Michelle Light appointed Associate University Librarian for Special Collections and Beinecke Library Director

July 15, 2021

Michelle Light has been appointed as the new Associate University Librarian for Special Collections and Director of the Beinecke Library, effective October 1, 2021. The appointment was announced today by Barbara Rockenbach, Stephen F. Gates University Librarian. Light comes to Yale University Library from current service as the director of special collections at the Library of Congress. “Michelle brings great experience to build a more unified vision for Yale Library special collections and the Beinecke Library and to sustain and strengthen collections, access, user experience, and a work environment that attracts and retains the best staff,” Rockenbach said.

Waterfront 1940s estate in Connecticut built for 'Town & Country' editor listed for $4.2M (Connecticut Post)

June 21, 2021

In 2019, the Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library held an exhibit on the life and works of Zerbe, which featured some of his Connecticut home’s early architectural drawings.

Tulsa: The Fire and the Forgotten (PBS)

May 31, 2021

Preservationists want to breathe new life into the former Vermont Marble Company headquarters (The Architect's Newspaper)

May 26, 2021

At the height of its productivity, the VMC was considered the largest U.S. corporation in the world, according to the Vermont Marble Museum website, and held exclusive mining rights to all marble deposits in the states of Vermont, Colorado, and Alaska. Using this broad network of quarrying facilities, VMC would provide building materials for prestigious building projects, including the Oregon State Capitol, the Arlington National Cemetery, and Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

Queer Shoulders at the Wheel (Boston Review)

May 21, 2021

A lot of Wieners’s later writing is lost: much was never published, and though his papers are spread across several university collections, from which the letters in Yours Presently are drawn, many later manuscripts were in all likelihood lost after his death. But we know that Wieners continued producing elusive, obscure, often waspishly humorous texts for his own pleasure and sometimes for that of others. Some of these late poems appeared in o·blēk, The East Village, and Big Bridge, and others were mailed to his younger friend and last devoted Occult School member Lansing, and are therefore deposited in Lansing’s archives at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. When Wieners died in 2002, at his side were his longtime supporters Shively and Jim Dunn.

Restored Richard Wright novel hits bestseller lists (AP via The Oakland Press)

May 13, 2021

In 2010, Julia Wright was seated in "the comfortable, secluded, air-conditioned calm of the Beinecke Archives where my father's manuscripts are housed at Yale University." She told the AP that she "came across a long version of the short story I knew so well but augmented by the 50 pages on police brutality. Bringing the whole work to light was not only timely, it was a cure against the physical dismemberment suffered by the James Byrds of our dark history."

Fellowship winners will study next at Oxford and Cambridge

May 11, 2021

Emma Brodey ’21 has been awarded the King’s-Yale Fellowship to pursue an M.Phil. in English at Cambridge University, where she will study 18th-century and Romantic literature and the history of the book. At Yale, she is an English major focusing her studies on 19th-century English literature and creative nonfiction. Her academic thesis explored Jane Austen and George Eliot’s novels through the lens of material texts and the embodiment of the 19th-century woman reader. Her creative thesis was a memoir about the role of Austen in her own family. Brodey has also studied letterpress printing, helps lead the Yale Guild of Bookmakers, and often teaches bookbinding workshops for the Yale community. She works as a research assistant at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. Her most recent curated exhibit, “Publication and Prejudice” focuses on copies of “Pride and Prejudice” in the Yale Library collections.

Yale poets, experts weigh in on relationship between social media, poetry (Yale Daily News)

May 7, 2021

Nancy Kuhl, Beinecke Curator of Poetry for the Yale Collection of American Literature, said that the publishing history of American poetry is rich and fascinating. Innovation made by American poets, such as Walt Whitman and Emily Dickison, provided a “fertile ground” for later writers. “Social media platforms add a new layer — allowing poets to reach new audiences around the world and providing a virtual space for the development of dynamic new poetry communities,” Kuhl said.

Blood, Tears and Samurai Love: A global collaboration uncovers a lost love story in a library manuscript

April 29, 2021

The untitled manuscript is housed in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library and is being referred to as the Shūdō tsuya monogatari, roughly meaning “male-male relationship stories.” Set in 1714 in Dewa Province in Northeastern Japan, the story features unusual full-color illustrations and is written in kuzushiji, a challenging calligraphic script commonly used in Japanese texts before 1900 but now legible only to scholars with specialized expertise.