Special Collections and University Archives at The University of Tulsa

THE AMERICAN WOODS, EXHIBITED BY ACTUAL SPECIMENS WITH COPIOUS EXPLANATORY TEXT by Romelyn B. Hough, B.A.

The American Woods represents the life work of Romeyn Beck Hough (1857-1924). Completed in 14 volumes, each volume contains 25-26 cards each with three extremely thin wood specimens—transverse, radial and tangential—of trees (including catus, yucca, and palm trees) found from New York to the Pacific Slope.

Happy Bloomsday!

To commemorate James Joyce and his most famous novel, we’ve decided to showcase *some* of our many editions of Ulysses. As one of the leading repositories for James Joyce material, we currently have about 72 different editions in our collection in a variety of formats and languages! Alongside Ulysses, we also have several editions of Joyce’s other works, and various manuscript materials from James Joyce and his contemporaries.

McFarlin Library Special Collections at the University of Tulsa is closed again today due to inclement weather. Stay warm out there, and we’ll see you when we can reopen!

As author Helen Corke stated so well in this 1931 letter to Heinemann Publishers, “Nothing was more important than the book”. With most businesses closed tomorrow (including us!), we hope you have time to sprawl out and read a book from beginning to end, just as Miss Corke used to love!

TU Special Collections will be closed on Monday, June 19th in observance of Juneteenth.

Happy Pride from your friends at Special Collections! 🌈🌈 we see and love each and every one of you! Here is a small selection of q***r authors and artists in our collections:
1 and 2.) Letter from Romaine Brooks to Natalie Clifford Barney [1987.005.1.1]
3.) The Weary Blues by Langston Hughes [PS3515.U274 W4 1926 Connolly]
4.) The Picture of Dorian Gray [PR5819 A1 1890] and Oscarina [PR5812.O83 1910 RHD Undrsz] by Oscar Wilde
5 and 6.) Orlando by Virginia Woolf, which was inspired by her friend and lover Vita Sackville-West [PR6045.O72 O7 1928b]
7.) Giovanni’s Room by James Baldwin [PS3552.A45 G56 1969 Undrsz]
8.) Photographs of Gertrude Stein and her friends, including Alice Toklas, Georges Hugnet, and Eugene Berman, at her summer home in Belley, France [1000.005.1.1]
9.) Meridian by Alice Walker [PS3573.A425 M47 2003]

“Call me Ishmael.” We recently rediscovered this beautiful first edition of Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick in our library 🐳 have you read this classic? [PS2384.M6 1851]

One of our librarians is currently reading Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders which made us want to showcase our framed piece of wallpaper from the theater booth where president Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in April of 1865 [1000.149]. Not only that, but we also have a handwritten letter by John Wilkes Booth as well as a press notice from the U.S. War Department offering a reward for Booth and his accomplices, dated April 20, 1865 [1979.021.1.6].

Yesterday was the birthday of William Shakespeare! Here is his fourth folio from 1685 that we hold in our library. These beautiful pages include Two Gentlemen of Verona, Romeo & Juliet, Hamlet, Troilus & Cressida, Coriolanus, and Titus Andronicus [PR2751.A4 1685 ovrsz].

Our marathon McFarlin Library Finals Hours begin this coming Tuesday, April 25th! Students looking for comfortable and quiet spaces to study will have access to the library's reading rooms and other areas from 7:30am on April 25th before we finally close at 5pm on May 4th.

By the way, you read that correctly: the library is staying open for nine days straight--that's 217.5 uninterrupted hours of study time in McFarlin Library! Time to get those finals game faces on...