When people come to Hornbake to explore our Literature and Rare Books collection they are often viewing our works from a historical or literary perspective. While it’s true that students studying history and English can find a wealth of resources in our collections collection, the same is equally true for students in STEM. Whether you study biology, astronomy, engineering, or math you can find early texts on those subjects in Rare Books. And it’s now easier than ever with a new libguide on STEM in Rare Books!
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The latest updates about Hornbake Library, including changing hours, renovations, sustainability news, and more.
Updates to the William Addison Dwiggins collection Finding Aid
When you read something, whether it’s a blog post, a newspaper, or a novel the odds are that you are focused on the content of the text you are reading. But have you ever paid attention to the appearance of words on a screen or a page?
One artist whose work highlighted the art of book design, the arrangement of text, and lettering is William Addison Dwiggins, one of the most influential figures in typography. Dwiggins’ typefaces were stylized and geometric, breaking away from the more antiquarian inspired typefaces of his predecessors. In addition to his typography work, Dwiggins designed and illustrated books. If you would like to learn more about Dwiggins take a look at the William Addison Dwiggins collection finding aid which has been recently updated to allow requests for individual items! The collection includes works by and about Dwiggins, as well as books he designed.
Continue readingFinding Aid Update for the Carolyn Davis collection of Louisa May Alcott
As we come back from winter break, you may be looking for something to keep you in the holiday spirit. Well there’s no better place to look than the Carolyn Davis collection of Louisa May Alcott! You can now view and request individual items from this collection through the updated finding aid, making it easier than ever to access these timeless stories.
The Carolyn Davis collection of Louisa May Alcott contains numerous editions of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women, including everything from a first edition copy of the novel, a Danish translation, an edition from 1995, and more! Seeing how Little Women has been interpreted throughout time and across countries can allow you to experience this classic story in new ways. The Carolyn Davis collection also contains other works by Alcott such as Hospital Sketches and Rose in Bloom and works about Alcott and her family.
Continue readingOn the Trail, at Home with Maryland Public Television
Autumn is quickly sliding into winter, and we at Special Collections and University Archives are hunkering down, already reminiscing about summer days spent in the sunshine. For coping with quarantine, Maryland Public Televison’s (MPT) program On Nature’s Trail is a true delight. University of Maryland (UMD) alumni Jean and Elmer Worthley take viewers on an exploratory trip into the woods. Jean, the author of The Complete Family Nature Guide, studied human development and childhood studies at UMD, and was the host of the beloved MPT children’s show Hodgepodge Lodge. A noted botanist who received his PhD from UMD, Elmer grew plant specimens under the sponsorship of the UMD School of Pharmacy. These two approach nature with a conversational tone reminiscent of a science class field trip. Each one of On Nature’s Trail’s 26 episodes focuses on a specific environment or landscape, from summertime woods to railroad tracks and hedgerows.
The real joy of this show, besides how adorable and informative Jean and Elmer are, is their close examination of Maryland’s natural environment. The Worthleys passion for science is evident, both in their precise observations and meandering conversations. In episode 15, “ Woods of the Summer,” the Worthleys teach viewers to approach the woods methodically, encouraging close examination at all levels and through the engagement of multiple senses. Through looking, touching and even smelling, Jean and Elmer illuminate the finer points of woodland life, inspecting azaleas, ferns, insects and birds. Common and Latin names spill from their tongues, as do facts, background information and fun tidbits. Did you know, for example, that the Acadaian flycatcher likes to nest in beech trees along streams, and builds its nests of spent oak and beech flowers? Have you heard of ticklegrass, rattlesnake orchids, or a spiny-bellied spider? Jean and Elmer are here to tell you about all that and more. In just 30 minutes, viewers get the full flora and fauna experience without even needing to put on their boots — a welcome diversion if you’re feeling chilly and already missing summer!
Be sure to check out more On Nature’s Trail here to get through those winter and pandemic blues. Once you’ve gotten your fill of the show, check out The Geometry of Trees, a text praised by Elmer and available at UMD. Whatever your covid-coping looks like, we’re sure to have a MPT show to fit the bill.
This post is the last installment of a series promoting the Maryland Public Television collection in celebration of MPT’s 50th anniversary. Please check the #MPTatHome and #MPTturns50 tags on the Special Collections and University Archives blog for more MPT content!
Emily Moore is a second year MLIS student with a background in art and theory. In addition to her role as a student assistant at Special Collections and University Archives, she works as the Archival Assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Made possible by viewers like you: Maryland Public Television finding aid goes live!
The Mass Media and Culture unit in Special Collections and University Archives holds a wide range of collections documenting U.S. television and radio broadcasting history, including the Maryland Public Television (MPT) collection. In celebration of the University Libraries’ extended “Year of MPT” celebrating the organization’s 50th anniversary, we just published our finding aid for the MPT records! This finding aid is an invaluable resource for our campus community and for the public to learn about this unique and vital collection documenting the history of Maryland’s only state-wide public television broadcaster.
While the library is temporarily closed due to the pandemic, explore the finding aid from home. There is something for everyone in the 3,920 itemized videos (including over 700 with links to digitized content) and the 47 boxes of print records and photographs:
Behind the scenes: What’s in the finding aid?
The finding aid is a guide to the entire Maryland Public Television collection, including print records, photographs, and recordings on open-reel film, Betacam, U-Matic, and VHS tapes. The print records include administrative records, correspondence, memos, program guides, promotional materials, publications, marketing and development plans, newspaper clippings, budgets, and reports. The thousands of videos represented in the MPT finding aid document the breadth and depth of MPT’s broadcast programs, primarily from the mid-1970s to the late 1990s but dating as late as 2013.
This most recent phase of documenting the MPT collection began in January 2019 in anticipation of last fall’s exhibit opening, Made Possible by Viewers Like You: Maryland Public Television Turns 50. Processing Archivist Jen Wachtel spearheaded the inventory and finding aid project. Although previous archivists documented portions of the collection, Jen started from scratch with the audiovisual inventory so that we would have an up-to-date and accurate record. An important milestone for Special Collections in working with large audiovisual collections, the publication of this finding aid also reflects an enormous effort on the part of many other people from MMC including graduate student assistant Emily Moore, past graduate assistant student Liz Holdzkom, and Curator Laura Schnikter.
Of course, documenting thousands of videotapes takes time, as does ensuring the accuracy of the metadata (the detailed information in a library catalog record). Proceeding shelf by shelf throughout 2019, the team updated and refined the inventory. Just as they neared the last few stacks of videotapes in early 2020, the University Libraries shut down due to the coronavirus pandemic. Working remotely with the pre-pandemic inventory, Jen Wachtel and Archival Metadata Librarian Liz Caringola experimented with workflows for reconciling large amounts of data across multiple inventory spreadsheets and linked digitized videos to the corresponding items on the inventory. In the meantime, Jen Wachtel created descriptions about the print and audiovisual series so that public viewers would be able to navigate all components of the collection. For example, although the physical videotapes and film reels are not necessarily shelved by program title, for the sake of discoverability, each item is arranged alphabetically by MPT program title in the finding aid.
We are so excited to share this public broadcasting collection, made possible by viewers like you!
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Jen Wachtel is the Mass Media and Culture and Processing Archivist and Special Collections Engagement Specialist at the University of Maryland Special Collections and University Archives. She is also a graduate student in the History and Library Science (HiLS) dual master’s program and Museum Scholarship and Material Culture graduate certificate program at the University of Maryland, concentrating in modern European history and archives and digital curation.
The Shelleys, Godwins, and Wollstonecrafts in Literature and Rare Books
What do anarchism, science fiction, women’s rights, and Romanticism have in common? One family! William Godwin, Mary Wollstonecraft, Mary Shelley, and Percy Shelley wrote in different genres but the writings of all four continue to provoke thought and provide enjoyment centuries later. You can learn more about this fascinating family by viewing their works in Hornbake Library’s Literature and Rare Books collection!
William Godwin was a British philosopher, novelist, and a radical critic of British government and society in the 18th and 19th centuries. Godwin was a proponent of utilitarianism and anarchism, and many of the radical critiques of these schools of thought can be found in his writings. For example in St. Leon: A Tale of the Sixteenth Century Godwin ponders the value of the aristocracy and questions what truly makes people free.
In 1797, Godwin married Mary Wollstonecraft. Like Godwin, Wollstonecraft was an author and philosopher. Wollstonecraft is best known for writing a Vindication of the Rights of Women, a work that was highly influential on the early women’s rights movement. In Vindication, Wollstonecraft argues that a lack of education, rather than inherent differences due to sex, is what prevents women from achieving the same things as men. You can find both the 1794 edition and the 1796 edition in the Literature and Rare Books collection.
Godwin and Wollstonecraft had one daughter, Mary. Wollstonecraft died shortly after Mary’s birth and Mary was raised by her father and step-mother. At age 16, Mary met the Romantic poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. Percy, despite his aristocratic birth, was a follower of Godwin’s radical political views. Despite the fact that Percy was already married, the two fell in love and fled along with Mary’s stepsister, Claire, to Switzerland.
In Switzerland, Mary would write Frankenstein, her best known work. Hornbake has several fascinating editions of Frankenstein such as a specialty edition given out to the armed forces during World War II and an edition featuring engravings from the acclaimed artist Lynd Ward.
While Frankenstein is what Mary is most well known for, she continued to write in a variety of genres after it was published. Her novel Lodore follows a widow and her daughter as they struggle to find their way in a patriarchal culture after the death of her husband. Mary also wrote a travel narrative, Rambles in Germany and Italy in 1840, 1842, and 1843.
Mary’s literary output also included editing her husband Percy Bysshe Shelley’s works after his passing. Mary edited volumes of Percy’s poetry that were published in 1824, 1839, 1840, 1854, and 1892. Hornbake’s Rare Books collection also includes works that were published before Shelley’s death such as Posthumous Fragments of Margaret Nicholson, The Revolt of Islam: A Poem, in Twelve Cantos, and Rosalind and Helen: A Modern Eclogue: With Other Poems.
Writings by Wollstonecraft, Godwin, and the Shelleys are only a portion of what Literature and Rare Books has to offer. For more information about our holdings contact us!
New Resource: Black Writers and Artists in Special Collections
Literature and Rare Books in Special Collection and University Archives is a rich resource of works black artists and writers. Explore these items in our new subject guide on Black Writers and Artists!
Non-fiction writing by black authors covers a wide variety of topics, including pamphlets on politics, racism, activism, and culture in our African American and African pamphlet collection. The subject guide also highlights fiction ranging from children’s books by Chinua Achebe to literary masterpieces by writers such as James Baldwin. Contributions of black artists and printers to other parts of the bookmaking process, such as illustrators like Cledie Taylor and black owned presses like the Broadside Press, are also included.
Continue readingA Bonanza of Baltimore Bounty on Chesapeake Bay Collectibles
For fans of libraries and archives who harbor a special place in their hearts for Maryland history, Maryland Public Television’s Chesapeake Bay Collectibles is a treasure trove! A Mid-Atlantic version of Antiques Roadshow, Chesapeake Bay Collectibles is a great starting point to explore the best of our region’s history. This 2011 episode features a couple of antiques specific to Baltimore, embodying some colorful parts of its fascinating past.
First up is a relic from the infamous Great Baltimore Fire, which ripped through the city in February of 1904. A stack of melted eyeglasses, grabbed by the owner’s grandfather, bears witness to the destruction of the blaze.
Over the course of two days, the fire, which started in a dry goods store, decimated the downtown areas around Camden and the Inner Harbor. Baltimore’s narrow streets accelerated the spread, resulting in a towering blaze that could be seen as far away as Washington, D.C. Aid from the Capitol proved to be useless as the couplings for the fire trucks did not fit the hydrants in Baltimore. Eventually, firefighters from Philadelphia and Delaware would join the battle. A February 7, 1904 issue of the Sun Metrogravure, the Baltimore Sun’s weekly pictorial magazine, covered the destruction, and can be requested here in our special collections.
View of downtown Baltimore, before the Great Baltimore Fire of 1904. National Trust Library Historic Postcard Collection, Special Collections and University Archives, University of Maryland. 
Betsy Patterson’s music box, screenshot by the author.
Next we’ve got the Betsy Patterson music box, a beautiful piece named after a woman commonly referred to as “The Belle of Baltimore”. The daughter of an Irish immigrant who eventually became the second richest man in Baltimore, Elizabeth “Betsy” Patterson was beloved for her grit and risque fashion. Perhaps most famous for her short-lived marriage to the younger brother of Napoleon I, Patterson enjoyed a brief stint in Europe during which she was forbidden from touching French soil. A number of tomes celebrate Patterson as the heroine of Baltimore, including Glorious Betsy, being the romantic story of the Dixie belle who defied Napoleon, by Arline De Haas and Rida Johnson Young, currently available in UMD’s collection in the Maryland Room.
For more on Patterson, check out the Traveler’s Narratives series of the Maryland Manuscripts collection, which includes William Pickney’s account of her Atlantic journey in 1804.
While we at Hornbake Library have finished celebrating MPT’s 50th anniversary, our digital archives of their offerings continue to entertain and educate viewers of all stripes. Chesapeake Bay Collectibles is a great jumping off point for exploring the rest of our digital collections – a treasure hunt that you can do from your couch! Matching items from the show with resources in our collections demonstrates the web-like nature of our holdings: each object speaks to another! From rare books to antique maps, UMD’s special collections build out the context around each object and provide the opportunity for creativity in search. It’s a great reminder that our holdings can be applied for learning in a ton of different ways. Be sure to check out our next installment on MPT, where we check out Wolf Trap, and the amazing cultural events that you can enjoy from home.
Emily Moore is a second-year MLIS student with a background in art and theory. In addition to her role as a student assistant at Special Collections and University Archives, she works as the Archival Assistant at the National Museum of Women in the Arts.
Collection Highlights: Lester N. Trachtman Papers and the African American Labor Center Records
African Labor Union Records Now Available!
Two new labor collections are now available to the public: the Lester N. Trachtman Papers, and the African American Labor Center records. Both of these collections are focused on African labor and trade unionism, and complement the existing public holdings of the AFL-CIO Archive’s International Department in the Special Collections and University Archives at University of Maryland.
Continue readingNew Resource: Science Fiction Pulp Magazines Finding Aid
Whether it is novels like The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, major franchises like Star Trek, or recent television series like Lovecraft Country, science fiction is one of the most popular and profitable genres in pop-culture. And now you can discover science fiction among the Literature and Rare Books collections in Special Collections and University Archives! You can now explore the stories which have influenced the genre, and take a look at our new finding aid for the Howard and Jane Frank Collection of Science Fiction Pulp Magazines!
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