January 2015 Archives

Treasures from Japan in the Yale University Library

January 16-April 11
Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library

This exhibition, now on view at the Beinecke Library, provides a glimpse of the treasures in two extraordinary collections associated with the legacy of Asakawa Kan’ichi (1873–1948), professor of history and first curator of the East Asian collections at Yale.

The Japanese Manuscript Collection (1907) and Yale Association of Japan Collection (1934) include stellar examples of early printing, woodblock print publishing, and artworks, as well as an impressive array of rare historical documents. The exhibition is a tribute to Asakawa’s vision for a great Japanese library that would engage Americans in the study of Japan’s history, society, and culture. It also celebrates recent efforts by faculty, students, librarians, and conservators at Yale University and the Historiographical Institute of the University of Tokyo to document Yale’s holdings of pre-modern Japanese books and manuscripts and bring them to the forefront in research and teaching.

The exhibition is on view until Thursday, April 2nd.

Post on January 22, 2015 - 12:44pm |

January 21, 2015

Time and Date: 3:00-4:00 pm, Friday February 6
Place: Room L01 A & B, Bass Library

This event will feature a discussion with Prof. Jessica Chen Weiss (Political Science) examining her new book,Powerful Patriots, which traces China's management of dozens of nationalist protests and their consequences between 1985 and 2012. Weiss asks the important question, what role do nationalism and popular protest play in China's foreign relations? Chinese authorities permitted anti-American demonstrations in 1999 but repressed them in 2001 during two crises in U.S.-China relations. Anti-Japanese protests were tolerated in 1985, 2005, and 2012 but banned in 1990 and 1996. Protests over Taiwan, the issue of greatest concern to Chinese nationalists, have never been allowed. To explain this variation, Powerful Patriots identifies the diplomatic as well as domestic factors that drive protest management in authoritarian states. Copies of the book will be available for purchase at the event.

Post on January 20, 2015 - 7:00pm |

The Historical Library of the Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library at Yale University is pleased to announce its eighth annual Ferenc Gyorgyey Research Travel Award for use of the Historical Library.

The Medical Historical Library, located in New Haven, Connecticut, holds one of the country’s largest collections of rare medical books, journals, prints, photographs, and pamphlets. Special strengths are the works of Hippocrates, Galen, Vesalius, Boyle, Harvey, Culpeper, Priestley, and S. Weir Mitchell, and works on anesthesia, and smallpox inoculation and vaccination. The Library owns over fifty medieval and renaissance manuscripts, Arabic and Persian manuscripts, and over 300 medical incunabula. The notable Clements C. Fry Collection of Prints and Drawings has over 2,500 fine prints, drawings, and posters from the 15th century to the present on medical subjects. The library also holds a great collection of tobacco advertisements, patent medicine ephemera, and a large group of materials from Harvey Cushing, one of the founding fathers of neurosurgery.

The 2015-2016 travel grant is available to historians, medical practitioners, and other researchers who wish to use the collections of the Medical Historical Library. There is a single award of up to $1,500 for one week of research during the academic fiscal year July 1, 2015 - June 30, 2016. Funds may be used for transportation, housing, food, and photographic reproductions. The award is limited to residents of the United States and Canada. Applicants should send a completed application form, curriculum vitae and a description of the project including the relevance of the collections of the Historical Library to the project, and two references attesting to the particular project. Preference will be given to applicants beyond commuting distance to the Historical Library. This award is for use of Medical Historical special collections and is not intended for primary use of special collections in other libraries at Yale. Applications are due by Monday, MAY 4th, 2015. They will be considered by a committee and the candidates will be informed by JUNE 8th, 2015. An application form can be found on our website.

Applications and requests for further information should be sent to:

Melissa Grafe, Ph.D
John R. Bumstead Librarian for Medical History
Harvey Cushing/John Hay Whitney Medical Library Y
ale University P
.O. Box 208014
New Haven, CT 06520-8014
Telephone: 203- 785-4354
Fax: 203-785-5636
E-mail: melissa.grafe@yale.edu

Additional information about the Library and its collections may be found here

Post on January 20, 2015 - 12:24pm |

January 20, 2015

We are delighted to announce the new exhibit Treasures from Japan in the Yale University Library at Beinecke Library from January 16th to April 2nd. Complementary exhibit catalogs are available at Beinecke Library Security Desk upon request. The catalog features articles written by Prof. Edward Kamens, Prof. Daniel Botsman, Ellen Hammond, Joshua Frydman and other researchers from Japan.

Post on January 19, 2015 - 7:00pm |

January 13, 2015

Happy New Year! Hope you all had a relaxing holiday break.

Our Spring reference hours at the reference desk in the East Asian Reading Room start TODAY. The hours are 2-5 pm from Tuesday to Thursday, and 2-4 pm on Friday, with the exception of a few University holidays. Please feel free to stop by and ask us any questions you may have on your study and research.

If you need assistance outside these hours, you are welcome to contact our librarians (Michael Meng for China-related,michael.meng@yale.edu; Haruko Nakamura for Japan-related, haruko.nakamura@yale.edu; and Tang Li for general inquiries, China and Korea-related, tang.li@yale.edu), or come to our main office (SML 213) on weekdays.

Post on January 14, 2015 - 7:00pm |

Donations from library supporters have enabled the migration of over 12,000 legacy analog video tapes to digital files, the complete holdings of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies. The first migration occurred in February 2011 in the lab constructed in a renovated basement space in Sterling Memorial Library. This process assures preservation of these unique video documents, many recorded thirty-five years ago. It is also the first stage of the plan to provide free remote access to the Fortunoff collection to university libraries and to Holocaust museums and resource centers. Karen Prtizker and Michael Vlock, Dr. Lisbet Rausing and Professor Peter Baldwin ‘78, Helene Fortunoff, Joshua and Esther Fortunoff Greene, the late Judge Howard Holtzmann ’42, ’47 JD, Daniel ’51 and Joanna Rose, and Robert Weis are major donors who supported the migration. Foundation support came from the Mary Jane and Morton K. Blaustein Foundation, Conference on Material Claims against Germany, Charles H. Revson Foundation, Jacob and Hilda Blaustein Foundation, and Fondation pour la Mémoire de la Shoah. Yale College courses in which testimony excerpts were recently screened by Fortunoff staff include Introduction to Ethnicity, Race, and Migration; Affect in the Writing of History; Poetry and the Holocaust; Postwar German Literature and Politics; Genocide and Ethnic Conflict; Visual Biography; and History and Holocaust Testimony. Excerpts have been incorporated in museum exhibits, documentaries, curricular units, conference presentations, and classes at universities throughout the world.

Post on January 12, 2015 - 7:04am |

The Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library at Yale University is pleased to announce that it has acquired the literary archive of dramatist Paula Vogel, a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Drama and a celebrated teacher who has mentored a generation of playwrights. Vogel is the first American female playwright to have her archive included in the Yale Collection of American Literature, where she joins such luminaries as Eugene O’Neill, Thornton Wilder, A. R. Gurney, and John Guare.

“It is difficult for a playwright to think of her script in the chaos of production as anything but ephemeral,” Vogel says. “It is a significant honor for my work to be preserved in the remarkable company of Beinecke writers and artists.”

Vogel has authored more than a dozen plays, including the 1992 Obie Award-winning Baltimore Waltz; How I Learned to Drive (1997), which won her second Obie, the Pulitzer Prize, the Lortel Prize, the Drama Desk Award, and the Outer Critics Circle Award; Desdemona, A Play About a Handkerchief (1979); The Mineola Twins (1996); and The Long Christmas Ride Home (2003).

The Paula Vogel Papers include drafts of most of Vogel’s plays, teaching files, and drafts of work by students from her many years teaching; also included are about 200 computer disks and five computers. These digital files include photographs, documents, and email correspondence with theater critics and practitioners, including Sarah Ruhl, Bert States, David Savran, and Amy Bloom, as well as numerous theater companies who have produced Vogel’s works. Researchers will be able to access Vogel’s papers beginning in spring 2015.

“It is surprising that Beinecke had not acquired the archives of a female playwright before now, but I can’t imagine a more fitting artist to be the first,” says Melissa Barton, the Beinecke’s curator of drama and prose in the Yale Collection of American Literature. “We are very excited to welcome Paula Vogel’s archive to the Yale Collection of American Literature and to provide researchers access to this remarkable record of a great dramatist and teacher’s artistic process.”

As director of playwriting for Brown University for 24 years, Vogel mentored numerous playwrights who have gone on to great acclaim, including Sarah Ruhl, Nilo Cruz, Lynn Nottage, and Quiara Alegría Hudes. In 2008, Vogel joined the faculty of Yale School of Drama as chair of the playwriting program, a post she held until 2012. She is currently playwright in residence at Yale Repertory Theatre, and she continues to teach at Yale.
Born in 1951, Vogel grew up in Washington, D.C. She lives in Providence, RI. T

he Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library is Yale's principal repository for literary archives, early manuscripts, and rare books. One of the world’s largest buildings devoted solely to rare books and manuscripts, the Beinecke Library welcomes researchers from around the world to engage with its extensive collections.

Post on January 8, 2015 - 12:08pm |

January 7, 2015

Photo of Rollins from Carl Purington Rollins Papers, Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library

Two talks at the American Printing History Association (APHA) annual conference addressed inspired teaching around printing and paper at Yale.

Katherine M. Ruffin (Simmons College) discussed her doctoral research about the origins of the bibliographical press movement in academia in the early 20th century. Yale's Carl P. Rollins, the first University Printer, plays a central role. The Bibliographical Press at Yale, founded by Rollins, is located in Sterling Memorial Library.

Jae Rossman (Yale Arts Library) discussed the innovative structure of the Freshman Seminar 'Paper' led by artist Elana Herzog. This class uses the idea of paper to introduce freshman to important concepts in higher education and the wealth of resources on campus.

Post on January 7, 2015 - 2:50pm |

January 8, 2015

Happy New Year!

Yale University Library has recently acquired three new databases related to Chinese studies: The Late Qing Dynasty Periodical Full-text Database 1833-1911 (Wan Qing qi kan quan wen shu ju ku 晚清期刊全文数据库), Zhongguo fang zhi ku, series 2 (中國方志庫, 二集) and China, America and the Pacific: Trade and Cultural Exchange. The resources have been added to the Library’s Orbis online catalogFind a Database by Title, and Chinese Studies subject guide.

Shanghai Library’s The Late Qing Dynasty Periodical Full-text Database 1833-1911 includes 302 journals (more than 290,000 articles, approximately all those published). The database is a part of the full-text series of Quan guo bao kan suo yin along with the Republican full-text series 1911-1949.

Erudition’s Zhongguo fang zhi ku, series 2 adds additional titles of Chinese gazetteers at all levels from Song Dynasty to the Republican Period. All texts are provided in full- text and image format, allowing for a direct comparison both between digitized text and original text image.

Adam Matthew’s China, America and the Pacific: Trade and Cultural Exchange explores the cultural and trading relationships that emerged between America, China and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Manuscripts, rare printed sources, visual images, objects and historical maps from international libraries and archives document this fascinating history.

Post on January 7, 2015 - 7:00pm |

Wednesday, January 28, 2:00pm
Peter Hirtle, Harvard University
Sterling Memorial Library Lecture Hall P

eter Hirtle is a Research Fellow in the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University. He also serves as the senior policy advisor in the Cornell University Library with a special mandate to address intellectual property issues. Previously at Cornell, Hirtle served as Director of the Cornell Institute for Digital Collections and as the Associate Editor of D-Lib Magazine. He is an archivist by training with an MA in History from Johns Hopkins and an MLS with a concentration in archival science from the University of Maryland. Hirtle is a Fellow and Past President of the Society of American Archivists and is a member of its Working Group on Intellectual Property. He was a member of the Commission on Preservation and Access/Research Library Group’s Task Force on Digital Archiving and the Copyright Office’s Section 108 Study Group, and is a contributing author to the LibraryLaw.com blog.

All are welcome to attend this talk sponsored by SCOPA.

Post on January 6, 2015 - 12:26pm |

Pages