Folger Collections
Collection Connections: 'Circe' by Madeline Miller
Rachel B. Dankert, Learning and Engagement Librarian, shares items she presented on May 6, 2021 as an introduction to Circe by Madeline Miller.
Collection Connections: 'A Bright Ray of Darkness'
Dr. Emma Poltrack shares the items she presented on April 1, 2021 as an introduction to ‘A Bright Ray of Darkness’ by Ethan Hawke.
Documenting mistakes in our documentation
If someone points out a typo in an online Finding Aid or a Hamnet catalog record, we gratefully say thank-you, fix it, and (usually) move on.For more on the differences between Finding aids and Hamnet records, see Manuscripts in libraries: catalog…
Pre-pandemic phone photo fails
As we hit the one year mark of special collections reading rooms closing around the world because of the pandemic, “primary source research” for many of us now consists of scrolling through our phones in search of photos of collection…
Collection Connections: ‘Hag-Seed’
Dr. Emma Poltrack shares the Folger collection items she presented on March 4, 2021 as an introduction to ‘Hag-Seed’ by Margaret Atwood.
Marks on Bindings
Thank you for your witty guesses to this month’s Crocodile, they are great! I also need to make a disclaimer: I am far from having collected enough evidence to answer this mystery, so like you, I only have guesses to…
Balancing information and expertise: vernacular guidance on bloodletting in early modern calendars and almanacs
A guest post by Mary Yearl The first calendar printed as a book in Europe was also the first to contain a printed image of a bloodletting man.1 This point alone is indicative of the importance bloodletting played in medieval…
Collection Connections: ‘The Moor’s Account’
Rachel B. Dankert, Learning and Engagement Librarian, shares the Folger collection items she presented on February 4, 2021 as an introduction to ‘The Moor’s Account’ by Laila Lalami.
Fortune’s Fools: early tarot cards
As several of you guessed last week, this month’s crocodile mystery showed an early tarot card. When treating a copy of a 1673 edition of Vincent Reboul’s “Le Pelerinage de S. Maximin,” Folger conservators discovered two tarot cards used to…
This Post Stinks, or, ‘I hope that the stuff will not smell too vilely’
John Masefield has a burning question he needs answered. Literally. Writing from his home Hill Crest in Boar’s Hill, Oxford, the Poet Laureate asks theater production veteran Allan Wade a crucial question about staging his home theatrical production of Macbeth.1…
Using cardboard spacers to fill gaps on the shelf
Sometimes the simplest tools are the best. This post is a tribute to the humble hunk of folded cardboard.1 Cardboard spacer filling the gap on the shelf while two large volumes are in use. All photos are by me, Erin…
Collection Connections: ‘Hamnet’
Dr. Emma Poltrack shares the Folger collection items she presented on December 3, 2020 as an introduction to ‘Hamnet’ by Maggie O’Farrell.