The premise of the current exhibition “Mirror of Humanity: Seeing Ourselves in Playing Cards” is that the imagery used on playing cards tells us a lot about how we have viewed ourselves in the past. As an example, consider the deck The Forbidden City: Pekin & Chinese Views (Los Angeles, CA: Grimes-Stassforth Stationery Co., 1901). […]
News from RBML’s Archivists | October 2019
Head Archivist Kevin Schlottmann shares collections new from the RBML Here are some new and updated finding aids, reflecting work by archivists in archival processing, collections management, and university archives, as well as by our graduate student internship program. – KWS Marie Mattingly Meloney Collection on Marie Curie “The bulk of the collection deals with […]
Thanks for entering our Playing with a Full Deck Design Contest!
As the Halloween ghouls and goblins and geese came out last night, the deadline for our design contest, Playing with a Full Deck, also came to a close. Thank you to everyone who took the time to enter! Our panel of judges will get to work and choose a winner to be announced at a […]
The Other DeWitt Clinton Chair
Most of the time, when people at Columbia talk about the DeWitt Clinton chair, they mean the professorial chair in American History currently held by Eric Foner. At the Rare Book Manuscript Library, however, we mean a literal chair on display in the Corliss Lamont reading room. As its tarnished silver plaque notes, this is […]
Jack Kerouac Played Football Here!
Jack Kerouac came to Columbia in 1940 on a football scholarship. Unfortunately, the all-Massachusetts State player in high school suffered a broken leg in only his second game of his freshman year. In a memoir by C. Ogden Beresford (CC 1943) available at the University Archives, there is a first-person account of Kerouac after the […]