Scholarly Favourites: Researching in Special Collections Exhibition, University of Otago
10 June 2016 – 26 August 2016
de Beer gallery, Special Collections, University of Otago

Who uses Special Collections? And why? And what research results emanate from physically examining books and manuscripts? These questions formed the basis of the forthcoming exhibition, beginning on 10 June 2016, at the de Beer Gallery, Special Collections, University of Otago. The exhibition, entitled Scholarly Favourites. Researching in Special Collections, reveals a variety of readers, and an equally wide variety of books and manuscripts used. In most cases the item was used for research; in others the item was a pure favourite, a work that resonated with the reader’s sense of being. The book or manuscript had become important to them.

Each reader was asked to contribute 150 words on ‘their’ chosen book; the exhibition: Scholarly Favourites. Researching in Special Collections is the result.

The items selected were from the diverse collections within Special Collections: Brasch, de Beer, Shoults, Truby King, Pulp & Science Fiction, Monro, and Stack. Notable items include Albinus’s spectacular Tabulae Sceleti et Musculorum Corporis Humani (1747); Augustus Hamilton’s The Art Workmanship of the Maori Race in New Zealand (1901); Johannes Wolleb’s Compendium Theologiae Christianae (1642); Gregory M. Mathews’s Supplement to The Birds of Norfolk & Lord Howe Islands and the Australasian South Polar Quadrant (1928); the scurrilous Alvin Purple (1974); and Egypt and the Sudan: Handbook for Travellers (1929). Please enjoy what others have researched and enjoyed.

Book Arts Materials From Dartmouth College
1 September 2016 – 2 December 2016
de Beer gallery, Special Collections, University of Otago

Book Arts materials from Dartmouth College that were used in their own 25th anniversary celebrations last year, will be exhibited in the de Beer Gallery, Special Collections. The Otago exhibition starts 1 September and runs through to 2nd December 2016.

On 1 August, Sarah M. Smith, Book Arts Printer at Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, will arrive at the University of Otago to be the Printer in Residence (PIR) for 2016. Sarah’s Otakou Press print project is to print a limited edition of poems written by local poet Rhian Gallagher. The theme of this volume is centred round the life and activities of Freda Du Faur (1882–1935), the first woman to climb Aoraki/Mount Cook, New Zealand’s highest mountain. The text will be enhanced by images by the Dunedin artist Lynn Taylor. 120 copies will be printed; 100 will be for sale.