Beloit College Magazine

Anyone who thinks a college library serves only as a base for solitary study should have been at Beloit last fall.

Between student projects, a faculty lecture series, and an unveiling of the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation, the Morse Library pulsed with activity.

Driven by an exhibit of 30 rare books and documents on loan from the Remnant Trust, Inc., the library became a weekly gathering place for discussions that focused on the loaned books and titles in the College’s special collection.

Among the books on loan, which spanned five centuries, were an 1806 edition of the Koran (the first printing in America), a leather-bound, six-volume set of The Iliad, a copy of Summa Theologie, by Thomas Aquinas—printed in 1475 and one of only three in existence—and dozens of other titles.

Copies of the Declaration of Independence and the Emancipation Proclamation, both exceedingly rare, were a highly visible part of the loaned exhibit. Shown in display cases at the entrance to the library, they were the only two items in the collection that remained behind glass.

The lender stipulated that all other volumes and documents be available for handling, reflecting the Indiana-based foundation’s notion that the books, while valuable as artifacts, are most notable for the ideas they contain.

“The artifact quality of a book or document—say, a book owned by someone who heard Patrick Henry speak—is a teaser to get people interested,” says Kris Bex, president of the Remnant Trust. “We think the real value of our collection is in the content. We’re interested in the ideas and the thoughtful discussions they inspire.”

The Remnant Trust holds more than 600 titles, which they have been lending to select colleges, universities, public libraries, and secondary and prep schools since 1997. Titles from the collection, built over the past 10 to 15 years from a variety of sources, circulate to several schools each semester.

President Burris learned of the Remnant Trust collection and secured it for Beloit, working with a committee of faculty and staff that planned two years for its arrival.

The availability of the rare books and documents allowed the College to build on a strong tradition of engaging students in research using primary resources, says Charlotte Slocum, director of the Morse Library.

“One of the library’s major goals has been to develop the ‘library-as-laboratory’ concept,” Slocum says. Initially, these efforts were in response to requests from the history department, but Slocum points out that faculty members teaching in many academic disciplines incorporate archival and special collections resources into their courses.

“This idea has struck a chord with faculty and students, and the library has redoubled its efforts to build the Archives and special collections, extend more of these materials into the classroom, and raise awareness about what the College holds,” Slocum says. “The rare book exhibit helped take the library in this new direction.”

Students in Assistant Professor of History Ellen Joyce’s history workshop, for instance, have been using archival materials since Joyce began assigning a major archival research project in the spring of 2002. It makes use of primary sources in the library’s holdings like diaries, travel memoirs and letters, many of which were written by Beloit’s earliest teachers and students.

“The project requires students to copy and type large chunks of text and to research people, places, and things that are mentioned in the documents for footnotes they create,” Joyce says. They also write introductory essays about the sources and their value as historical documents.

A couple of students have tackled additional special projects related to this assignment, including one that involved editing a complete diary that was kept by a Beloit alumnus who fought in the Civil War.

Chuck Lewis, associate professor of English and director of the College Writing Program, says he’s a big believer in making new students aware of all resources and opportunities available to them on campus. So, while he did not assign a major project related to the Remnant Trust books or the special collection, his first-semester writing seminar students visited the library to learn about the books and experience them as physical objects in a “touch and talk” session. They also researched select loaned titles (including market values of comparable editions) and incorporated them into their discussions about notions of originality, authenticity, and value (the seminar was called Facsimiles, Fakes and Frauds).

“In a course about ‘the real thing,’” says Lewis, “it was a great chance for the students to hold something in their own hands that suggested how these concepts present historical, economic, intellectual, and artistic concerns.”

Talking About Books

A faculty series inspired by the books on loan invited the public to attend a dozen discussions over the course of the semester.

Many visitors came to Beloit for the first time to see the collection and attend lectures ranging from a discussion of intellectual heresy and the Bible in the Middle Ages (by Prof. Joyce), to a presentation about Galileo through the eyes of his daughter (by Andrea Cox, assistant professor of physics and astronomy), to an examination of some of John Locke’s ideas (by Gary Cook, Hales Professor of Ethics and professor of philosophy).

Of course, any of these lectures could have taken place without the books in residence. But when Cook finished presenting his talk during Homecoming Weekend, for example, it was difficult not to be moved by the chance to leaf through a 1690 edition of An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, only a thin cotton glove separating the title page—with John Locke’s signature on it—from the fingertips.

Most faculty presentations focused on the loaned items, but several drew attention to books that are available year-round in the College collection. Professor of English John Rosenwald’s lecture on William Morris and the Kelmscott Press reminded everyone that the College owns a fine quality facsimile of the Kelmscott Chaucer, described by Rosenwald as “one of the three or four most lovely books ever printed.”

Kosta Hadavas, associate professor of classics, presented two lectures in the series: one focused on The Illiad, among the Remnant Trust titles; the other was a discussion of the Nuremberg Chronicle, printed in 1493 and second only to the Gutenberg Bible in terms of best-known books printed before 1500, notes Hadavas. The College has a copy of the illuminated volume in its special collection, a gift from former trustee George Parker.

Paul Gehl, curator at the Newberry Library in Chicago, visited classes and delivered a keynote address at Beloit as part of the fall book series. Among Beloit’s connections to the Newberry, one of the world’s greatest research libraries, is an active off-campus study semester, available each fall to students.

Gehl, whose expertise is on the history of printing from the 15th to 18th century and the book trade in continental Europe, discussed people’s changing attitudes toward books over time. Surrounded by books with so much historical significance, an audience member asked the inevitable question of Gehl: “What kind of relationship will people have with books in the future?”

“People working in libraries are witnessing an information revolution in which whole classes of books will become obsolete in print,” Gehl replied. He added that he believes the number of smaller print runs will explode, resulting in a proliferation of titles, but fewer books.

“Printing will change in our lifetimes,” says Gehl. “But that does not mean we will stop loving books.”

Sharing One of Beloit’s Treasures

Last spring, Associate Professor of Classics Kosta Hadavas asked Aaron Wenzel’03 (now in the Ohio State University graduate program in classics) to explore the College’s museums and library holdings for materials that were rare and interesting and showed promise for use in classics courses.

Wenzel returned with news of the library’s copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle, a lavishly illustrated history of the world, printed in 1493, in the German city of the same name. Its primary claim to fame is its outstanding wood cut illustrations, which are hand-colored in the College’s edition.

Hadavas decided to use the Chronicle rather extensively in his Latin Paleography class, where students are translating sections of the Latin text and relating accompanying images to the translations.

“There is often a symbiotic relationship between texts and images in the Chronicle,” Hadavas explains. The assignment is challenging, he adds, and diverges from most studies of the famous book, which typically focus on its art.

But Hadavas didn’t stop there.

Realizing the good fortune of having such a resource to teach with, Hadavas decided to create a digital version of the Nuremberg Chronicle, effectively sharing it with the rest of the world.

“There was no digital version on the World Wide Web, and I wanted to create an electronic edition that teachers and students in Latin, art history, and Medieval/Renaissance studies could make extensive use of in their classes,” he says.

Since last April, with the assistance of a group of students and staff, Hadavas has led efforts to create the first digital version of the 500-year-old book. The work involves photographing the text, designing the Web site, and crafting commentaries and other supporting materials that will aid users in navigating and understanding the online version.

Hadavas says the Chronicle is an important book for many reasons. “It provides vivid testimony to the bookmaker’s art at the time of its creation, but even more significantly, it offers an extraordinary look at a late 15th century world view.”

“The Chronicle is a history book, but one that can no longer exist in our modern, post-Enlightenment world,” says Hadavas. “It is a curiosity, in one sense, but also a powerful tool that demonstrates how educated individuals in the late Middle Ages/early Renaissance organized the new—and often conflicting—ideas of their expanding and rapidly changing world with respect to their bifurcated past (Judeo-Christian vs. Greco-Roman), their present (the last vestiges of Medieval thought), and their future (the emerging Humanism).”

Beloit’s copy of the Nuremberg Chronicle can be found online at www.beloit.edu/nuremberg.

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