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On this day in Claude Pepper History: January 18, 1983
From his early days in the United States Senate, Claude Pepper continually advocated for the expansion of Social Security accommodations for all older Americans. The Claude Pepper Papers trace this advocacy from the Senate, to the U.S. House of Representatives, where in 1983 he was appointed to the National Commission on Social Security Reform. Informally…
On This Day: December 12th, 1765
Among the 17th-20th Century Correspondence and Documents Collection at FSU’s Special Collections and Archives, there is a letter from Charles Lyttelton dated December 12th, but as the title of the collection would suggest, it was not written in 2022. This 18th century letter was written on December 12, 1765, and discusses newly uncovered tree fossils.…
Bake Off Wrap-up and Corn Cake Conundrums
I clearly missed what the recipe meant by “thick paste,” and landed on something more akin to tile grout.
The Great Immersive Bake Off!
Hello there! My name is Amanda Brito, and I am the Immersive Scholarship graduate assistant in the Office of Digital Research and Scholarship. I am currently a second year MA student in Art History with a concentration in Museum and Cultural Heritage Studies. My research focuses on Contemporary Latin American and Caribbean visual culture with…
Windsor Milk Soup
I’ve always wanted to take part in the Great Rare Books Bake Off and this year I seized my chance just in time for my favorite time of year: Soup Season. I knew I wanted a comfy soup that I could (hopefully) enjoy for a few nights while it’s been rainy and cold here in…
Great Grandma’s Banana Bread
This post was written by Caroline Haight, an intern at Special Collections and Archives, for their Great Rare Books Bake Off blog series. For my contribution to the Great Rare Books Bake Off blog series, I have decided to make my great grandmother’s banana bread recipe. This recipe is one that I’ve watched my grandmother…
Sweet as Molasses: Making a Molasses Cake
When thinking about a recipe to try for this year’s Great Rare Books Bake Off, I tried to find something that required minimal ingredients and was something that I had never tried before. A lot of the required ingredients for cakes that I kept finding required a large amount of eggs, flour, and sugar, until…
GRBBO Mini-Exhibit
Currently located on the main floor of Strozier Library is a mini-exhibit dedicated to the Great Rare Books Bake Off event hosted by Special Collections and Archives. Over the last month or so, I have been searching the archives for interesting and relevant materials to fill the display case and put together a cohesive exhibit…
Lemon Snaps
This is a guest contribution to Illuminations for The Great Rare Books Bake Off, from Alex Challenger, a member of Special Collection’s Reference Assistance Team. When I began researching recipes for the Great Rare Books Bake-Off, I quickly found that the recipe books from Special Collections assumed that I knew quite a bit more about…
Cinnamon Rusks
“Mould into biscuit and bake immediately” seemed to be missing some crucial instructions but I was game to try it out
The Bee’s Knees
This is a guest contribution to Illuminations for The Great Rare Books Bake Off by Mila Turner, FSU’s Social Science Data & Research Librarian Today I’m sharing a recipe for a Bee’s Knees cocktail with a delicious taste and an even richer history. It’s simple and easy to make yourself, or to enjoy at your…
Wacky Diet Fads from the Past
I thought I’d explore the wacky world of diet-focused recipes in the collections.
Announcing…The Great Rare Books Bake Off 2022!
It is the most wonderful time of the year! The Great British Bake Off Season 13 is currently airing and the weather is finally cooling down here on FSU campus. This will be our third year of celebrating all things baking, cooking, and mixing here in FSU Special Collections & Archives. This year we are…
Ancient Cuneiform Tablets Spend 100 Years at FSU
The present year of 2022 marks a full century since the acquisition of Special Collections and Archives’ oldest inanimate residents, the cuneiform tablets. Purchased by faculty in 1922, these twenty-five tablets were bought from Edgar J. Banks back when the school was still referred to as the Florida State College for Women. Although they currently…
American Archives Month: Conscious Metadata at FSU Libraries
On September 27, five representatives of FSU Libraries attended the SSDN Conscious Metadata Working Session in Tallahassee, FL. In the spirit of the American Archives Month theme of The Power Of Collaboration, we shared ideas and brainstormed next steps on conscious editing at FSU Libraries. Read on to find out what we learned and what…
Digital Housekeeping for Archives Month
As part of our celebration here for American Archives Month, I thought a few tips on how you can be the best archivist of your own digital archives might be helpful. We all create documents, photographs, and other digital content every day at an ever increasing rate. This is our personal archives and while we…
American Archives Month
Happy American Archives Month! This month is intended to raise public awareness about the importance of historic documents and records. Join us though out this month to learn more about how our staff makes history accessible to the public! FSU Special Collections and Archives will celebrating American Archives Month multiple ways throughout October: Want to…
LGBT Oral History Project of North Florida
Oral history is one of the biggest components of understanding the queer experience. Most LGBTQ+ history has been passed down orally, rather than through written material. Oral histories have special characteristics that other resources in our collection don’t have – intimacy. They provide a first-hand view and help us understand a specific moment in time…
Flexibility of Japanese in Books
Hello, all! My name is Terryon Larkins and I have been working at the Special Collections & Archives since the fall of 2018. Initially, I was a Federal Work Study employee but not too long after I became a part-time worker. Although I have been working here for a number of years, I do think…
Vintage Valentines in the Archives
In celebration of Valentine’s Day we are reposting this entry from 2020. Valentine’s Day gained popularity in the United States with the introduction of mass-produced Valentines cards around the middle of the 19th century. Most of these early cards have long since disappeared, but we are fortunate to have many examples of early 20th century…
Look what Percival found in Special Collections & Archives
This post was written by Percival Pitter, a Federal Work Study employee in Special Collections & Archives. Hi my name is Percival Pitter. I am a senior majoring in public health with a minor in biology. What I like about working in Special Collections is getting to work with some really cool artifacts and the…
Student Archival Investigations, Part III
Guest Authors: Nadia Rassech and Eli McKown-Dawson, with Tarez Samra Graban, Associate Professor of English and Honors Teaching Scholar This is the last installment of three highlighting the work of students in Special Collections and Archives with HUM 2937/IDH 3109 Sustainable Public Discourse during American Archives Month 2021. You can read the first and second…
Women of the Movement: The Law and Emmett Till
On January 13 and 20, ABC aired the last four parts of the scripted historical drama Women of the Movement, centered on Mamie Till-Mobley and the pursuit of justice for her son Emmett Till. The dramatization of the murder trial of J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, as well as surrounding events, naturally commanded screen time…
Student Archival Investigations, Part II
Guest Authors: Miranda Fuller and Kate Kramer, with Tarez Samra Graban, Associate Professor of English and Honors Teaching Scholar This is the second installment of three highlighting the work of students in Special Collections and Archives with HUM 2937/IDH 3109 Sustainable Public Discourse during American Archives Month 2021. You can read the first installment on…
The Great Rare Books Bake Off Finale
As November has come to a close so has our Annual FSU Special Collections & Archives Great Rare Books Bake Off. We have had a month full of mixing, baking, cooking, and exploring. Our recipes ranged from cookies, stews, and bacon pancakes, to milk punch, bread pudding, and cakes. Diving into the stacks, our contributors learned…
The Jelly Roll – The Perfect Cake for the Holiday Season
As someone who has been a long-time fan of the Great British Baking Show, I knew I wanted to try and make a showstopping cake for my recipe. After perusing through cookbooks for different cakes, I found one from 1905 for a Jelly Roll from The New England Cook Book: the Latest and Best Methods…
Excellent Cookies: Are they, in fact, excellent?
This is a guest post to Illuminations for the Great Rare Books Bake Off by Sofia Varela, Digital Library Center Assistant. I don’t bake frequently but, when I do, I stick to the same cookie recipe which is fine by me but my family has grown a bit tired of it. When I was looking…
You Can’t Go Wrong With Bread Pudding, Right?
This post was written by Emily Castillo for the SCA Great Rare Books Bakeoff. Bread pudding is a timeless dessert that plenty of people have tried at least once. In my case, I first tried it when my mom was on a food experimenting binge in high school. There were some good (and not so…
Cheese Toast – The Country Kitchen
This recipe was attempted by Chelsea McClellan, an accounting representative who works in the admin suite of Strozier Library. She has been with the University for four months and considers her baking skills to be non-existent. For the Rare Books Bake Off I decided to recreate Cheese Toast from the cookbook titled The Country Kitchen. …
They Call This Simmer: Bigos and the Wild World of Family Recipes
This is a guest post to Illuminations for the Great Rare Books Bake Off by Devin Burns, Religion Ph.D. Student. When I was seven, my grandmother taught me how to make stuffed cabbage or golabki. For a whole day, we washed and cooked the cabbage, cooked the beef, cut vegetables, rolled the meat into the…
To Make (or Not to Make) a Bacon Froize
This year when we announced the Rare Books Bakeoff, I knew that I had to enlist my roommate Michelle because we both enjoy cooking and History. What better way to understand the past than to cook your way through it? Michelle perused The queen-like closet, or, Rich cabinet last month from Diginole and found the…
Clarified Milk Punch: A case for curdling your cocktails
In rare books cooking, it is not difficult to find truly vile recipes: aspic, cakes with ambergris, beef tea pudding. Every once in a while, however, it’s possible to find something that reads as viscerally disgusting on the page, but actually turns out delicious in practice (think depression-era tomato soup cake). I have recreated one…
FSU Special Collections & Archives Presents: The Great Rare Books Bake Off Cocktail/Mocktail Week
Welcome to the first week of the FSU Special Collections & Archives Great Rare Books Bake Off! As always, we begin our week with a series of cocktails and mocktails. Please go visit our earlier post this week to see how to participate! Because we’re back on campus this semester, for this first post we’re showing…
FSU Special Collections & Archives Presents: The Great Rare Books Bake Off 2021
Last year FSU Special Collections & Archives spent the month of November showing off recipes from our digital collection of cookbooks and herbals. We welcomed guest contributors who shared recipes from their personal family collections, and modernized historic recipes, and we baked…a lot! With more students, faculty, and staff back on campus this Fall we…
The Great Rare Books Bake Off 2021
It is almost November, which means it is almost time for the Great Rare Books Bake Off! This year our celebration occurs while the newest season of the Great British Baking Show airs. Let’s make Paul Hollywood and the crowd proud by attempting some historic recipes from our collection and yours. How can you participate?…
Pest Management in an Archive
What is it, and why do we need it? As we begin making bigger and better changes for the archive, one major adjustment currently being worked on is the creation of a standardized Integrated Pest Management (IPM) policy. IPM is a program put in place in order to effectively protect archives from damaging insects. For…
American Archives Month 2021
October is American Archives Month and institutions around the United States are gearing up to share their work throughout the month. The goal of the month is to raise public awareness about what archives are, what purpose they serve, and why they are important. Fun Facts about the FSU Archives FSU Special Collections & Archives…
The Casual Dirac
The Paul A.M. Dirac Papers are a terrific source of information about the public, scholarly side of Paul Dirac: the lecturer, the genius mathematician, a theorist among theorists. However, in our eagerness to honor someone’s professional achievements, it’s easy to gloss over the rest of their personality, the private figure that coexists with the public…
The Elmo TT-12F Document Camera and Special Collections Instruction
While the buzz of a classroom filled with excited discussion was somewhat lost in the move to a virtual space, this technology allowed us to share as much of the tactile experience of archives work as we could.
Back in the Classroom: Reflections on a Year of Remote Instructional Support
We are excited to apply the new skills we have developed over the past year of remote instruction to upcoming in-person or virtual sessions, as well as continue to develop more activities to introduce and support primary source literacy at FSU and beyond.
Korean Movable Type: A Mini-History
Most scholars credit China with the conception of printing. The oldest surviving printed book, The Diamond Sutra, dates back to 868 AD. For reference, Gutenberg’s bible was printed in 1455. Fast forward a century from the Diamond Sutra and we meet Bi Sheng who was the first person to create movable type between 1039 and…
Asian Pacific American Heritage Month
This is a crosspost, click here to see the original by Kyung Kim. We are celebrating Asian and Pacific American Heritage this month. Congress proclaimed a week of May in 1979 as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Week, and in 1992, it designated May as Asian/Pacific American Heritage Month. The month of May was chosen to commemorate the first…
Library History at FSU, Part 9: John and Mable Ringling Art Library
Governance of the John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art was given to FSU in 2000. The University oversaw the restoration and renovation of all four buildings on the complex: the Ca d’Zan, the Museum of Art, the Circus Museum, and the Historic Asolo Theater. The Art Library was established with The Ringling’s reopening under…
Library History at FSU, Part 8: Library and Learning Center at FSU Panama City
In 1972, the University of West Florida was directed by the Florida Board of Regents to establish a center of higher education in Panama City. The center was originally located in the Bay County School Board Office Building and the Gulf Coast Community College campus. The library was housed in Gulf Coast Community College. In…
MythBusters Month Wrap-Up
Throughout the month of April we shared some of the most commonly held misconceptions and myths about Special Collections & Archives, and then proceeded to debunk them. Here is a roundup of all our mythbusting posts in case you missed one. Welcome to Special Collections & Archives MythBusters Month! by Rachel Duke Rachel showed us…
Library History at FSU, Part 7: College of Engineering Library
The FAMU-FSU College of Engineering was established in 1982 and is the only shared engineering college in the nation. The facilities were remodelled in 2011. It is located less than three miles from both FSU and FAMU campuses. College of Engineering students at both FAMU and FSU learn together at the joint College of Engineering…
Everything but paper: what else does SCA collect?
A lot has been written about our rare books and manuscripts collections on this blog, but did you know SCA also collects all kinds of objects, art, and recording formats? Take a look to learn more about our non-paper collections.
University History and Mythology
As with any person, place, or institution of note, there are a multitude of myths that attach themselves to their histories through various avenues. They can range from fun anecdotes to harmful misrepresentations.
Do we just collect “Old Stuff”? Appraisal in Special Collections & Archives
While monetary value and current demand for a book are part of the criteria I review in assessing its appropriateness for FSU’s Rare Book Collections, it is just one facet in a web of related values that are considered.
Movie Myths: Busted!
We’ve all seen a movie or two that has a scene set in the Archives or a Special Collections Library. Movie magic can really show our work off well. The silver screen is notorious for exaggeration and over generalizing certain tasks and this is even true for the depictions of the world of Special Collections…
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