New staff members (and researchers!) are sometimes surprised to find that on-order and newly received collection materials show up in Hamnet searches. Many special collections libraries keep that information staff-only until the material has arrived, been processed, and sent to the vault. But it doesn’t feel right to us to hide information that might be useful to researchers. Even if you can’t see an item right now because it was only ordered yesterday, you at least know that it exists, and is on its way.… Continue Reading
Yes, last week’s Crocodile Mystery was a close-up image of a woodblock. This woodblock, in particular:
And in fact, it is the woodblock that was used to print this image:
You can compare this section of the woodblock with the (hand-colored) print that it created:
So what’s going on here? What is this book and why is the woodblock used for one of the illustrations still with it?… Continue Reading
A guest post by Derek Dunne
For anyone who has worked in the Reading Room of the Folger Shakespeare Library, you’ll know that a certain amount of paperwork is part of the daily routine: sign-in sheets, call slips, and of course the exit pass. Each of these is designed to be filled in over time—sometimes written by readers (‘PLEASE PRINT’ as shown below), sometimes stamped by library staff—meaning that the document is always in progress, never quite complete; making these documents both collaborative and hybrid.… Continue Reading
As March draws to a close, spring has finally (mostly) sprung in Washington DC (we’ll not talk about our poor cherry blossoms). If the days are warming up where you are as well, contemplate this Crocodile Mystery while you enjoy the weather, and tell us what this image is:
As always, leave your thoughts and guesses in the comments and we’ll be back next week with the answer.… Continue Reading
A guest post by Megan Heffernan
Working in the Folger Shakespeare Library this year has opened my eyes to the important role that research centers play in shaping knowledge. If this sounds like a truism, bear with me for a moment because I want to use this post to think through some of the ways that scholarship is sustained by access to archives.… Continue Reading
It’s not uncommon for me to encounter small presses, publishers, and binderies with which I’m unfamiliar in the course of my regular work at the Folger. However, few of them have as intriguing a story as the Guild of Women-Binders, which I discovered in our catalog earlier this month.
The Guild of Women-Binders was started by Frank Karslake, a London bookseller with ambitious ideas, but little actual experience in bookbinding.… Continue Reading
Since (and even before) our founding in 1932, Folger Shakespeare Library staff has come together with a wide variety of arts and humanities organizations to celebrate the powerful nature of Shakespeare’s plays and poems. Shakespeare’s works represent a literary place to which many of us turn in times of turmoil, both personal and on a broader stage. His works have been used to support many different viewpoints, and many different types of causes—regardless of what use Shakespeare’s words have been made to serve, we can agree that they are powerful and compelling in the hands of orators and writers.… Continue Reading
The next time a scholar of early modern Europe tells you that they don’t look to the Folger as their research home because they don’t work on Shakespeare, you might gently suggest that there are other parts of the Folger’s collection that may be relevant to their work. Chances are, if they work on any topic involving literature, religion, history, or culture from between 1450 to 1750 in Western Europe, the Folger has material for them.… Continue Reading
Thank you to those who have tried to solve this month’s Crocodile mystery regarding the yellow color of a book, which can be found in the Stickelberger collection of Reformation at the Folger Shakespeare Library (more on this collection in a future Collation post!). While we had many interesting guesses, we still cannot fully explain what caused the coloring of the paper in this book.… Continue Reading
The mystery this month isn’t about what the text is (these pages are excerpts from a Calvinist Bible in French printed in Geneva in 1588) but rather it’s about the paper. What is going on here?
Leave your thoughts and guesses in the comments and we’ll be back next week with more information.… Continue Reading
