by Luke Kelly, Gladys Brooks Conservation Fellow, Hesburgh Libraries The books in Special Collections’s April-May spotlight exhibit represent a small selection of materials from the University of Notre Dame’s collection that reveal the influence of William Morris on the Arts & Crafts movement. From the printing and binding of Thomas J. Cobden-Sanderson to the illumination ..read more

“Girls Really Play Baseball.” So reported the cover of the Official National Girls Baseball League Magazine in August 1950, beneath a picture of power-hitting infielder Freda Savona. The National Girls Baseball League (NGBL), a Chicago-based rival of the better-known All-American Girls Professional Baseball League (AAGPBL), took the field from 1944 to 1954 and provided high-level ..read more

Please join us for the following public events and exhibits being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections: Thursday, April 11 at 5:00pm | Italian Research Seminar: “Boccaccio, the Disguised Revolutionary” by Martin Eisner (Duke University). In the spring exhibition, Mapping the Middle Ages: Marking Time, Space, and Knowledge, primary objects bring to the fore the tension ..read more

We join the Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in commemorating and encouraging the study, observance and celebration of the vital role of women in American history by celebrating Women’s History Month. Second-Wave Feminist ..read more

by Kristina Kummerer, Ph.D. student in the Medieval Institute The February-March Spotlight, A Choir Book for Medieval Nuns, highlights one item from the Hesburgh Library’s Special Collections in order to showcase the activities of women religious in the Middle Ages. It features a small fifteenth-century manuscript from Poissy, France, which once belonged to a convent ..read more

Please join us for the following public events and exhibits being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections: Thursday, March 27 at 5:00pm | “The Actor’s Mind in the Russian Modernist Theater” a lecture by Alisa B. Lin (Ohio State University). In the spring exhibition, Mapping the Middle Ages: Marking Time, Space, and Knowledge, primary objects bring ..read more

Rare Books and Special Collections’ spring exhibition, Mapping the Middle Ages: Marking Time, Space, and Knowledge, is open and will run through July 31st.  The tension between literal and figurative arrangements of space, time, and knowledge during the Middle Ages is brought to the fore through the primary objects that remain. Geography, whether real or imagined ..read more

Please join us for the following public events and exhibits being hosted in Rare Books and Special Collections: Thursday, February 1 at 5:00pm | Italian Research Seminar: “Leonardo da Vinci’s Way of Seeing Water. Wetlands, Mapping, and the Art of Painting” by Francesca Fiorani (University of Virginia). Thursday, February 23 at 5:00pm | Italian Research Seminar: M.A. Students Presentations (University ..read more

Rare Books and Special Collections welcomes students, faculty, staff, researchers, and visitors back to campus for Spring ’24! Here are a variety of things to watch for in Special Collections during the coming semester. Spring 2024 Exhibition: Mapping the Middle Ages: Marking Time, Space, and Knowledge The tension between literal and figurative arrangements of space ..read more

Rare Books and Special Collections is open Monday through Thursday this week (December 18-21, 2023) — appointments are recommended. After that, we will be closed from Friday, December 22, 2023, through Monday, January 1, 2024, in participation with the campus-wide holiday break for all faculty, staff, and students. Special Collections will reopen on Tuesday, January 2 ..read more