The Special Collections department of the Weinberg Memorial Library provides exhibits, programming and instruction that reach out to both the University community and the general public. Special Collections contains historical collections and a small rare book collection that ranges from medieval manuscripts and early printed books through 20th century first editions and fine press work. Much of the collection was donated or acquired over the decades.

There is also a component focusing on rare books produced by Jesuits. The collection was started through a donation by Rev. Richard W. Rousseau, S.J. A series of small donations from the Jesuit community enabled Special Collections to purchase a number of classic Jesuit works providing a glimpse of the incredible Jesuit literary, theological, scientific and historical scholarship from the 16th century into the 20th century.

But beyond collecting for long-term preservation and research, the rare book collection is also used regularly for teaching purposes. The highlights of the collection are four medieval manuscripts and a handful of incunabula, or books printed between 1454 and 1501. Over the years, I have attended a number of courses on various aspects of medieval books at the Rare Book School at the University of Virginia. I have utilized knowledge I’ve gained in these courses to lecture on the development of the medieval book from the creation of the codex (the technical term for a book with covers) in the late Roman Empire through Johannes Gutenberg and the first century of printing. I lecture to a wide variety of classes with an interest in the medieval period including philosophy, art, literature, theology and history. In a rather brief period of time, we cover approximately 1,500 years of book history discussing how the books were physically made and how they were used in both church and secular societies. The classes finish with the birth of printing and the impact that easily available mass-produced books had on society. The lectures are tailored to the subject matter of the respective classes. The various professors with whom I’ve worked and I believe that exposing students to actual books from the medieval period and explaining how they were made and used in society provides an additional dimension to the subject matter they study in class. Students have been quite pleased to see and touch the medieval books. Lectures such as these have also been presented regularly for outside groups. Recently, we expanded the material on the medieval book into a three-night Schemel Forum series. In spring 2011, I taught a five-night course titled "The Bible as Book," discussing how the physical format of the Bible, and to some extent its contents, evolved between the ancient world of papyrus scrolls through the 19th century industrial production of the family Bibles.

Special Collections also presents a series of exhibits in the Weinberg Library’s Heritage Room throughout the year. Sometimes these exhibits use material from the University’s collection and frequently the library rents traveling exhibits in collaboration with other University departments or outside organizations such as the University’s Office of Equity and Diversity, the Schemel Forum, The Center for Anti-Slavery Studies, or the Holocaust Education Resource Center of the Jewish Community Center. These collaborations have been successful both in bringing national traveling exhibits to the University community and bringing the local community to campus. I also work with Sondra Myers, director of the Schemel Forum, to create public programming, usually in the form of lectures, to support the exhibits.

Other times, I have curated exhibits using borrowed materials. The most impressive of these exhibits have been stunning rare books borrowed from the private collection of University alumnus and former chairman of the Board of Trustees, Edward R. Leahy, who has graciously allowed me to do four exhibits from his collection. In 2009, I curated an exhibit titled "Scarce Books & Elegant Editions: Samuel Johnson & James Boswell Selections from the Edward R. Leahy Collection."

The exhibit, in celebration of Samuel Johnson’s 300th birthday, featured an extraordinary collection of first editions by Johnson, as well as books by his biographer James Boswell. The collection featured many books in amazing bindings and featured a unique assemblage of seven different copies of Boswell’s "Life of Johnson." Although copies of the same edition, each volume was special due to either an autograph, a splendid binding, or "in boards" — meaning how the book appeared before it was taken to a bindery. But the rarest part of this set of Boswell’s is a copy previously owned and discovered by early 20th century book collector A.E. Newton, which features a controversial passage that was removed from the official published version. Only a handful of copies with the original text survived. 
 
Recently, Special Collections acquired a unique and important collection of material concerning the history of American penmanship, a sampling of which was exhibited in spring 2011. The Zaner-Bloser Penmanship Collection came to the University as a result of a 2009 Hope Horn Gallery exhibit about Scranton-based engrosser P.W. Costello, curated by Thomas Costello and Darlene Miller-Lanning, Ph.D. P.W. Costello was an acclaimed penman whose work was published in Zaner-Bloser publications, which were borrowed for the exhibit. Zaner-Bloser Inc, a subsidiary of Highlights for Children since 1972, was looking for a home for its historical collections and expressed interest in the University.
The collection has numerous components from professional journals published for the practitioners of handwriting instruction and engrossing to rare hand writing manuals to instructional material for children. The collection contains more than 20 scrapbooks containing examples of ornamental penmanship done by renowned master penmen. The period between 1875 and 1925 has been called the Golden Age of American Ornamental Penmanship and this collection has examples by most of the great penmen of the era. There are also engraved printing blocks that were made from the original engrossings and pen flourishings.

Although many of the published handwriting manuals from the 19th century exist in other libraries, and there are some small collections of master penman examples, there does not appear to be another collection of this scale documenting the Golden Age of American Ornamental Penmanship.

While I have spent nearly 25 years working with rare and historical materials both here and in a museum research library, I remain fascinated with historical materials and hope to convey my enthusiasm to students and the public in exhibits and teachings. Original historical material still matters because they can’t feasibly digitize everything unless they have an immense amount of time and money. High-quality digitization takes time and skill and resources. Digitization is not as quick or easy as dropping an item onto the photocopier. A preservation quality image takes much longer to scan. Then the item needs to be described well enough (back in the library book world it was called subject headings, now it’s called metadata) so that people can find it when searching on the Web. Consequently, there will likely always be material that is preserved, but not digitized. However, that is simply an economic reason.

Just as in art, history, book, scale and color matter. While a computer screen can represent color accurately, scale will always be a problem; an object that is 2 by 2 or 20 by 20 still looks the same size on screen or on page. Until you see the real thing, you really do not appreciate the skill involved in creating a small-scale work of pen art or feel the impact of a large-scale item.

Furthermore, we still cannot digitize every aspect of an artifact. Even though high-resolution digitization can extract an amazing amount of detail from an item, there are others sensory aspects that cannot be captured digitally. For instance, you cannot feel the texture of paper or parchment in a digital version and you can easily tell the difference between high-and low-quality paper by touch. Medieval parchment (made from animal skin) has a distinctive scent and texture, neither is reproducible digitally until someone invents the Smell-o-Net.

Finally, paper, parchment, ink and bindings were all created with different materials at different times. The animal used to make parchment can only be determined with certainty by DNA analysis and for that the original is needed. Paper was originally made from linen rags and is now made from trees, but various plants were used at times. Ink can be made from anything from minerals to bugs. Paper and ink composition can be determined by chemical analysis requiring the original.
The virtual world is a tremendous access tool. Digitization provides immediate high-quality, but partial, access to historical material and if anything, digitization makes the original artifact more important rather than less. In that sense it is not much different than an image in a printed book. Few people interested in art see an 8-by-10 picture of Michelangelo’s wall-size "Last Judgment" and think, "Now I don’t care about seeing the Sistine Chapel anymore, the photo is just fine." Digitization provides access to people who cannot see the original, but can also lead people to the original.

To learn more about the permanent and visiting exhibits in the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Memorial Library’s Special Collection, visit www.scranton.edu/specialcollections.