April 3, 2014, Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Cataloging, Digital Collections, Research + TeachingCollection of diplomat’s seventeenth-century newsletters reveal insights into early English history and statecraft I must thank you for the chocolate and snuff you intend to send me, if it be perfumed with anything but orange or jessamin [jasmine] flowers, I had rather have plain, for I find all musk etc. hurts my head. William Bridgeman, Clerk to the English Secretary of State, London,… read more
February 3, 2014, Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Cataloging, Digital CollectionsLetter reveals lessons in seventeenth-century home economics in London According to Mary Evelyn, the wife of John Evelyn, a renowned English intellectual, diarist, and horticulturalist in the late seventeenth century, it cost £313 and 1 shilling to set up a proper upper-class household for eight people in London in 1675. In today’s dollars, the dishes, silver, glasses, linens, and… read more
January 20, 2014, Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Cataloging, Research + TeachingArchivist declares medieval manuscript fragment crowdsourcing project success During the late medieval and early modern period, it was a common practice for bookbinders to cut out the sturdy parchment leaves of outdated or unwanted handwritten books to reuse those leaves as covers or binding reinforcements in new “cutting edge” printed books. This practice lasted until roughly the seventeenth… read more
