Month: September 2012
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Hand-colored Coat of Arms of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor
Woodcut coat of arms of Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor (1459-1519) surrounded by the arms of Austria(?), Styria(?), Carinthia(?), and Carniola(?). Found in: Dialogus mythologicus Bartolomei Colonie[n]sis : dulcibus iocis, iucundis salibus, co[n]cinisq[ue] sente[n]tiis refertus, atq[ue] diligenter nuper elaboratus, by Coloniensis Bartholomaeus, ca. 1460-ca. 1516. Woodcut used by Hieronymus Vietor and Johann Singriener of Vienna.…
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Mason’s Journey (Continued)
I thought I’d follow on Nancy’s excellent post on the Mason manuscript uncovered at Penn with a few geographical illustrations of Mason’s journey and his scientific observations. What Mason chose to record in his journal seems befitting of an 18th c. scientific traveler. He noted weather conditions nearly every day as well as animal sightings, like…
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Charles Mason and the Transit of Venus
It had been a busy day of meetings for me. Each time that I returned to my office, I noticed the same number as a missed call on my telephone. Although I tried calling back, I didn’t realize the person who was so eager to speak to me was in England. Around 10:00 in the…
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How I, Rare Books Cataloger, Became the World’s Expert on The Days’ Doings
Until now, it had been so simple and I had been having so much fun. Now, however, things were different. Now I was at my wit’s end. What started as the least complicated of the projects I had done using Archivists’ Toolkit, the library’s finding aid creation software, had suddenly become a black hole. My…
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For the Love of Reading: From the Library of Eugene M. Pharo
[Thanks to a great lead provided by B P Camden and research done by Alison Warner we now know a lot more about Eugene Pharo! See the comments below.] Bookplate of Eugene M. Pharo. Do you know anything about this bookplate or Pharo? If yes, please comment! Call Number: PolC9 P9589 Eg920t
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Films in Press
The University of Pennsylvania Libraries has recently acquired a small collection of 71 pressbooks (1929-1980) (1981-2003) from the cinema industry in India centered around Mumbai. Pressbooks were promotional material created by film producers to market films. At at a time when most film companies did their own promotion, pressbooks were given to theatre owners by…