“It seems to me that a sick man in California digging gold in the water up to his knees would look funny”

wrapper

An earlier post about bibliographies on everything from the California Gold Rush to tomatoes got me wondering about the impetus behind that heady experience (the Gold Rush, not the tomatoes).  How did a man who heard all the fairy-tale stories of incredible wealth just waiting to be picked out of the rivers make the difficult ...

Private Libraries in a Digital Age

01

In an age of inter-connectivity, mobility, and Librarything.com that purports to bring us together in a digital utopia, whither will the truly personal library go? Do we risk having a network of Gatsbys present and past, interested in books more essential for their social value than their literary or historical merit? A social networking database ...

“Animal Magnetism” at its best

animalmagnatism

Over two hundred years ago Elizabeth Inchbald wrote and published the three act farce Animal Magnetism.  Heavily criticizing Mesmer’s magnetized baths and healing wands, this typical eighteenth-century afterpiece farce features befuddled lovers, lovers’ ruses, and battle of the sexes.  Two hundred years later, befuddled lovers remain but Animal Magnetism is now carefully housed in AAS's ...

Bibliographies: from the Gold Rush to Tomatoes

forcalifornia

A recent reference question reminded me just how many amazing bibliographies there are, and it also sparked a memory of a wonderful cache of letters in AAS's manuscript collection that give an insider's view of the '49er experience. (The entire Grant-Burr Family Papers are fully transcribed online, including the letters on the California ...

The First Publication for the AAS Bicentennial

baldwinbook

The first of the books about the history of the American Antiquarian Society to mark the 2012 bicentennial has arrived. It is A Place in My Chronicle: A New Edition of the Diary of Christopher Columbus Baldwin, 1829-1835, co-authored by Jack Larkin and Caroline Sloat. We always call it “diary” in the singular, ...

“Who did it? The Maine Question,” Part 2

Robin

Jennifer Burek Pierce, Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa’s School of Library and Information Science and recent AAS fellow, discusses the game “Who did it? The Maine Question” (described in an earlier Past is Present post) in the context of children's games generally. In the array of AAS materials about young people's play and ...

“Who did it? The Maine Question”

whodidit

Returning the occasional game to the AAS graphic arts department does not usually result in discovering the explosives that blew up the USS Maine in 1898. Well, it never does, actually.  But when Jennifer Burek Pierce, Assistant Professor at the University of Iowa’s School of Library and Information Science and recent Jay and Deborah Last ...

Goodbye Blacksmith, Hello Schoolmarm!

school

When Diann Benti, former AAS assistant reference librarian, created our now (nearly) complete anonymous blacksmith blog, she was inspired to do so by the Massachusetts Historical Society’s tweeting John Quincy Adams. Past is Present would never have a tweeting blacksmith, Diann informed us in her blog post when the blacksmith initially forged his way ...

On “Readies” and Fore-edge Painting

Book of Common Prayer.  New York D. Appleton & Co., 1845.  Gilt fore-edge.

In a New York Times Book Review article last month, Jennifer Schuessler quoted Bob Brown, an early proponent of electronic reading devices.  In his prescient manifesto, "The Readies," Brown declared: “The written word hasn’t kept up with the age....  Writing has been bottled up in books since the start."  Brown called for no less than ...

The Civil War, Courtesy of the American Antiquarian Society

Currier & Ives lithograph of the capture of Atlanta, Georgia by Sherman

Next year marks the 150th anniversary of the start of the American Civil War. Many institutions are planning exhibitions, activities, and publications around the events which tore the United States apart between 1861 and 1865. Some organizations have already contacted AAS regarding the possibility of borrowing or reproducing material from our collections. ...