On January 11, 2017, Brittany Williams and I met with Midwestern State University’s archivist. We soon realized we had this entire assignment handed to us in a single collection. With MSU being a smaller university, the entirety of our rare books section is comprised of a single collection created and owned by Nolan Moore. He […]
On January 11, 2017, Brittany Williams and I met with Midwestern State University’s archivist. We soon realized we had this entire assignment handed to us in a single collection. With MSU being a smaller university, the entirety of our rare books section is comprised of a single collection created and owned by Nolan Moore. He traveled the world and most of the United States in search of great works and early evidence of written human communication.
While there were a few leafs from the Gutenberg Bible, the oldest complete book in the collection is the Nuremberg Chronicles, written by Hartmann Schedel and published in 1493 by Anton Koberger. This book was created by a woodcut press. The intricate process that went into producing this beautiful work was my first indication of how important books and records were to the people of this time period. Because the majority of the book is a reconstruction with pictures of the Hebrew Bible and a rough history of the world, it reinforced my preconceived notion that religion dominated the culture of this time period.
Most of the works in the collection were so well preserved that they looked untouched. A small edition of Dante’s Inferno did show a lot of evidence of ownership and marginalia. Most of the pages were annotated in small, cramped ink handwriting that was extremely difficult to read. Because of the amount of writing in the book, I assume it was used for scholastic purposes before Moore collected it.
The collection was donated to MSU by Moore’s family after his death. Nolan Moore and his family were native Wichitans and wanted the collection to go to a smaller liberal arts university. They eventually decided Midwestern State was the best choice. Moore dedicated his life to showing others the significance of human communication and its evolution over time, making that the underlying theme of this collection. From a model of cave drawings and the Rosetta Stone to first editions of comic books, Moore found significance in printed works no matter what their origins or intended and was motivated to share their importance.
https://www.mwsu.edu/library/departments/Nolan-Moore-III/print
Note: Please post this to your individual blog by 8pm on Wednesday, January 18th so that everyone has time to read the other students’ posts.
To prepare for this first blog post, you should make an appointment with your university’s archivist or special collections librarian—you’ll need at least a half hour of their time, and perhaps more, so be sure to plan ahead.
After your meeting, write up what you’ve learned about your local collections. Continue reading “Assignment #1: Blog post for Thursday, January 19”
Welcome to Social Life of Books Sites. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
Welcome to Social Life of Books Sites. This is your first post. Edit or delete it, then start blogging!
I, along with fellow Montevallo student Savannah Willard, met with the school archivist to discuss the questions posed to us by Dr. Pauley and Dr. Bankhurst. Despite the fact that I have been interning in our school’s archives for the past semester, many of these questions were not things I’d gotten to explore yet, and […]
I, along with fellow Montevallo student Savannah Willard, met with the school archivist to discuss the questions posed to us by Dr. Pauley and Dr. Bankhurst. Despite the fact that I have been interning in our school’s archives for the past semester, many of these questions were not things I’d gotten to explore yet, and it was very exciting to explore them.
Oldest book: The Satires of Decimus Junis Juvenalis, 3rd Edition with Sculptures
This book was printed by Jacob Tonson, a book printer at Grey’s-Inn-Gate in London, in the year 1702. It is written in old English, and therefore spelling and some grammatical structure was quite different from that which we use today. This, combined with the general state of the book, kept me from trying to read much of it. The book itself had obviously been rebound, but even despite that it was very nearly falling a part. The spine was completely separated from where the papers were bound at the side.
Beyond what we could guess, there was not a very obvious trail of history within the book. We were able to find the number assigned to the book when the school library bought it on February 8th, 1952 for $6.50. They bought it from someone in the ascension records penned as “Elizabeth Bkseller,” which Savannah and I took to mean Elizabeth- bookseller. It was one of ten or so books bought from Elizabeth on the same date. It was near this period of time that our school was needing an entirely new library because the building that the library was housed in was rapidly becoming too small.
Perhaps if the original cover and binding had been present, we would have been able to find more information about previous owners, and how this books got from London all the way to Montevallo, Alabama. Savannah and I discussed several ideas, including things such as a visitor to London from the USA buying the book and bringing it home with them, or it being brought with a native Londoner over for the sake of moving.
Marks for use: The Mind of the South by WJ Cash
This copy of The Mind of the South was printed by Vintage Books Inc, in New York in 1960. It was a 1st Vintage Edition and was originally owned by Professor Ethel Rasmusson. She was a professor of History at Montevallo, teaching 101 and 102 level classes. The book bears notes and underlining- it was probably used for lecture purposes when she moved on to teach at the University of Alabama after Montevallo. The book was part of a collection that she left to Montevallo in her later life.
Collection: Library of Science Collection
The University of Montevallo started as the Alabama Girls Technical Institute, as a means for giving young women a way to be better prepared for life and become either excellent homemakers or have a way of making a small income for themselves. Particularly popular in the 1920s and 30s was the education program, in which girls would have to take at least one class about how to build a small rural library for students of all ages. The books in this collection are ones that were gathered in Library Science 301 and 302, Book Selection for children. They are all children’s books with vibrant drawings such as Gulliver’s Travels by Swift and The Haunted Bookshelf by Morley, and all are identifiable by a specific stamp from the Library Science department. The collection is an ongoing one, as some of the books originally in the Library Science department are still in regular circulation in the University’s library. The school archivist, Carey Heatherly, is currently collecting the books as they are rotated out of regular circulation and taking them into the special collections registry. He told us that this collection was a reflection of both the history of our school as a girl’s institute, and as the history of our Education major, which to this day is one of the most popular majors on campus.
