In youth, I spent interminable hours copying out by hand long passages of the Bible for Sunday school. I also remember dutifully copying out lecture notes in school and feeling grateful for mechanical pencils (no sharpening!). These days, I use my phone to snap a picture of some text, printed or handwritten, and in a […]
Behind the Stacks: Unheard-of Curiosities
As the Collection Services Assistant at the Burke Library, I am constantly in and out of the stacks and handling materials from both the special and general collections. In the course of my work, I frequently stumble across interesting items, images, or views that may otherwise go unnoticed or are even inaccessible for the public. […]
Letters between a Prisoner and a Soldier: The Houser-Shinn Correspondence from the Roger L. Shinn Collection
“I’ve never had the experience of writing to anyone in the army before. I suppose you’ve never written to anyone in jail before, so I guess we’re even.” George Houser, July 17, 1941 George Houser and Roger Shinn first met as students at Union Theological Seminary, living across the hall from each other on […]
Burke Coloring Book
Today is our inaugural stressbuster where we will be offering up coloring books and sweet treats! The coloring book was created using images of items within our amazing special collections. For those who are unable to come and who want to follow along at home we wanted to share the pages as well as a […]
Coloring in the Burke
In honor of the Burke’s first “coloring book,” created for a stress buster event the library is hosting for Union Theological students next week, I thought it would be nice to show off this sweet children’s coloring book from ca. 1920: Each page offers a new image (x3) to be painted in with the way it […]
Hanging Out With Ulanov
Since the beginning of 2016, I have been working to finish up some processing projects in the archives. In particular, I have taken over the initial processing of the papers from former Union alumna and Professor Ann Belford Ulanov. These papers start with her work from her student years at Radcliffe College and end as […]
Treating the Van Ess Collection: When Less is More
Among the many treasures of the Burke Library, it is the Van Ess Collection that makes the book conservator’s heart beat fast. This collection of more than 500 volumes is unique in America for its high concentration of early European printed books in contemporary bindings. To the modern eye they are something out of a […]
“Of making many books…”
On Wednesday, Nov. 18, 2015, the Burke Library hosted a workshop, organized by Columbia Libraries’ Conservation Department, for New York City curators and conservators on the study of the provenance of historic bookbindings. Dr. Nicholas Pickwoad, Director of Ligatus Research Centre at the University of the Arts London, led an all-day session featuring more than […]
#LoveInAction: A reflective essay
That sounds familiar! As I sifted through the materials in the Burke archives, reading student publications and looking at pictures that were over forty years old, I kept recognizing my classmates in these relics from our predecessors. My project was tracking a series of student-driven movements in the 1960s and 1970s that radically transformed the academic […]
My Own “Final Blog Post” Has Arrived
We keep moving forward, opening new doors, and doing new things, because we’re curious and curiosity keeps leading us down new paths. ~Walt Disney As I look back on the last four years and four months that I’ve spent as the project archivist at the Burke Library, I am so thankful to have had this opportunity. […]