Have you ever wondered why Stanford is represented by the color cardinal, and not the original choice of gold? Or why the university's motto is in German?
We are pleased to announce a new Spotlight at Stanford exhibit focused on the development of Stanford's insignia: Becoming Stanford: The History and Meaning of the University’s Insignia.
I was very interested when recently a colleague from Green Library, David Jordan, alerted me to the existence of several Chinese and Japanese items within the Gunst Collection, also known as the Morgan A. and Aline D. Gunst Memorial Library of the Book Arts. As the name suggests, this collection, which was donated to Stanford Libaries in 1963 and contains over four thousand volumes, is devoted to works that showcase the role of books as artifacts. As I was browsing through the short list of East Asian materials belonging to this collection, I was intrigued by one item in particular, which was described as an eleventh-century print of a Chinese Buddhist scripture.
As the Stanford Libraries develop to be a fully-realized, 21st Century Scholarly Workbench, we are thinking strategically about the tools that we supply and the services we support. No workbench can hold every tool, and we must ensure that we deploy our resources to most effectively meet the needs of the always-evolving Stanford community and the broader research community. To achieve this strategic alignment, the Stanford Libraries rely heavily on outreach by its staff.
With a patron's help, Zhaohui Xue, Chinese Studies Librarian at the East Asia Library, has discovered some particularly rare materials within the library's collections.
The Stanford Libraries, like the rest of Stanford, has engaged in a long-range planning process which has all of our staff focused on the role that the library plays in a growing, and changing, academic organization. That process, which has involved both internal review and engagement with faculty, students, and donors, has lead us to develop a new metaphorical model for envisioning the library’s position in the academic sphere: The Scholarly Workbench.
How is it that for hundreds of years California was depicted as an island on maps? The Stanford University Library's cartographic experts know...
I came across this miniature book, Duke Ellington Remembered: New York Notes, by Whitney Balliett, and thought it perfect for a miniature blog post. It is by far the tiniest book in the Music Library. Balliett (1926-2007) was a journalist and jazz critic who wrote for a number of publications, including for the New Yorker under famed editor William Shawn. His essays on jazz and jazz musicians have been collected into a number of monographs, many of which are available in the Stanford Libraries.
Have you been looking for just the right spot to study for your finals? Looking for a comfy, quiet place for just you and your laptop, perhaps a large room equipped with whiteboards and/or audiovisual equipment for your study group, or maybe an area with soft seating and an amazing view of the campus?