News for Books And Literature
Moving a library
A photo gallery marking Magrath Library's closure and the effort to move its holdings of nearly 500,000 books and other materials.
Behind the legend
Daryl Richard Lawrence, 2026-27 Chair of the Library Senate Committee, shares more about his in-progress biography on American actress Myrna Loy and how he has utilized UMN Libraries resources in his research process.
A year of libraries and Loy
Daryl Richard Lawrence, 2026-27 Chair of the Senate Library Committee, kicks off a blog series sharing his experiences with UMN Libraries as well as his favorite resources, collections, and spaces.
Cataloging the tangled web of serialized novels
We all know the anticipation of waiting for the next episode of our favorite show to be aired. Or the next book in our favorite series to be published. This phenomenon is nothing new, and at the University of Minnesota Libraries (UMN Libraries), the Archives and Special Collections’ Cataloging Unit is making sure that the next story is at your fingertips.
Expanding ecology with a free textbook and an international friendship
Professor Clarence Lehman’s open access ecology textbook, published by UMN Libraries Publishing, has sparked an international friendship of scholarly proportions. Since publication, it’s been viewed over 20,000 times and downloaded over 15,000 times. One of those readers was 24-year-old Solomon Freeman from Assin Tabil, Ghana. He’s a master’s student at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), studying to become an ecologist.
Here’s the best books we read in 2025
The books we read can say a lot about us. The ones we enjoy, the ones we dislike, and especially the ones we recommend. So as 2025 shrinks in the rearview mirror, get to know the University of Minnesota Libraries through the books we read this year.
Cordiforms and love poetry – it must be February!
The theme of our U of M Special Collections pop-up exhibit on February 13 – “Matters of the Heart: A Pop-Up Prelude to Valentine’s Day” – led me to an unusual map-projection from the 16th century: cordiform or heart-shaped. This type of map was a distinctive way of trying to solve the puzzle of how to project a round globe onto a flat surface, and most scholars believe that these maps also held symbolic significance.
Oldest evidence of ‘curry’ outside of India
James Ford Bell Library Assistant Curator Anne Good reflects on what a recent archeological find reveals about early trade and cultural networks.
Geographical Works for Children in the James Ford Bell Library
Some time ago, I had the pleasure of listening to a “History Book Club” conversation between Prof. M.J. Maynes (History, U of MN – Twin Cities) and Dr. Emily Bruce (History, U of MN – Morris), concerning the latter’s new book, Revolutions at Home: The Origin of Modern Childhood and the German Middle Class. It was a great conversation about a really interesting book, and I was inspired by the discussion of geographical education for children to see what I could find on the topic in the Bell Library.
Unboxing a New Acquisition at the James Ford Bell Library
One of the most fun things that we get to do at the Bell Library is acquire new materials for the collection. Earlier this year we were absolutely thrilled to receive a 17th-century manuscript map of the Java sea, by Johannes Blaeu, as a gift from the James Ford Bell Trust and trustees Ford and Amy Bell. This post is about an item that is considerably less rare and vastly less expensive, and yet thoroughly fascinating as well.
The past owners of the Bell’s books
We often find names written in the books that make up the Bell collection – inside the front or back covers, on blank leaves at the back of books, and even written across title pages. Most of these names mean nothing to me. When I’m not in a hurry or focused on a particular project, I occasionally pause and think about the person who might have read the book hundreds of years ago and felt strongly enough about it that they wanted to mark it as their own and add their name to the book’s history. I wonder how these books shaped their ideas about the world in which they lived.
Cadillacs and Conquistadors at the James Ford Bell Library
It is fascinating to see the ways that historical interpretation has changed over time – sometimes due to the discovery of new materials, and sometimes because of societal changes that also altered the perspectives of historians. Ideas about the explorers of the so-called “Age of Discovery” are a case in point.