This past spring term, Rare Books and Special Collections hosted more classes than we have ever before! We welcomed classes from a wide variety of disciplines, including English; history; medieval studies; archival studies; art history; geography; French; gender, race, sexuality and social justice; and Asian studies. In addition to hosting single-session class visits, a few classes met regularly at RBSC, including Professor Greg Mackie’s “Fraudulent Texts: Literary Forgeries and Creative Deceptions” and Professor Siân Echard’s “The History of the Book.” We love hosting classes, as it allows us to introduce that many more students to our amazing collections. And it’s wonderful to see the interesting materials, some of which are new even to us, that professors select for the classes. But we especially love to see the results of the students’ work with our collections and the incredible insights they bring to their topics. Now we’re very happy to share some of this great student work with you!
One of the assignments for Professor Echard’s course, “The History of the Book,” was a “Book Blog.” Students were asked to choose an item (book or otherwise) from RBSC, research its history, and introduce it to a public audience through a blog. We have thirteen of these student blog projects to share with you over the next several weeks. We hope you enjoy them and will perhaps be inspired to stop by RBSC to see one of the objects for yourself!
First up: Elysse Bell’s blog about William Salmon’s The Family Dictionary
http://blogs.ubc.ca/ahistoryofabook/
Maybe you’ll try your hand at “Salmon Frigassed” this weekend. Don’t forget the sippets!