday in 1902 from libraries around Europe.

1880s Chemistry Set of Harmon Cozzens
Columbia RBML acquires a chemistry set used by one of the students in its School of Mines in the late 19th century. This is one item you’ll be handling with gloves in the reading room, as it contains a number of substances you don’t want to get on your hands.

Code Cracking in the Tinder Postcard Collection
Knowledge of the “Pigpen Cipher” makes it possible to decode a 1911 romantic message from Myrtle to Leon.