Category: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts
-
Take Note(s): A New Indulgence
A former owner of the Edgar Fahs Smith Memorial Collection‘s copiously annotated copy of the medico-pharmacological magnum opus Polyanthea Medicinal (1716) by Portuguese physician João Curvo Semmedo (1635-1719) left this note containing what appears to be a recipe of his or her own on a small sheet of paper. Of equal interest is the printed…
-
Where did she find the time? : The Very Industrious Life of Elizabeth Fee
Elizabeth Fee was a professor, historian, and major figure in the history of science, medicine, and public health in the late 20th and early 21st centuries. Over the last six months, while delving into the tangible remnants of her life and work, I have also learned that she was an attentive mentor, an uplifter, a…
-
Everyone Has a Grandmother
As an archivist, I have learned that collections will often surprise you. In the case of the Doshia Mae and William M. Blackmon photograph collection, I find it interesting how it is both unusual and entirely typical of collections of historical family photographs I have seen. Many people will likely recognize the types of scenes…
-
The Marvelous Mrs. Rubinstein
I probably would have never heard of Frankie Rubinstein if not for her relationship to Alvin Rubinstein, a distinguished political science professor who taught at Penn for over forty years. When I first began looking through a collection of Rubinstein related diaries, journals, and correspondence, the expectation was that it would provide valuable insight into…
-
If Today Is Sunday, This Must Be 1798
A section of a diary kept between 1797 and 1800 by the Quaker farmer Jacob Peirce recently joined the collections of the Penn Libraries as Oversize Ms. Codex 2079, thanks to the Philadelphia Society for Promoting Agriculture. Peirce was a busy man, but he found time to write brief entries about the work of the…
-
Fiddle Music, Fishing and Dreaming of Michigan
As a new project processing archivist at Penn Libraries, I had the distinct pleasure of beginning my term at Kislak by processing the H. Owen Reed papers (1920-2016), gifted to Penn by his grandson. Herbert Owen Reed (1910-2014) was an American composer, musician, music educator and author. Born in Odessa, Missouri to musical parents (his…
Unique at Penn 