Special Collections and Archives at Mizzou

Manuscripts, books, documents, and more at the University of Missouri Libraries. #Mizzou  http://bit.ly/mizzousocial  

[muspeccoll]

Wordy Wednesday

Watermark: An identifying mark made by papermakers. Wherever the watermark was placed, it would result in the paper being slightly thinner, allowing the watermark to be visible when light passes through the paper. Watermarks can serve multiple purposes: to authenticate a document, to indicate the manufacturer, to indicate the paper size, and to simply be beautiful. In Europe, watermarks were made by sewing a piece of wire in a particular shape to the paper mold.

[curiouscatalog]

Lovely ladies' fashions of the 1870s.

Godey’s Lady’s Book (Philadelphia, Pa. : 1840). Philadelphia, Pa: L.A. Godey, 1840-1892.

AP2 .G56

[muspeccoll]

Leonard Haseman wrote this report for the University of Missouri's Agricultural Experiment Station in 1915 with the goal of dispelling some of the myths about cicadas. He writes:

The numerous traditions and superstitions which have been connected with the periodical recurrence of the cicada since the early settlements are still quite prevalent in many localities of Missouri and are often the occasion of unwarranted alarm.

Haseman predicted the emergence of Brood XIX throughout Missouri in 1920. Today, we're seeing (and hearing) the descendants of that brood throughout the state again. Below is a video taken just outside the front door of our library. It might look like the tree branches are swaying in a gentle breeze, but that's mostly just cicadas.

Sound on to experience the screeching that we can hear in our offices with all the windows and doors closed, even as we type.

[a-book-of-creatures]

Hey tumblr we need to have a talk about something I noticed.

Specifically going by tags attached to images I’ve blogged or reblogged, there seems to be a misconception that marginalia means “any quirky medieval art”.

It’s not.

Marginalia is anything in the margins of a text.

The ones that will get posted on tumblr will more often than not be quirky drawings, but they also include notes, annotations, scribbles, and whatever else. The quirky drawings just happen to get a lot of press on here because, well. They’re quirky drawings.

For instance, see this image here of a platanista (river dolphin) chomping down on an elephant’s trunk?

This is not marginalia! This is a full-fledged illustration. It’s within the text (Liber natura rerum, Thomas de Cantimpré, Librairie de Valenciennes Ms 0320). It illustrates the entry on Platanista.

This is what it looks like in context.

But you know what are marginalia? Let me circle them for convenience.

Know the difference. It won’t save your life but it will make you more popular at a medievalist conference.

[arthistorycq]

Reblogging for conference popularity

[muspeccoll]

Wordy Wednesday

Verso: The “back” of a leaf, which in European-style books is visible when the leaf is on the left-hand side of the codex. (The other side of a leaf, when it is on the right, is the recto side.) In books that are read from right to left rather than left to right, the positions of verso and recto are reversed.

[muspeccoll]

Wordy Wednesday

Vellum: Another term for parchment. Vellum is sometimes used to refer specifically to parchment made of calf skin or lamb skin, but this usage is not very consistent. Calves and lambs, being younger, tended to produce higher-quality parchment without many blemishes and so their skins were in high demand. The term “uterine vellum” is used to refer to parchment made from the skin of unborn calves or lambs. Some early books were printed on vellum rather than paper as luxury commodities.

[antiqueanimals]

The Natural History of Insects; In Two Volumes. Vol. II. 1835.

Internet Archive

[muspeccoll]

It's cicada season! Our 13-year cicadas in Brood XIX are starting to emerge. We noticed cicada shells scattered across the sidewalks on campus today, and judging from their last appearance in 2011, there are many more to come.

Cicadas don't seem to be in published scientific research until the 19th century. Naturalist Benjamin Banneker recorded cicada broods in 1749, 1766, 1783, and 1800, and was one of the first scientists to observe that this brood emerged on a 17-year cycle. However, racism excluded Banneker from the scientific community, and his research was not published until fairly recently. More about Banneker's research on cicadas.

The images above were published well after Banneker wrote down his observations. They are from the journal American Entomologist, which published an article with illustrations of cicadas in 1868, and asked readers to confirm the emergence of Brood I - another 17-year brood - in 1869.

Watch for more information on periodical cicadas to emerge next week!

[muspeccoll]

Wordy Wednesday

Unopened: A book where the folds on some of the edges have not been cut. These folds are produced as a natural byproduct of bibliographic formats smaller than folio: in a quarto, they are usually at the top of the book and in an octavo, there are usually folds at the top and at the fore-edge. Binders would commonly slice these open free of charge, but even into the 20th century, books were sometimes delivered still unopened so that the book’s purchaser could savor the experience of cutting them open. Some readers would cut the folds as they read the book, so you can sometimes see exactly when a fickle reader gave up and moved on to another book.

[muspeccoll]

Calling all pet lovers! Special Collections has a new online exhibit: Fancy Magazines for Pet Fanciers. We showcase magazines from the Husni Collection. In this exhibit, we are showcasing fourteen pet-centric magazines. In the interests of space, we have limited ourselves to four kinds of pets: birds, cats, dogs, and ferrets. We present them in alphabetical order, so please don’t think that the order of the pets in any way indicates our preference! We hope that you enjoy looking at some of these magazines and that they remind you of some of the pets you may have had or met over the years. See more at the exhibit: Fancy Magazines for Pet Fanciers: Birds, Cats, Dogs, and Ferrets.

[muspeccoll]

Callot, Jacques, 1592-1635 (Illustrator). Les caprices. 17. Deux femmes de profil : [1 leaf], 1621.

[detroitlib]

From our stacks: "Another worker makes file cards for each book, showing the book's title, author, and other information. The cards for nonfiction books also show the book's library numbers. Then the cards are filed in the library's "card catalog"." From What Happens at the Library by Arthur Shay. Chicago: Reilly & Lee Books, 1971.

[houghtonlib]

We've just launched a new site focusing on material features in our early manuscripts, with tutorials on bindings, pages, content, and decoration, and links to digitized manuscripts with those features.

[blowery]

Libraries collection on Tumblr by blowery

Libraries and Special Collections on tumblr

Made some major additions to my collection of libraries and special collections that are active on here on good ole Tumblr. Check 'em out!

[muspeccoll]

#WordyWednesday

Uncut: A book whose margins have not been trimmed. Typically, a binder would slice off the edges of a book’s text block after binding, thereby getting a nice smooth edge to all the leaves. If a book was rebound often, this inevitably meant that the margins would get smaller and smaller until in the most extreme cases, some of the text itself might be cut off. A book might be left uncut either to avoid this or because the book’s owner likes the looser, uneven effect of an untrimmed book. Any book with a deckle edge will necessarily also be uncut. An uncut book may also be unopened, though the two are not the same.

[muspeccoll]

Beanie Baby Bonanza! Created in 1993, Beanie Babies were an instant pop culture craze, and many collected them as financial investments. Throughout the 90s Mary Beth Sobolewski released several collector and price guides tracking the rise and fall of the Beanie Baby market. Few of the Beanie Babies continue to bring high prices in the collector market, but most sit collecting dust in attics and basements. These are just a few of the many hobby magazines found in the Husni Collection.

[muspeccoll]

#WordyWednesday

Type: The letters used to print words. Generally, the term refers specifically to moveable type where the letters can be rearranged in any order to print any text. Printing with moveable type was undertaken in Asia as early as the 11th century and was separately invented in Europe in the 15th century by Johannes Gutenberg. A design for a given alphabet is called a “typeface.” A complete set of type in a specific typeface is called a font.

[muspeccoll]

@unproduciblesmackdown #Part of it is because of how the print shop is set up: you don't set your type on the printing stone, you set it in a "composing stick" while you're standing in front of the cases. As a result, you have to set it upside down to keep it from falling out of the stick. #Type has a little nick on one side of the "body" (the long bit of metal with the letter on one side) which lets you know you've got all the type set up the right way around. That nick is at the foot of the letter. #You're right about the reason we use "font" to refer to different sizes on a computer. A printing font is a complete set of all the letters and symbols in a particular typeface *in a particular size*. You can have a 12-point Roman font and a 14-point Roman font and they are not interchangeable, since the 12-point letters are smaller and won't fit with the 14-point letters. #On a computer, it's all ones and zeros (typically rendered in raster graphics which can be scaled up and down at will) but they chose to adopt "font" as a way to refer to a typeface, probably since there's no type involved anymore. #Hope that helps!