Rare Books and Manuscripts Library, The Ohio State University

Can't make it to Columbus to see RBML's superb exhibition, "Deathless Fragments," highlighting our substantial collection of medieval manuscript fragments, Ohio's central place in the history of North American manuscript-breaking, and Ohio State's commitment to and role in supporting the reconstruction of broken medieval books? No worries! You can see a "virtual tour" of the exhibit, led by its curator, Prof. Eric J. Johnson, here:

Deathless Fragments: A Virtual Tour of the Exhibit at the Thompson Library Eric J. Johnson, Professor and Curator of Thompson Special Collections, The Ohio State University, presents "Deathless Fragments" Ohio is awash in the remain...

RBML curator Eric Johnson's write-up of the fall 2020 Medieval Manuscript Studies' manuscript acquisition assignment, published on the Les Enluminures website:

STUDENTS AS CURATORS: Manuscripts in the Classroom at Ohio State University This blog highlights what makes our text manuscripts particularly interesting and appealing to us – and (we hope) to you too! Here we explore what these books can tell us about how they were made and used.

Students in the Fall 2020 "Medieval Manuscripts Studies" course offered by Ohio State's Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies and co-taught by Prof. Leslie Lockett and Prof. Eric J. Johnson worked together to evaluate, assess, and select medieval manuscript codices for purchase and addition to RBML's collection. The project was made possible by a generous gift from an anonymous donor. Read the story at the link below for more details about this exciting--and fun--project!

Students Select New Acquisitions for Rare Books & Manuscripts Library Graduate student Tamara Mahadin examines one of the manuscripts she and her fellow students selected for purchase, a mid-15th century copy of Bernard de Parentis’ commentary on the Mass. With the support of an anonymous donor, Ohio State students were empowered to select $50,000 in rare manuscript...

Check out the link below for a brief, 5-image/caption "exhibition" featuring a nifty 15th-century manuscript prayer book at RBML that was used to record an 18th-century journey to the Holy Land:

https://library.osu.edu/site/journeys/rare-books-manuscripts-library/

Rare Books & Manuscripts Library | Journeys

This article appeared back at the beginning of March, just as pandemic madness began to hit and the library started it's slide to shutdown. It just crossed our path again, so we share it now as a great example of the work one of OSU's remarkable undergraduate student has done with medieval manuscripts--and as an example demonstrating RBML's commitment to putting historic books and manuscripts directly into the hands of students. Enjoy!

Valuable research with invaluable resources Learn more about Rose McCandless, an Ohio State University student working and discovering rare, exciting books in the University Libraries collections.

Join RBML curators Eric J. Johnson and Jolie Braun, along with special guests Ann Marie Davis (OSUL's Japanese Studies Librarian) and Ashleigh Minor (our Accessioning and Processing Coordinator in the Archival Description and Access Unit) for our online 2020 Preview Night where we'll talk about medieval manuscripts, Japanese postcards commemorating the Great Kanto earthquake of 1923, modern literary archives, zines, and psychological warfare during the Vietnam War. For more info and to register, go here:

https://library.osu.edu/events/rare-books-and-manuscripts-librarys-2020-preview-night-virtual-event

Rare Books and Manuscripts Library’s 2020 Preview Night (Virtual Event)

RBML is having a micro-fundraiser to support direct teaching and research support with rare books and manuscripts at Ohio State and beyond. A very generous donor has agreed to match up to $1000 for donations made through the end of October, so if you're inclined to help, please know that whatever your contribution might be will go even further! Your support will help provide amazing opportunities for our students at Ohio State, as well as contribute to education and outreach opportunities for K-12 students around Ohio and the general public.

Thanks for considering!

Support Access to Remarkable Materials The Rare Books & Manuscripts Library needs your help to fulfill its mission to put its materials right into people's hands.

The Ohio State University Libraries stand with those in opposition to the systemic racism reflected in recurring acts of violence perpetrated against black men and women in the US.

The Ohio State University Libraries’ (OSUL) Rare Books & Manuscripts Library (RBML) is excited to announce that materials from its Women’s Suffrage Collection have been digitized and are now available online. Users can explore nearly 40 early twentieth-century American and British postcards with both pro- and anti-suffrage viewpoints. Photo postcards of the historic 1913 Suffrage Parade in Washington, D.C., cartoons satirizing suffragists, and postcards featuring key individuals involved in the British movement are included. A short video of curator Jolie Braun talking about one of her favorite postcards in the collection is available at the OSUL YouTube channel as well. The postcards are part of RBML’s Woman’s Suffrage Collection, which contains publications and correspondence about women’s right to vote, mostly from 1903-1912. In addition to the postcards, two scrapbooks (one containing pro-suffrage materials, the other containing anti-suffrage items) also have been digitized. They comprise pamphlets, clippings, and other items documenting perspectives and news about women’s suffrage, from the late nineteenth century through the early twentieth century. Users can peruse writings by prominent suffragists such as Carrie Chapman Catt, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and M. Carey Thomas, as well as other kinds of ephemera such as leaflets, sheet music, and cartoons. The items are wide-ranging in scope from flyers for local, Columbus, Ohio elections to materials about women’s suffrage in England, France, and Australia.

The postcards and scrapbooks provide an important and exciting window into the efforts and concerns of those involved in the women’s suffrage movement as well as their victories and the opposition they faced. This digitization project was motivated in part by the women’s suffrage centennial. 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which established the right to vote for many women.

Thanks to the many OSUL individuals whose work made this project possible:
• Kallen Alsdorf, Thompson Library Special Collections Student Worker
• Ariel Bacon, Metadata Program Assistant
• Joelle Cassetto, Thompson Library Special Collections Student Worker
• Miriam Centeno, Preservation and Digitization Strategist
• Lisa Iacobellis, Instructional Services Coordinator
• Annamarie Klose, Metadata Initiatives Librarian
• Morris Levy, Head of Bibliographic Initiatives
• Amy McCrory, Digitization Program Manager
• Maria Scheid, Copyright Services Coordinator
• Rocki Strader, Catalog/Authorities Librarian
• Theresa Wei, Library Associate

Nice to see last summer's medieval manuscript-themed marriage proposal by PhD candidate, RBML supporter, user, researcher, and friend, Clint Morrison, to his wonderful partner, Toni Franken as part of this month's campaign. Congratulations, guys!

A Rare Proposal The idea for one of the biggest moments in Clint Morrison’s life began as a joke with a professor. Morrison, a PhD Candidate studying Late Medieval Literature, purchased an engagement ring for his girlfriend Toni Franken in February 2019. The couple met at a university-sponsored graduate student s...

Newly arrived at RBML is this lovely edition of the sermons of Robertus Caracciolus (1425-95), one of the most popular Italian Franciscan preachers of the late-medieval era. Robert's sermon collection was widely popular in print from the 1470s well into the 16th century and found enthusiastic readers not just in the professional preachers who used his sermons as models, but with everyday readers looking for entertaining literary fare. This copy of his sermons, the "Prediche de Frate Roberto vulgare," was published in Milan by Johannes Angelus Scinzenzeler in 1509.

Making this nifty little volume even niftier is its "cheap" binding consisting of a recycled medieval manuscript bifolium on parchment. In this case, the text on this binding fragment preserves lines 1961-2031 of Alexander de Villa Dei's long poem, the "Doctrinale puerorum," a versified treatise on grammar originally written between 1200-1225. The bifolium used here as the printed book's wrapper is a lovely example of the poem, preserving the traditional page layout for manuscript verse, with the first letter of each line set off to the left of the rest of the line (and in this case with each opening letter stroked in red ink). Alexander's poem was remarkably popular in the Middle Ages, and remained so well into the age of print. This fragment is just the latest of at least half-a-dozen examples of manuscript copies of this poem to have survived as binding fragments and to have surfaced in the past five years, or so.