Special Collections

Okay, so 200-300 words might be kind of difficult, but here goes. I want to talk about a couple of things that I thought were really cool.

First, I thought it was really mindblowing that Ellis Library has stuff that's over 4000 years old. I can't really fathom that length of time at all, so the fact that I can have an artifact like that in front of my face is really crazy. I also obviously found the objects themselves very interesting, specifically the stone tablets with cuneiform writing on them. It's nice to be able to see these ancient historical figures in a more humanizing light, but also kind of depressing. We all like to think of ourselves as being more advanced, cultured, and intelligent than the ancients, but that probably isn't true. Ultimately, stone tablets and iPhones are all just wrought tools of communication that don't make the actual end user any more progressive or advanced.

Next, I want to talk about some of the books that I thought were cool. I really liked the limited edition book of Shakespeare's Sonnets. The calligraphy and illumination really add a certain quality of immediacy and importance to the works, even if Shakespeare himself didn't write them. I also enjoyed the illustrations in the special edition of Paradise Lost, and of course there was the near-incomprehensible Frankenstein comic. The most interesting books to me, though, were the oldest ones. I really enjoyed learning about the old binding and printing methods, specifically the changing media on which the works were written. I was completely boggled when I saw the piece of papyrus being handled like some newspaper scrap from the 40s, which shows how little I know about the preservation of such items.