“Working at the Hay has been life-changing for me,” Maya Omori said. “It’s changed the direction of my studies.” Omori recently received one of the two annual Undergraduate Library Research prizes for her work with the John Hay Library’s archives, Pembroke Center archives, and various university archivists and curators for her senior capstone “Hidden Portraits … Maya Omori ’19: Hidden Portraits of Brown
Published: 1735, Philadelphia. Cato’s Moral Distichs is a Puritanical text by James Logan. This edition is probably the first English translation published in the colonies, and it was printed by Ben Franklin at his Philadelphia press.
Published: 1912, Washington D.C. Robert Ridgeway was frustrated with the lack of standard nomenclature for different colors. He took it upon himself to hand dye, cut, and mount hundreds of color rectangles into his book “Color standards and color nomenclature.” Ridgeway hoped that this tome would standardize use and reference of colors. The style of … Material of the Week: Ridgeway Color Standards
Published: April 2001, Providence, RI Famed Brown alum John Krasinski ’01 wrote “Contents Under Pressure” for his senior honors thesis in the Theatre Arts and Performance Studies department. The two-act play is set in Ray’s Auto and follows the increasingly intense exchange between Jack Taylor, a young struggling son who has returned to town after … Material of the Week: John Krasinski’s Senior Thesis
Published: 1984, San Francisco. A Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of Poetry, John Ashbery’s Self-Portrait in a Convex Mirror, inspired by the portrait of the same name by Renaissance artist Parmigianino, is presented in a large metal case with, appropriately, a convex mirror in the center. Inside includes the poem and original prints.
Published: 1623, London, England Printed seven years after William Shakespeare’s death, Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies, commonly referred to as Shakespeare’s “First Folio,” is the first collection that compiles all of Shakespeare’s plays, patched together from various scripts. Nicknamed the Folio because of the size of the sheets, approximately 750 copies were printed … Material of the Week: Shakespeare’s First Folio
History Comprising nearly 250,000 volumes of American and Canadian poetry, plays, and vocal music, the Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays is one of the largest collections of its kind in a research library. Begun in the mid-19th century by Brown graduate Albert Gorton Greene ’37, the collection assumed the unusual mission of acquiring … Harris Collection of American Poetry and Plays
To celebrate Brown alum Angela Lorenz’s ’87 exhibition of watercolors and ephemera, the John Hay Library hosted R.ed Day, a scavenger hunt using Lorenz’s inspiration for her most recent work. Twenty-six R.eds, red cloth figurines, hid all over the John Hay, and throughout the day, around 40 students participated in searching for R.ed on all … R.ed Day at the Hay – May 1, 2018
The John Hay houses a large History of Science Collection which includes extensive holdings of old and rare editions of early scientific texts as well as now outdated and pseudoscientific texts. Geographically and temporally broad, the collection includes the Pingree Collection, which focuses on ancient Indic sciences and includes a number of works in Sanskrit … History of Science Collection
Published: 1546, Basel, Switzerland Published just three years after Copernicus proposed his heliocentric (Sun-centered) cosmic model, Sphaera Mundi, written by Rabbi Abraham Hispanus, subscribes to the still widely accepted geocentric (Earth-centered) model of the universe. In Hebrew and Latin, the text elucidates the design of the universe with dozens of illustrations, and various leaves include … Material of the Week: Sphaera Mundi
