Welcome to the U-M Library’s digital magazine, which highlights stories from around the Library, the Library in the news, and upcoming events. A new edition is published at the start of each fall, winter, and spring/summer term.
Before all else, a university needed a library, and a library had to begin with a book.
Pitcher said he had just the book in mind.
Its title was The Birds of America. It was a collection in multiple volumes of 435 life-sized color engravings made by a strange, obsessed man named John James Audubon, an artist, frontiersman and entrepreneur.
Writing for the U-M Heritage Project, James Tobin tells the story of how the University came to acquire its first book.
Around the Library
Librarian makes connection to family artifact
For almost 20 years, Martha Epperson had been in search of a family legacy, the evidence for a story she’d been hearing her entire life. She’d canvassed the Internet, written letters to corporations and individuals, and followed up on more than one promising lead that in the end fizzled out.
Finally, she asked a librarian.
The artifact was a television ad produced in the 1960s by the oil company Texaco, one of a series highlighting service stations around the country, which featured Epperson’s grandfather Jerry Conner, owner of stations in Columbia, Missouri. The ad had included a glimpse at Conner’s family: his wife, his two grown daughters and their families, and his youngest daughter Candy — Epperson’s mother, back when she was in junior high.
New destination for Special Collections researchers
In March, the Library celebrated the opening of the Special Collections Research Center on the 6th floor of the Hatcher Graduate Library. With newly renovated spaces for reading, instruction, and consultation, the center is designed to maximize the opportunities for engaging with the Library’s extensive collection of unique, rare, and primary source materials.
This new designation for what was known as the Special Collections Library reflects the space’s focus on serving the needs of individual and group research, says the center’s director Martha Conway. “We’re thrilled to be able to offer more opportunities to connect researchers, instructors, and students with our collections, and with the passionate expertise of our librarians and curators.”
At the intersection of design and power
When the students in Will Thomson’s class visited the Library together, they brought with them backgrounds in a variety of fields, representing at least three of the University’s schools and colleges. The course, titled Design and Power, was cross listed in LSA’s Department of Anthropology, the Penny Stamps School of Art & Design, and the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning.
At the Library, they found themselves on common ground.
Labadie acquires Emma Goldman letters
The Library recently acquired a new set of Emma Goldman papers, adding to its already extensive holdings in the Joseph A. Labadie Collection. Goldman (1869–1940) was a world-famous anarchist activist, lecturer, and writer. Because she played such a key role in the anarchist movement in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century, her papers are an extraordinarily valuable resource for researchers studying the politics, people, and events of those tumultuous times.
Hatcher Library debuts at Cannes
Among the places visited by UK filmmaker Mark Cousins while making his documentary "The Eyes of Orson Welles" was the U-M Library, which is home to the bulk of the letters, scripts, and other documents generated by this highly influential artist of radio, stage, and screen. The film had its premiere at the recent Cannes Film Festival.
New digital collection tracks career of architect Robert C. Metcalf
The Robert C. Metcalf Architectural Drawings and Visual Materials digital collection documents the career of this Michigan-based modern architect, who was a professor and dean of the University of Michigan College of Architecture and Urban Planning. Metcalf's work includes more than 150 buildings in Michigan and Ohio. The material in this collection includes architectural drawings, photographs, slides, and teaching materials from the 1940s through the 2000s.
In the News
Library's StoryCorps project featured on Michigan Radio
The Michigan Radio program Stateside featured a conversation between Librarian Karen Downing and her father, Harold Johnson, who made history as the first black dean at the University of Michigan.
The conversation was part of the Library's U-M bicentennial partnership with StoryCorps, which captured 15 conversations that tell important stories about the University and its people.
Library’s ‘Most Deadly Book’ featured in Atlas Obscura
Sometimes, the loveliest images are also the most toxic: a red sunset over a polluted skyline; the cool blue depths of quarry; a delicate sprig of hemlock.
One such item can be found tucked away in the U-M Library’s remote shelving facility, only to be handled with protective gloves: A 19th century book of wallpaper samples saturated with deadly arsenic.
Though a known poison in the Victorian Era, arsenic was not believed to be harmful for everyday, external use, and the vibrant green hues created by arsenic pigments were wildly popular in wallpaper coverings and other products. Its use in wallpaper, in particular, was eventually linked to widespread sickness and death.
The library’s copy of “Shadows from the Walls of Death,” produced in Michigan in 1874 to raise awareness about the dangers of living with arsenic-pigmented wallpaper, is one of only four remaining in the world.
Read more about the book in Atlas Obscura.
NEH funds 'open access' books for Asian studies
A $200,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) will make significant books about Asia published by the University of Michigan freely and publicly available online, in editions that use digital affordances to enrich the reading and teaching experience. Together these titles will dramatically advance public understanding of the diversity of society, culture, and history in East, South, and Southeast Asia at a time when the region is rarely out of the headlines.
Library and partners look to bolster data curation
Backed by a $526,438 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the U-M Library and seven other academic libraries will launch the Data Curation Network. The network helps institutions better support researchers who are seeking to meet a growing number of mandates to openly and ethically share their research data.
Photo Gallery
Featured Blog
In Lab Notes, hear from students who've worked in the Shapiro Design Lab. The lab is an ever-evolving experimental space in the Library that creates engaged learning opportunities and experiences across research, artistic, and teaching projects.
It features a variety of tools, including 3D printers, audio/video hardware and software, letterpress, and prototyping supplies, all supported by a community of experts, learners, and developers.
Current & Upcoming Exhibits
Check our Upcoming Library Events on a regular basis and sign up to receive our weekly exhibits & events email.
Quaker Oats Makes a Movie: A Scrumdiddlyumptious Wonka Adventure
View Quaker Oats Makes a Movie in the Special Collections Research Center (6th Floor Hatcher Graduate Library) | Through July 20
This student-curated exhibit tells the behind-the-scenes story of an unprecedented foray into the marketing of consumer goods (a new line of Wonka candy products) via filmmaking.
Nothing Makes Sense, Except Love: The Cinematic Musings of Director Alan Rudolph
Visit the Gallery, Hatcher Library to view Nothing Makes Sense, Except Love | June 1 to August 19
A chronicle of the career of filmmaker Alan Rudolph, from papers that are now part of the Screen Arts Mavericks & Makers collection.
Seven Fantasy Classics for Children
See Seven Fantasy Classics for Children in the Audubon Room, Hatcher Library | Through July 31
Featured Online Exhibit
The Life and Times of Lizzy Bennet examines the milieu in which author Jane Austen (1775–1817) lived, and the characters she created in her ever-popular novels. It was a tumultuous time in Britain, encompassing the French revolution and subsequent Napoleonic Wars; the fight to abolish the slave trade; and vigorous debates on women’s role in society. These events are not directly taken up by the characters inhabiting the polite drawing rooms of the novels, but it's impossible to fully understand what was at stake for Austen's characters without considering the political, social, and domestic context in which they resided.
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