An Interview with the Librarian

At the end of August 2018, long-time Marcus A. McCorison Librarian and Curator of Manuscripts Thomas G. Knoles will be retiring from AAS. After almost twenty-nine years at the Society, we wanted to be sure to tap Tom’s long institutional knowledge and his experiences in the library world. There was none better to do this ...

Congressman and Librarians Pay Visit to AAS for National Library Week

The group visits the conservation lab on their tour of AAS.

Although many think of public libraries when they hear National Library Week, we couldn’t resist celebrating our special collections library as well! Through social media we’ve made sure there have been plenty of pictures of old books and #shelfies, as usual, and our annual Adopt-a-Book event, which raises money for acquisitions, also launched this week. ...

Who is that Book-Clad Man? William Jenks on the Science of Early American Antiquarianism

the antiquarian

This image, a favorite around AAS, is part of a series a lithographs that circulated in the late 1820s and early 1830s, depicting people as an amalgamation of various objects: shells, vegetables, paintings, and in this instance, relics. This graphic motif harkens back to the Renaissance painter Giuseppe Arcimboldo, whose portrait heads made of similar ...

A.L.A.: Librarians en masse

lookoutlibrarians

  The ongoing processing of the Society’s Group Photograph collection has recently turned up a small cache of nineteenth-century photographs of librarians.  Oh sure, there are also significant photographs of mill workers, school children, and important businessmen, but around here we get pretty jazzed up over images of librarians.  On the whole, librarians tend to be ...

AAS Helped Compile an Early African American Bibliography

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Toward the end of his now-famous 1897 Atlantic Monthly essay, "Strivings of the Negro People," W.E.B. DuBois states that the post-Civil War years brought for African Americans “the ideal of book-learning, the curiosity, born of compulsory ignorance.” Historians may note DuBois’ ultimate discontent with this ideal -- the longing to achieve freedom through ‘book-learning” -- ...

Call for Co-editors for an AAS Glossary

booksnake

The American Antiquarian Society is almost 200 years old. I guess that's not entirely shocking, given that "Antiquarian" is in our name, but sometimes it's easy to forget that when we were founded there were no functional steam-locomotives, no sewing machines, no modern matches.  Napoleon was still fighting his way across Europe.  Even "The Star-Spangled ...

The Acquisitions Table

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In 1834, AAS librarian Christopher Columbus Baldwin wrote: “Some philosopher has said that his unhappiest moments were those spent in settling his tavern bills.  But the happiest moments of my life are those employed in opening packages of books presented to the Library of the American Antiquarian Society.  It gives me real, substantial, and unadulterated ...