The Burke Library’s new exhibit, “Gratian’s Decretum and the Foundations of Christian Legal Education,” explores the history and development of one of the most important legal texts of all time: Gratian’s Concordia discordantium canonum (“Harmony from Discordant Canons”) – or, more simply, the Decretum – a twelfth-century legal textbook designed to reconcile aspects of […]
Category: Manuscripts
The Return of Special Collections at Burke!
Earlier this Fall, The Burke Library proudly reopened its doors to the Columbia and Union communities after being closed for eighteen months due to the Covid-19 pandemic. It has been wonderful to see so many new and returning friends use Burke’s study spaces, stacks, and general collections. Our staff is particularly proud to provide […]
Virtual Teaching with Rare Materials in the Era of COVID-19
Over the last year, much has changed at The Burke library. The era of COVID-19 has brought about a host of challenges, particularly the ongoing effort to connect students with our magnificent collection of rare materials. The Burke is currently closed to visitors, but manuscripts, rare books, and archival material are always richer and […]
Newfound Letter from a young Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Mahatma Gandhi
The Burke Library staff recently received a warm and exciting message from our friend Prof. Clifford Green, the Bonhoeffer Chair Scholar at Union Theological Seminary. He wrote eagerly telling us of the recent discovery in New Delhi of a previously unknown letter mailed to the famous resistance leader Mohandas Gandhi, sent in earnest by none […]
The Eckley Sermons: a Manuscript Cataloging Mystery
*NOTE: The Burke Library is currently closed and personnel are working from home due to the COVID-19 coronavirus outbreak (see Columbia’s COVID-19 guidance page for more information and consult the Your Libraries Online portal for increased access to e-resources during this time). We are sharing this post, written a few weeks ago, harkening back to […]
Mapping the Holy Land: a New Exhibit, by Jeffrey Wayno
Visitors at the Burke Library may have noticed our new exhibit, Mapping the Holy Land, which showcases two items from our special collections—one from the rare book collection, one from the archives—to highlight how scholars of the past have thought about, and visualized, one of the most historic and contentious areas of our world. The […]
Buying Cool Things for the Burke
For many of us, the start of a new year brings with it new things: new calendars, new resolutions, even new routines. In the Columbia University Libraries, it also brings about… a new budget season. January, which is half-way through our fiscal year, is a good opportunity to take stock of how we’ve spent our […]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer on Microfiche: the Nachlass Collection
“Microfiche is cool” is a sentence one rarely hears any more, in the Internet age. Yet I am constantly reminded of the astonishing efficiency of microformatting, when researchers ask to see the collection of primary-source materials of Dietrich Bonhoeffer—noted German theologian, pastor, and anti-Nazi dissident, and onetime student at Union Theological Seminary—preserved on microfiche, collectively […]
A German Ecclesiastical Heritage in the Smaragdus Manuscript
UTS Manuscripts Student Series Post 4 of 4* The curiously-nicknamed “Smaragdus manuscript” (after the author of its first and most prominent text) is a curious collection of medieval writings officially known by its item number at the Burke Library at Union Theological Seminary, UTS MS 006. Written around the year 1100 in a Rhineland […]
A Life of its Own: an Itinerant Manuscript
UTS Manuscripts Student Series Post 3 of 4, by Emily Gebhardt, a Graduate Student in the Medieval and Renaissance Studies Program at Columbia University* At first glance, UTS MS 019 resembles many of the other medieval manuscripts and codices housed in Burke Library’s collections—it is old, it is worn, and it has clearly seen […]