The new library website has been in place for over two months now, and the team has been busy receiving feedback, fixing bugs, adding new features, and planning ahead. We have established a support contract with Chapter Three, the same firm that engineered the site initially, to provide us with a fixed number of support hours each month. Within that allocation of support hours we first tackle critical bug fixes and then attempt to add new features to enable better service and to support content creators in their work.
Stanford University Libraries Department of Special Collections and University Archives is excited to announce the completion of the processing of the STOP AIDS Project records. This effort was made possible by a detailed processing grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC).
Listen to Julie Sweetkind-Singer talk about the Branner Earth Sciences Library, her passion for maps and the 'California as an Island' collection on KZSU’s Peninsula Report.
At the beginning of this year, the papers of Benoit Mandelbrot, the father of fractal geometry, were given to SUL’s Dept. of Special Collections. Funding for the first year has been set to begin processing this complex collection. We are happy to announce that Laura Williams has been hired as the project archivist and Christy Smith as the processing assistant.
In preparation for this event, Matthew Marostica, Curator for Political Science and Economics in the Stanford University Libraries, has written an introductory essay about Ignatieff's remarkable work and career, including a rich annotated bibliography and set of excerpts from Ignatieff's writings.
Digital Production Group takes great pride and pleasure in our role supporting the Library's many beautiful and informative exhibitions. The current exhibition is just that, displaying an array of startlingly colorful and detailed medieval manuscripts from the University's collection.
Scripting the Sacred, part one of a two-part exhibition of Western European manuscripts and fragments, showcases the medieval experience of reading. The exhibition will open Monday, September 17, in the Peterson Gallery and Munger Rotunda of Green Library, and continue through January 6, 2013.
Studying these texts involved not only the absorption of knowledge, but also practices of interpretation, identification, and devotion. By focusing on the exercise of reading, this exhibition explores "scripting" in diverse forms: scribal activity, scripted performances, and inscribed divine things (res divinae).
Throughout the Middle Ages, the Bible remained the paradigmatic text for reading and studying. The exhibited biblical items highlight different preferences pertaining to legibility. Indeed, scribes designed manuscripts to guide, assist, and sometimes challenge readers, as medieval versions of biblical commentary and patristic works exemplify. The liturgical genres on display contain written and visual markers that instruct readers in the proper performance of the Mass, music, and specific feast days. The text portion of the liturgy helped stage the clergy's ceremonial duties. Liturgical fragments with musical notation assisted ritual actors in the memorization of stylized speech. Both components show how customized manuscripts promoted reading aloud. Miniature prayer books and books of hours demonstrate a late medieval trend toward privatized and personalized lay devotion.
