Author Archives: kgmatheny

The End of an Era

After over 12 years of sharing archive and rare book content on this blog, we are officially retiring it. It’s not going anywhere anytime soon, however — we’re leaving the content here for the time being so you can continue … Continue reading

“There was joy and there was sorrow”: Armistice Day, 1918

World War I was fought between multiple countries in two main alliance groups, making the process of ending the war complicated. In some ways, it began with Allied power Russia’s separate peace with the Central Powers, the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, … Continue reading

University Libraries Special Collections Announces LGBTQ Digital Exhibit and Digital Collection

University Libraries Special Collections announces the launch of a new digital exhibit, Empowering Voices, and a digital collection, the Alabama Forum, a major LGBTQ newspaper. University Libraries is pleased to hold the largest collection of Forums in Alabama, with issues dating from … Continue reading

Documenting Black Literary Culture, 1926-1976

We recently published a new research guide called From Jim Crow to Black Power: African American History and Culture, 1877-1970 , which is designed to help researchers navigate our holdings on life during the post-Reconstruction, pre-Civil Rights era, as well as the … Continue reading

WWI Poster Art

Hoole Library is home to over 100 World War I posters — large and occasionally fragile, but still in beautiful color. You can take a look at full-size facsimiles of some of them at Gorgas Library, as part of our … Continue reading

Old School Trick Photography

This post was written several weeks ago by Alissa Helms. She has since moved on from Digital Services, but we wanted to share one of her finds from the Perkins family photos. While she was digitizing the tail end of … Continue reading

Native American History Resources

The Division of Special Collections has some interesting resources related to the culture and history of local Native American tribes, both in the Williams Collection and at Hoole Library. For Native American Heritage Month, we’d like to share a few pertinent manuscript … Continue reading

The Power of Facsimiles, part 1

Facsimiles — exact copies — of historical documents provide a way to access details of the original without having to actually possess it. Some are of printed items for which certain versions are now rare, or for which the original publishing context — … Continue reading

Scripture in Miniature

It’s not surprising that one of the best selling books in the world has been produced in miniature form. Still, I didn’t expect to stumble across these two turn-of-the-century specimens today. I was on a hunt in an artifacts box for something … Continue reading

Men of Color in the 19th Century

African Americans occupied a wider variety of spaces in the social order of 19th century America than you may realize. Because of the horrors of slavery, there are an uncountable number who, at least individually, are all but erased from the historical … Continue reading