Pax (nee Patrick) Crowley (they/them, þ/þs)

FINAL CALL! ⏰

One week left to apply for our Nottebohm Fellowship!

☟ ☟ ☟

I finally set my workstation background. It files like I am properly moved in. Also, I do not think I will ever be able to work without 2 screens again. This is the best thing ever!

Stop in random libraries

A white and brown bunny nibbles a carrot from a miniature shopping cart filled with carrots.

Our medieval curator Alison Ray introduces Rawlinson Bodleian Library MS. Rawl. D. 252...a 15th Century necromancer's journal.

This manuscript contains spells written in Latin and Middle English, and would have served as a reference for a professional sorcerer.

#MedievalMonday

Spotted in the stacks as I was shelving my stack of newly cataloged books. Love the headpiece and its appropriateness for the Argonautica.

#rarebooks #specialcollections #apollonios #earlyprinting

a drawing of some pumpkin people dressed as adventurers, a barbarian with an axe, a wizard with a staff, a knight with sword and shield and a rogue with a dagger. There is a pumpkin with bat wings flying in the sky and a moon

Pumpkin adventurers

UT Austin’s Harry Ransom Center Provides Funded Fellowships in the Arts and Humanities The humanities library and museum will award up to 50 fellowships to support scholars, artists, and writers conducting on-site archival research.

Many thanks to our friends @hyperallergic.com for spreading the word about @ransomcenter.bsky.social's 2026-27 #fellowships!

Learn more by visiting the Center's website: www.hrc.utexas.edu/fellowships/

#Humanities #Photography #Literature #ArtHistory #RareBooks #Theatre #FilmHistory 🗃️📜📚

I forgot to link: onesearch.wesleyan.edu/permalink/01...

So it's a bit too tight to really get in there and see it. But it also means that one could also solve this by assuming a conjugate flyleaf that didn't survive the rebind. But that in itself seems like an unlikely (and untidy) way to sign anyway. Anyway, good enough for now. On to other pastures.

that the fifth leaf is an unsigned singleton--a presumed chi. This seems most likely to me. The weirdness is that the catchword on [paragraph]4v correctly predicts the heading of this posited chi1r, which seems kind of odd for an insertion. It is in a modern binding. [3/4]

And it's got a funny little mystery with its first leaves too. It's a quarto, but the initial gathering is 5 leaves. I can't quite tell if there's a singleton in there or if there's an excised leaf. The title page is unsigned, but the next leaf is signed [paragraph]2. So that might mean... [2/4]

Finishing up cataloging this lovely 1676 book of Ecuadorian poetry and prose that contains accounts of hyperlocal fetivals with syncretic religious practices (Indegineous and Catholic). But what's enchanting my at the moment are the darling collections of typographic ornament! #rarebooks #typography

Page from a cookery book, describing various ways to make pancakes.

Happy Pancake Day!

This pancake recipe is from 'The Cook's and Confectioner's Dictionary' (1723) by John Nott, the oldest cookery book in our collections.

"...it will make them crisp, look yellow as Gold, and eat very well."

📷 Reserve 640.4 NOT

#PancakeDay #ShroveTuesday #RareBooks

Five lines of text on a orange-yellow gradient background. The text reads, “Identity, expression, full queer, visibility, experience” in a plain sans serif typeface, with some letters replaced with expressive calligraphic forms.

A photo of a woman with letters overlaid on top: “Intro to Modern Type Design / IMTD"

Fer Cozzi, Audaz (custom typeface for Nike), 2023.

Learn type design with Fer Cozzi, online! Create your own font, from sketch to screen (and everything in between).

10 weekly sessions, 3 hours each: Feb 26 – Apr 30, 2025
letterformarchive.org/shop/introdu...

#TypeDesign #Fonts #FontDesign

Some of Hartford’s long and important black history:

www.hartfordheritage.org/black-heritage

A couple of great owl decorations and some lovely initials in an otherwise pretty unremarkable edition 1901 edition of Bacon’s Essays. I love how well designed even mass market books could be at the turn of the last century. #rarebooks #owls #SCSUSpecialCollections #specialcollections

Two columns of music are on the page. Each column has 6 parts. The top five parts are staves of 5 lines. The last part has a stave of 6 lines. The musical notes have been drawn as black squares with tails. Red or Blue capital letters are given for names. The lines are in red.

If you like music, you might enjoy seeing this image. It is from a service book c.1300 (WCL Q107 folio 17v).

A page of paper with a white line image of a snake wrapped round a staff.

Happy Lunar New Year!

What do you get if you cross #WatermarkWednesday with the year of the snake? A jolly snake watermark, of course!

We found this happy chap on the endpapers of a 'Sacerdotale sive sacerdotum thesaurus' which was printed in 1592.

📖 F 26/103

What a cutie!

Full-page woodcut of a giant anaconda, from Ulisse Aldrovanid's volume on serpents and dragons, printed in Bologna in 1640

A 'Serpens Americanus', aka giant anaconda, from Ulisse Aldrovandi's 1640 volume on snakes & dragons #YearOfTheSnake

18th-century print of Asphodel.

This is intense. 💛 Asphodel, from ‘Collection des plantes usuelles, curieuses, et étrangères selon les systèmes de Mrs Tournefort et Linnæus, tirées du jardin du roi... gravées & imprimées en couleur... / par M. Gautier Dagoty’ (Paris, 1767). CCF.47.33 @theulspeccoll.bsky.social

i’m so tired but i’ve got obligations 😩

Wow! I’ve never seen the scroll! So cool!

Photo of a tiger shark

One way that you can tell a shark scientist from a non-expert enthusiast in online discussions is that the non-expert enthusiasts will say things like "Look at that Galeocerdo cuvier! " and professional shark scientists will say "that stripey boi is chonky!"

8 photos of shelves of books or people in front of shelves of books

It's #LibraryShelfieDay!
Take a picture of your favorite shelf of books (with or without yourself) - and then tag the Library!

In these photos: #MakerSpace, #SpecialCollections, #UnionStrong, #Cats, #LunarNewYear, #SelfHelp

🥁 Announcing the Public Domain Image Archive! 🥁

We are v excited to share our new sister-project, the Public Domain Image Archive (PDIA), a curated collection of 10k+ out-of-copyright historical images, all free to explore and reuse: pdimagearchive.org @pdimagearchive

Book cover for "Of Sugar and Snow" (on the history of ice cream). A painting of a glass dish holding ice cream with a cherry on top.

Did you know that Jan 15 is Strawberry Ice Cream Day? Neither did we! It might have to do with a tradition that James Madison's 2nd inauguration celebration included strawberry ice cream.
Read about the history of ice cream making in "Of Sugar and Snow" available as an ebook via SouthernSearch.

A vibrant and retro-style illustration celebrating the theme "Singin' in the Public Domain." The image features a red umbrella, music notes, a film clapperboard, and scattered books. The Lockette, a yellow dancing padlock with an open lock, symbolizes unlocking creativity, surrounded by colorful streamers and confetti. The title text is bold and playful, with "Singin' in the" above "Public Domain," set on a background of musical staff lines.

Celebrate the public domain with the Internet Archive on Wednesday, January 22nd ⤵️

10am PT—Register for our VIRTUAL party: www.eventbrite.com/e/singin-in-...

6pm PT—Come to the Internet Archive for our IN-PERSON film screening: www.eventbrite.com/e/celebrate-...

gray squirrel on fence in sunbeam

It may be cold but there's sun on your tail. Squirrel of the Day for January 17, 2025 #sqrlpix