The University of Connecticut (UConn) Library is fantastic, with wonderful people, locations, collections, and more. There’s a new story out about one item from the collections which is a 700-year-old medieval prayer book page. The page is used as part of a specimen collection in teaching, and its story of how it came to be at UConn takes a winding journey, connecting with many areas including medical humanities and a deep commitment to public access to important art. I love that the UConn Library’s Archives & Special Collections shares this in teaching, breathing new life and growing the story and connections of this and so many other publications.
While I was thinking about this, my RSS feed shared that the LibraryPress@UF just published a book I had acquired when I was there, Understanding Nature: The Strange Case of the Paper Flowers. This is a beautiful and important book by Maria Beatriz de Souza Cortez and Nanci Ribeiro de Jesus, illustrated by Isadora de Oliveira Barroso Frois and Indiamara Aparecida Ribeiro da Cunha, that is part of a dissertation and part of community engaged research. It’s also a lovely book to view and to read.
Libraries and archives hold and share so many treasures, from the past and present that help us to build for a better future. I’m always happy when I have time to reflect and share on specific examples like these.