Special Collections Roundup

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.