Blog Topic: Public collections

La Española, the island now divided into the Dominican Republic and the Republic of Haiti, existed first as a Spanish colony during the entire sixteenth century, when its population became the first one in the Americas with a majority of people of African descent. The Black ancestors of today’s Dominicans were the first to experience […]

This post has been updated to include new information about Artstor’s public collections, formerly made available on Shared Shelf Commons. The Delmarva Peninsula gets its name from the three states it’s a part of: DELaware, MARyland, and VirginiA. You could say Delmarva is technically an island, since you have to cross one of five bridges […]

Whether you consider illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages the beginning, or you start with William Blake’s self-published books of poetry in the 18th century, artists have been making books for centuries. But as Toni Sant recounts in his book Franklin Furnace and the Spirit of the Avant-garde, the term “artists’ books” is fairly recent. […]

This post has been updated to include new information about Artstor’s public collections, formerly made available on Shared Shelf Commons. Despite entreaties to the contrary, the debate about e-books vs. printed books doesn’t seem to be going away anytime soon. Traditionalists frequently tout the sensual pleasures of paper (smell, which doesn’t have much to do […]

Bryn Mawr College’s free and open Albert Winslow Barker Collection brings back to light the work of an unfairly neglected American lithographer of the 1930s and uncovers his little-known photographs. And there is much to admire.

This post was edited to reflect the change from Shared Shelf to JSTOR Forum. We invited Lee T. Pearcy of Bryn Mawr College’s Department of Greek, Latin, and Classical Studies, to discuss the Classicizing Philadelphia project. One way to think about America’s relationship with ancient Greece and Rome is to imagine a dialogue. Listen carefully as you wander around Philadelphia. […]

This post has been updated to include new information about Artstor’s public collections, formerly made available on Shared Shelf Commons. At the beginning of the nineteenth century the prevailing medical belief that “the more dangerous the disease, the more painful the remedy” meant that bloodletting, purging, and blistering were often prescribed. Not surprisingly, this led […]

This post has been updated to include new information about Artstor’s public collections, formerly made available in Shared Shelf Commons. Maine is famous for its winters, and understandably so – snow accumulation can reach up to 10 feet in parts of the state. This offers an irresistible opportunity for play, as you can see in […]

Rob Stevenson’s Electronic Field Guide Project’s image collection is composed of more than 200 images of turtles, many of them photographed by Susan Speak. Stevenson is an Associate Professor in the Biology Department at UMass Boston, where he works on problems related to conservation physiology, environmental informatics, and science education.

In 2008, as part of its extensive collection of political Americana, the Cornell University Library’s Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections began building a collection of publicity and memorabilia documenting Obama’s campaign and election. Fittingly released at the beginning of Barack Obama’s second term in office, the Library has begun making these historic materials from the […]