Sunday, January 21, 2007

The Rare Book Room


I thought buying my Calculus book was expensive. It was nothing compared to the value of the books in the rare book room. By value, I mean priceless. I witnessed a book which was written by hand in the late 15th century, which was awe inspiring. It was written on pages made of rags. Even more impressive was a full volumed collection of James Audubon's Bird's Of America which is incredibly valuable. There are 7500 books in the rare book collection and the oldest book is the one we witnessed from the 15th century. The collection is behind a locked door and we could not take any photos of it. It is primarily for scholarly use and is under high security.

5 comments:

Michele said...

This room was my favorite. The guy really seemed to know what he was talking about and like he loved every single item in those rooms. I thought his explination of early printmaking was incredible and I didn't realize how much work went it to is back then and how much was still done by hand. I really liked the original Darwin book, even though he wouldn't let me touch it, which was a bummer. The dead bird was a little bit weird, but it's good that they have a good variety of stuff. Good job on the video, guys!

mercedez091 said...

This was by far my favorite part of the Field Museum. When they brought out the Charles Darwin book I got such an incredible feeling. It was just so amazing that this piece was sitting right in front of me. I loved it. I am working towards a degree in Elementary Education with an emphasis in Science so this visit to the Field Museum was right down my alley.

Anonymous said...

This was also my favorite part of the Field Museum Library. Seeing the Darwin book and letters was amazing, and the old books in the storage area back there was an awesome sight to take in.

Katie said...

The rare book room was extremely interesting to me because of the variety of things we were shown and the knowledge the man had of each individual item. I thought that it was extremely wonderful how they will case their books in order to keep them save rather than rebinding them in order to keep them "special". I am just fascinated by anything "old". :)

Libby said...

The Audubon books are so amazing. And they had one of the originals! Before this class I had no idea that places like zoos and museums even had libraries, so to go in and see what it was all about was pretty cool. I really enjoyed the special collections. They had so much cool stuff; I mean what library do you know that has a couple hundred year old bird just chillin? Pretty awesome.