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Blog Topic: Public collections

December 15, 2014

The endangered art of bookplates

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 […]

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May 27, 2014

The Long Conversation: the Classicizing Philadelphia Project

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. […]

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April 22, 2014

Patent medicines and advertising cards from the Oskar Diethelm Library

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 […]

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November 26, 2013

200 turtles: the Field Guide to Biodiversity in Artstor

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.

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January 23, 2013

President Barack Obama Visual Iconography

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 […]

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November 7, 2012

1,000 images from Dante’s Divine Comedy – free to everyone

Dante Alighieri’s 14th-century epic poem Divina Commedia has had an incalculable impact on Western culture, not least through its inspiration of visual artists. After all, Dante’s descriptions of grotesque figures, fantastic landscapes, and inventive punishments virtually beg to be depicted visually. Now everyone can view and download more than 1,000 of these images from eleven […]

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