Miami University Collection Highlights

Putting Our Stars on Display

On one occasion, the Special Collections and Archives department at Miami University was hosting a small reception. The University Archivist put together a great display about Freedom Summer in the reading room, but one table in the corner was left open so that some of the most popular (and some of the most expensive) items from special collections could be displayed to visitors. It’s always nice to be able to showcase some of the treasures that the department owns, so we pulled some materials to display. However, setting books out on display takes up a fair amount of room. So a one-table display quickly became a two-tables display. I made sure to lay everything out in a way that would allow people to easily be able to view at least one item from wherever they were standing around the tables, and then the display was ready to go.

The photos in this exhibit highlight the materials that I arranged on display. They include items such as a leaf from a Gutenberg Bible, a Shakespeare first folio, a book of hours, a book with marbled endpages, a Bible with two different fore-edge paintings, letters written by George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, postcards, artist’s books, and more.

Credits

Candace Pine; Miami University Special Collections and Archives