Hull-House Maps and Papers: On moving a book from general to special collections

  By many measures, Hull-House Maps and papers is not a rare book. In 1895, Jane Addams and her colleagues at Chicago’s Hull-House published Hull-House Maps and Papers: a presentation of nationalities and wages in a congested district of Chicago, together with comments and essays on problems growing out of the social conditions. Their goal […]

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Re-post: Exhibit on Islamic Science on Display at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library through March 2023

  This post is entirely devoted to the newest exhibit at the Rare Book & Manuscript Library, featuring dozens of works from the Muslim World Manuscripts housed in the RBML and Burke Library collections. Head of Global Studies Kaoukab Chebaro wrote a terrific post for the Global Studies Blog which we are highlighting below. We […]

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Religious Communities in the Christian Tradition: a New Exhibit

  Three weeks ago, the staff of The Burke Library were delighted to welcome faculty, students, and staff from Union Theological Seminary and Columbia University to an opening reception marking the start of a new academic year. As part of the festivities, we were also very pleased to open a new exhibit on the first […]

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Virtual Teaching with Rare Materials in the Era of COVID-19

Screenshot of presentation by librarians Jeffrey Wayno, Emily Runde, and Melina Moe

  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 […]

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“On That Happy Ground”: Lyrics from the First African Methodist Pocket Hymn Book (1818)

  The Burke Library staff got a curious inquiry last week from a researcher in Maryland seeking a particular hymn book held in our Special Collections. He believed it would hold the key to a piece of his research, about the first African Methodist Episcopal (A.M.E.) church in service in Easton, Maryland, convened by a […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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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 […]

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The Burke Library Goes International

One of the great joys of working at an educational institution is the chance to meet and interact with students, teachers, and researchers from all over the world. At the Burke, that kind of interaction usually takes place when people come to visit us in New York City. But recently I had the distinct pleasure […]

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