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front back demi ANOMALIESC U R I O S I T I E Sa n dof Historical Childrens LiteratureBALDWIN LIBRARYo f t h eA N E X H I B I T I O NMAKING THE CASE FOR USED BOOKS Among contemporary American collections, the Baldwin Library of Historical Childrens Literature is peerless in its broad and unusual holdings. While it valuable manuscript holdings, the Baldwin is strongest as a collection of heavily used books. While books in excellent condition provide useful information about how a book was initially meant to be presented, books that have been heavily used often with the book. Scraps of paper found bound into the spines of nineteenth century childrens books contain diverse visual and textual content, from advertisements for moth killing powder and haberdasheries to pieces of Shakespeare and Wordsworth; from handwritten sheet music to blurbs from medical textbooks to images of children themselves. Between the boards of the book, other signs of use, including marginalia, drawings, and bookplates, are there to be discovered; sometimes, even the way a book has been repaired can be worth further investigation. This exhibit is a direct reaction to Cambridge Universitys 2003 exhibit, Marginalia and Other Crimes a didactic display that villainized signs of use in library books. Former curator Rita Smith notes that, Besides the cultural, religious, sociological, and historicalbased research, the Baldwin Library is a rich repository for research on the book itself as a physical object. Anomalies and Curiosities aims to showcase the great cultural value of used childrens books as a window into the way that books were made for and used by children in the nineteenth century. 1 A U G U S T to15 S E P T E M B E R2011 Special and Area Studies Collections This exhibit was curated by Krissy Wilson, an undergraduate at the University of Florida who is majoring in English with a concentration in Childrens Literature. She was inspired to begin her research on somnotexts in the Baldwin after volunteering in the Conservation and Preservation Department, measuring Baldwin books that needed the extra protection of acid-free boxes in the spring of 2009. She has since had the privilege to help catalog rare childrens books in the recently-donated Egolf Collection. The exhibit contains a number of books from her personal collection, chosen in the style of Ruth Baldwin. They will be on display at the Alachua County Public Library Headquarters in January 2012.A B O U T T H A N K SRita Smith, Baldwin Library curator, 1989-2010 Dr. Terry Harpold Associate Professor of English Mil Willis, Rare Books and Special Collections Reading Room Barbara Hood, Public Relations and Marketing Richard Bennett, Head, Special and Area Studies Collections Judith Russell Dean of Libraries
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R U T H B A L D W I N M A L A D I E S M A R K of the H A N D S O M N O T E X T S The Lion and the Unicorn R E C U R S I O N
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