Many new materials were added across Boatwright Library’s Galvin Rare Book Room rare book, archival, and artists’ book collections. New items added to the rare book collection include travel related works focusing on travel across North America in the colonial and early republic periods and on the Amazon River, an 1815 study on pneumonia with a section on medicine in Virginia, an early 18th-century Spanish cookbook, and a collection of early 19th-century botanical lectures which includes information on tobacco production.
Botanical works also highlight new additions to the archival collections at Boatwright Library. Recent donations include 10 stipple engravings with original hand colors created by Pierre Joseph Redouté for his series, Les Liliacées, between 1802 and 1816. Two additional donations of botanical studies include 4 exceptional watercolors produced in the early 20th century by Alexander Descubes.
New additions to the library’s growing collection of artists’ books include some outstanding selections. Raeleen Kao’s The Witch is inside of me (2018), Keri Miki-Lani Schroeder’s Reliquary: A Collection of Objects from the Mojave Desert (2015), and Ann Mansolino’s Glacial Flow (2019) each add a unique style and content to the research possibilities available in the artists’ book collection.
Additionally, work is ongoing to do additional cataloging for early works in the rare book room collection. Beginning with the earliest print item dating from 1472, this more extensive cataloging offers significant new information available in the catalog record for these items in the collection, including material form, provenance, gift notes, and other pertinent information to assist researchers in their quest for information.
~ Lynda Kachurek – Head, Rare Books and Special Collections