Printers’ flowers, pieces of type bearing designs (generally floral and arabesque) rather than letterforms, are a convenient and traditional way for a printer to pretty-up a text, as the ornaments combine easily within the page of type for printing. The samples above and below, both from Agostino dal Pozzo’s Gnomonices biformis, Venice 1679 (Plimpton 513 1679 […]
Pretty Mathematics
We have restarted a project to finish cataloging the Plimpton Collection. George Arthur Plimpton (1855-1936) collected “our tools of learning,” pretty broadly described, and gave the collection to Columbia shortly before his death. I’ve been enjoying reviewing the early books — though I’ve been a little surprised by how many books printed before 1800 remain […]
Naughtiness
Forgive me, reader; it’s been a very long time since my last post. Why? Because every time I find something interesting to write about it gets… complicated, and I get distracted. For example: A comics class came for a hands-on session, and in addition to the comics the professor picked out, I showed them […]
Journalists at Risk in the Former Yugoslavia: The Committee to Protect Journalists Records
Catherine Carson Ricciardi Archivist In processing the records for the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), I’ve found many files that document the challenges for journalists covering the war in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s. For example, records relating to a project to create a safety handbook for these journalists provide additional insights into the […]
“Mr. Farley! This is War!”
Annalisa Pesek, RBML Intern (summer, 2011) Today’s climactic moment as an RBML intern arrives at that time in the day when your fingers are beginning to tingle from the constant re-foldering and you start to question whether or not the demise of your career as an archivist will be the result of your enduring curiosity. […]