My love affair with this particular room started back in the Spring semester of 2009. My Forensic Bibliography and Archival Editing class took a "field trip" up to the room to view some of the old and interesting items that we have at our library that most did not already know about. Some of these items included circus materials, first edition Lois Lenski books, Japanese Scrolls and books about Lincoln. While there one particular book caught my eye and I was completely enamored by it. I've always loved books, but there was something that completely intrigued me about this one. This book had a wood cover (something I had never seen in person at the time), leather binding on the spine with very intricate engravings and holes through the cover. I soon found out it was written in 1507 (holy cow!), was written in old Latin and used Gutenberg's formula for ink, which I had previously learned in this class was lamp black and egg whites. Because it was written in Gutenberg's ink, the typing was actually edible...to BOOK WORMS. Yes, they actually are real little worms, not just something my friends would call me when they saw me reading under the lights at football games in high school. Needless to say after finding all of this out and spending the rest of the period with this book, I was hooked. I talked to the librarian and found out about volunteering and spent the rest of the semester volunteering there in my free time.
Over the past year and a half (I got hired on after my first semester of volunteering) I have learned so much about our collection. People ask me all the time what I could possibly be doing working in the library all day. "Do you just read and do homework all the time?" The answer is most definitely NOT. There is ALWAYS something to do in the Special Collections room. What has surprised me the most is that I've become very fond of one of our collections in particular. We have four collections (Lincoln, Rare and Fine, Children's Lit and Circus), all of which are very cool and interesting in their own way. But the one collection I have fallen in love with and can't get enough of is our Circus collection. There is so much to learn from this collection and so many amazing stories that go along with it. I have stumbled upon so many interesting items (books, pictures, artifacts...) in this collection, and all of the collections that it has inspired me to write this blog, so all can know about the amazing things I see everyday.
I figure I'll start this off with a bang and talk about the incredible and almost hard to believe item that I found last Thursday. Brace yourselves.
Right now we are in the middle of preparing for the annual Circus Historical Society (CHS) Convention. This year we have the honor of hosting it. I was given the task last week to make a display of anything that I found interesting and that would knock the socks off of the CHS members. I spent all day last Thursday going through boxes looking at artifacts that had been donated to our collection. I thought I'd find things like circus figurines, buttons, maybe some costumes, but I NEVER thought I would find what I found. I was digging through one of the boxes and pulled out an item wrapped in tissue paper (they all are) that was a little heavier than everything else I had found thus far. On it there was a small label that read "no numbered hide." "No numbered hide," I thought to myself, "what the heck could that be? Hide? Like animal hide? No, it can't be. I can't believe that." So I started unwrapping it and by god it was exactly what the label said: a non-cataloged ELEPHANT hide, well a chunk of one. I was shocked. Maureen and Mark (my bosses) were in the fish bowl-esque office. I looked up at them and back down at the elephant skin and back up again and told them they had to come see this. It was this hard, grey and wrinkly chunk of elephant skin...and it still had the hair! And it had this smell...I can't quite put my finger on it, but I suppose that's because I've never smelled dead elephant hide before. It took me a few minutes to calm down a bit because I was so excited, a little grossed out but excited, before I could read the card and examine it a little. According the card, this chunk of elephant hide was donated to Sverre O. Braathen (one of our major donators) by Don Howard who cut the skin off the Al G. Barnes' elephant after it had been euthanized in Peru, Indiana after it killed a person in Canada.
How cool! With that information we may even be able to figure out which elephant is missing a piece of its hide! Mark did a little bit of research and we have narrowed it down to three different elephants, dating from 1917, 1928 and 1935. I immediately sent an email out to a friend of ours who is practically an encyclopedia of circus facts to see if he knew which elephant our hide may belong to. As of now, I am anxiously awaiting his reply.
Until next time,
May all your days be circus days! :)
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