Today is Worcester County’s first-ever online giving challenge, Greater Worcester GIVES, and the American Antiquarian Society is proud to be participating. Please show your support for AAS – and for the community we are part of – by donating to us in the challenge before midnight EST so that we can contribute a strong total ...
Tomorrow night the Society is holding its seventh annual Adopt-a-Book event at Antiquarian Hall from 6:00 to 8:00pm. Come join us for libations and snacks (generously donated this year by Ed Hyder, Panera, and Crown Bakery). Each of the Society's curators has selected material for adoption including paper dolls, ledger books, newspapers, lithographs, and bound ...
Do you remember – especially before the advent of the internet - being in need of a definition or a proper spelling of a word and turning to your home’s, school’s, or work’s copy of a Merriam-Webster dictionary? That dictionary you used was based on the life’s work of one ambitious American, Noah Webster. Webster’s legacy continues ...
Riding the wave of our recent James Russell Wiggins lecture’s Franklin-iana and the American Library Association’s 2014 Preservation Week: Pass it On (which takes place April 27-May 4, 2014), we found ourselves struck by the Benjamin Franklin quotation, “An ounce of preservation is worth a pound of cure.” Although Franklin was speaking about fire safety ...
Living in the stacks amongst the vast collections of historical primary source material at AAS, one will find books of a much younger age. AAS does not only seek to collect one copy of every thing printed in the United States up until about 1876; we also strive to add recent scholarship written about topics ...
On Tuesday, May 6, 2014, the American Antiquarian Society will be part of Worcester County’s first-ever online giving challenge, Greater Worcester GIVES. Organized and hosted by the Greater Worcester Community Foundation, Greater Worcester GIVES seeks to inspire people to support local nonprofits within that 24-hour period, for a collective impact that will benefit the region ...
Now that the spring weather seems to have (finally) reached us here in Worcester, everyone is beginning to get out and partake in all of those activities they put off during the winter, including cultural events. We hope that our spring lineup of public programs at Antiquarian Hall—including the one tonight—will be among those that ...
The Bookbinders Shop. Philadelphia: P.S. Duval for the American Sunday School Union, ca. 1850. This image of the interior of the British bookbinding establishment of Westleys & Clark was issued by the Philadelphia lithographer P.S. Duval sometime between 1842 and 1850. A second, related print showing a ship and its furniture was printed by Duval using the same bordered ...
This year the American Antiquarian Society will be holding its 7th annual Adopt-a-Book event on Tuesday, May 6th, from 6:00 to 8:00pm. This event has been an entertaining and successful fundraiser for the library’s continued acquisitions of historic material. The money raised helps curators buy more books, pamphlets, prints, newspapers, and manuscripts. On May 6th, participants ...
Barton, Samuel Dickinson. Lecture Notes (Amherst College), 1827 and undated. Samuel Dickinson Barton was a student in the class of 1831 at Amherst College in Amherst, Massachusetts. These two volumes contain notes written by Barton while attending lectures at Amherst. One is dated 1827, the other is undated. The lectures he attended cover a variety of ...
This week, the series ends by correcting a case of mistaken identity. And if you missed the first two parts, be sure to check them out: Part I, Part II. 3. The Doctors Jackson We like to trace provenance information in our records when we can. This allows one to find former owners, virtually reconstruct an ...
Editor’s note: In a twist that follows up on Jackie Penny’s account of reading pre-1900 fiction to her children, retired AAS director of book publication Caroline F. Sloat turned to her ten-year-old grandson for an enthusiastic recommendation of Esther Forbes’s Johnny Tremain. Our bags were packed and we were ready to leave for the airport ...
Last week, in Part I, Amy discovered the title and date of a pamphlet missing a title page by scouring the newspapers. Now, she puts a name to a remarkable but unidentified woman. 2. The life of Ms. Sally (or Sarah) Rogers Sometimes, I catalog a book or pamphlet and a person appears whom we know ...
We're excited to share the March 2014 issue of the Almanac with everyone. This issue has a feature story about a unique acquisition related to the Bay Psalm Book (the first book printed in North America), news about an extremely generous gift that is already having a significant impact on the Society, and a history ...
One of the neat things about working as a cataloger at the American Antiquarian Society is solving the puzzles that come across my desk. I work exclusively on books and pamphlets published in the early nineteenth century, and over the course of 200 years title pages are lost, authors are forgotten, and people disappear into ...
