Notices by John Overholt (overholt@glammr.us), page 2

A 1912 metamorphic toy celebrates the escape of suffragist Christabel Pankhurst to France to avoid arrest. When you pull the tab, she vanishes and two police detectives crash into each other. https://rylandscollections.com/2025/03/08/votes-for-women-making-light-of-the-fight/

I often learn new things about our own collection from bookseller catalogs, and a colleague just sent me one about an important and rather chilling item. This is a 1551 decree from the Holy Roman Emperor requiring all Jews to wear a yellow ring in public (illustrated at the bottom right) nearly four centuries before the Nazi yellow star. The dealer said the Houghton copy was the only other one he had traced. https://id.lib.harvard.edu/alma/990041636810203941/catalog

In the classroom today we’re looking at some of our book production artifacts, including a laid paper mold, a 16th century woodblock, and a full sheet of parchment paper.

View digitized items from the British Library’s Medieval Women exhibition. https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2025/02/medieval-women-manuscripts-now-online.html

Much like Mr. Yuk, bright green is a sign of danger when it comes to Victorian books—they may contain arsenic. https://university-collections.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2025/02/24/poisonous-books-dangers-from-the-past/

The John Rylands Library will be moving some of its collections nearly 500 feet underground to a former salt mine called DeepStore. https://rylandscollections.com/2025/02/24/deepstore-an-answer-to-a-gritty-problem/

(Coworker on my fourth day on the job there: “Dammit, if you say ‘Well, back to the salt mines’ one more time…”)

@kims @murph @CyrikCroc I'll never forgive Atari for killing KC Munchkin.

I am delighted that we've been able to digitize our copy of Galileo's Dialogue on the Two World Systems, with its iconic Stefano della Bella frontispiece showing Copernicus schooling Aristotle and Ptolemy. https://nrs.lib.harvard.edu/urn-3:fhcl.hough:105459115

I am old enough to remember being warned that you can't trust Wikipedia and now it is the very last thing I still trust to accurately reflect a consensus reality.

In that sad phase of Monsterdon where the stream is like “Ok, good work everybody” but I’ve still got 6 minutes left because of all the Tubi ads. #Monsterdon

Why is the nonsense phrase “vegetative electron microscopy” turning up in fake scientific papers? Add two-column formatting to the list of things AI doesn’t understand. https://retractionwatch.com/2025/02/10/vegetative-electron-microscopy-fingerprint-paper-mill/
Via @Researchbuzz

A timely reminder of the difference between a house organ and independent journalism.

Next week, the earliest cookbook by an African American author will be issued in a new edition, drawn from the only known copy, in the collection of the Clements Library at the University of Michigan. https://www.lib.umich.edu/about-us/news/more-just-recipes
#BlackHistoryMonth #Libraries

Provenance research gets unexpectedly spicy.

Harvard’s Library Innovation Lab has made available a 16TB archive preserving the government data sets on data.gov in a purge-free environment. https://lil.law.harvard.edu/blog/2025/02/06/announcing-data-gov-archive/

Feeling snazzy today in a brand new tweed jacket and silk pocket square combo.

This must be some kind of record for the most incongruous tonal shift within a single paragraph. https://uwmspeccoll.tumblr.com/post/774304757094481920/steamy-saturday

The accountbook of perhaps the greatest observational astronomer of the 18th century, Charles Messier, recording in a neat, tiny hand every financial transaction over a period of years, but with a wealth of intriguing biographical detail as well.
#NewAcq #NewAcquisition

Every week the Tumblr from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee special collections does a post on wood engraved illustrations, and they are always gorgeous. https://uwmspeccoll.tumblr.com/tagged/Wood%20Engraving%20Wednesday

The first opera composed by a Black American will be staged from the only known manuscript, found in the Harvard Theatre Collection at Houghton. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/28/arts/music/edmond-dede-morgiane-opera.html?unlocked_article_code=1.sk4.Z_Fn.H8At-v2YK--2