News

Selected stories from the Beinecke Library, YaleNews, and external media outlets (the latter noted by source in parentheses after title of article).

  • The World in Maps, 1400-1600 (Fine Books & Collections)

    July 14, 2022

    This exhibition presents many of the most historically significant manuscript maps from the late medieval and early modern period from the Beinecke Library’s vast collection of maps. It is focused on portolan charts - large, colorful charts that showed the shoreline of the Mediterranean, and were used by sailors to navigate from port to port

  • Wright Lab summer undergraduate researchers explore scientific treasures of Yale Beinecke Library

    July 14, 2022

    Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library (Beinecke) and the Medical Historical Library together house early editions of many milestones of achievements in physics, including those from Copernicus, du Châtelet, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and other scientists from the 16th-18th centuries, with topics ranging from early materials science, astronomy and cosmology, physics, and mathematics.

  • Remembering Judy Schiff: Library colleagues share memories

    July 13, 2022

    Throughout her impressive sixty-year-long career at Yale—including as ­Yale Library’s chief research archivist since 1971—Judith “Judy” Schiff earned the deep respect and admiration of colleagues throughout the institution. The news of her death this week prompted several of these many friends and co-workers to share their memories of the ways in which she inspired them as a mentor, historian, and valued member of the Yale and New Haven communities she loved.

  • In Memoriam: Judith Ann Schiff, Yale’s long-serving chief research archivist

    July 12, 2022

    Judith Ann Schiff, a longtime archivist at the Yale University Library who loved helping others gain a deeper understanding of Yale’s and New Haven’s histories, died on July 11. She was 84. Over the course of a Yale career spanning more than 60 years, Schiff — the library’s chief research archivist and the university’s longest-serving staff member in recent memory — guided countless students and scholars through the library’s archival collections. She built and managed many of those collections, making them more accessible to researchers. And she delighted in sharing fun, fascinating, and often forgotten stories from the university’s history through her beloved “Old Yale” column in the Yale Alumni Magazine. Generous by nature, she enjoyed sharing her knowledge of Yale’s history with alumni, frequently giving talks during reunions and other special events.

  • Student curator Gabrielle Colangelo ’22 brings obscured lesbian histories to light

    June 6, 2022

    For her exhibition, “We Are Everywhere: Lesbians in the Archive,” now on view in Sterling Memorial Library, student curator Gabrielle “Gabby” Colangelo ’22, began by asking questions. “Why are there so few lesbians represented in Yale’s archives? And who is Silvia Dobson, this unknown woman who appears so prominently in my search results?”

  • Unraveling the past: New Sterling Library exhibition goes beneath the surface

    May 9, 2022

    Rather than craft a conventional narrative encompassing the disparate materials, the exhibit’s curators — Bill Landis, associate director for public services at Manuscripts and Archives; Jae Rossman, director of the Department of Area Studies and Humanities Research Support; and Nancy Kuhl, curator of poetry in the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke — framed the show around the basic questions that guide scholars’ thinking when they first encounter unique primary source materials: Who made this? When was it made? What was its function? Whose perspectives are missing?

  • Six faculty members honored for ‘transformational’ classroom instruction

    May 5, 2022

    Students who nominated the six Yale faculty members awarded this year’s Yale College teaching prizes on May 5 used many different adjectives to praise their instructors. But there was one overarching theme in their comments: All of the prizewinners were credited with being “transformational” in their students’ lives — in the classroom and beyond.

  • Celebrating the new Hanke Exhibition Gallery in Sterling Library

    May 2, 2022

    Lynn Hanke was honored at a University Library Council (ULC) ribbon cutting to celebrate the completion of the Hanke Exhibition Gallery in Sterling Memorial Library, a project she and her husband, Robert Hanke ’60, made possible. “For years, we have aspired to have a state-of-the-art exhibition gallery in the Sterling Memorial Library where we can share inspiring stories from across the library’s special collections in a central space,” Barbara Rockenbach, the Stephen F. Gates ’68 University Librarian, told the assembled guests. “Thanks to the great generosity and vision to support our special collection mission, Lynn and Robert Hanke have encouraged us to finally open such a space.”

  • Visiting Voynich (Manuscript Road Trip)

    April 24, 2022

    As we begin to make our way out of the COVID-19 pandemic, it isn’t only restaurants and theaters that are opening up. Libraries, too, are reopening to the public, and Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library is no exception. After several years of restricted access and closures, the Beinecke is now open for outside researchers, albeit with masks and proof of vaccination required. The Beinecke is one of my favorite places to visit, and when I heard that the Library would be welcoming outside researchers as of April 11, I made my plans right away, securing authorization to visit the campus and permission to spend April 22 with none other than MS 408, a.k.a. The Voynich Manuscript.

  • Behrens releases Cook film (Independence Bulletin Journal )

    April 22, 2022

    Roy Behrens, Emeritus Professor of Art at the University of Northern Iowa and Independence native, has released a new 60-minute online documentary film about Iowa expatriate artist William Edwards Cook, and his close long-term friendship with American writer Gertrude Stein ... there are 250 pages of letters between Cook and Stein in the Beinecke Library at Yale University, in which they often talk about Independence ...

  • Dreaming animals: Beinecke archives inspire campus artistic collaboration

    April 19, 2022

    Early in the pandemic, when much of Yale’s campus was shut down, Meredith Miller ’03 M.F.A. found inspiration in the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library’s digital collections. Miller, a senior photographer at the Beinecke, turned to her artistic practice while the library’s facilities were closed. She began searching the digital collections for images of animals from manuscripts, books, and photographs, acquiring a virtual menagerie of exotic, threatened, or endangered species, including rhinos, elephants, and buffaloes. Miller transformed this motley zoo into a series of playful still-life photographs, each featuring a different animal. Then she invited her Beinecke colleague MaryJane “MJ” Millington to compose poems to accompany the photographs. Millington’s verses and Miller’s images form “Dreaming Animals,” an exhibit on the Yale Health Center’s third floor that explores the complex relationship between humans and wildlife, probing the contradictions in how people claim to love and treasure animals while often treating them with indifference or cruelty.

  • You’ve enjoyed the parks he designed. Meet the creator at 200 years old (New Haven Register)

    April 16, 2022

    Famous in his day for his writing and lecturing on his European travels, Donald Grant Mitchell thought of himself much more as an urban farmer and landscape architect, a lover of beauty in all its forms. But while the Westville branch of the New Haven Free Public Library is named for him, Mitchell’s name is barely known by those who enjoy East Rock and Edgewood parks, which he designed.

  • Library special collections will welcome non-Yale researchers beginning April 11

    April 4, 2022

    Beginning April 11, Yale University Library will reopen its special collections reading rooms to non-Yale researchers who are fully vaccinated and boosted and have not traveled outside the U.S. within the prior 15 days. Researchers will be required to register in the Yale Library special collections system, complete the University vaccine attestation process in advance of their visit, and show a copy of their approval email for admission to the library on the day of their visit

  • Dreaming Animals by Meredith Miller and MJ Millington

    April 4, 2022

    Currently displayed at Yale Health (55 Locke St / 3rd Floor, New Haven, CT), Dreaming Animals is an award-winning collaboration between Beinecke Library's Meredith Miller (photographer) and MJ Millington (poet), exploring the complex relationship between humans and animals.