From the Stacks: Mosquitoes

Balmy summer weather has finally arrived in Ann Arbor, and the staff at the Clements Library are enjoying the season’s warmth and sunshine. The joys of sipping lemonade in the shade and lounging in hammocks are tempered by the less popular harbingers of...

From the Stacks: Flag Day

By Emiko Hastings, Curator of BooksIn honor of Flag Day, we share a variety of U.S. flag-related imagery from across the Clements Library collections. Flag Day, established by President Woodrow Wilson, in 1916, commemorates the adoption of the flag of the United...

Today in History: The Stamp Act Repeal, March 18, 1766

Guest post by Kayla Carucci, Book Division student assistant and graduate student at the University of Michigan School of Information. With the move from Ellsworth back to campus finally complete, the Clements staff and volunteers grow more excited by the day for the...

From the Stacks: Santa Claus

The Clements staff are busy packing offices and preparing collections for our move back to campus, an all-encompassing task that makes the days pass far too quickly. We take this opportunity to step back from bubble wrap and boxes to reflect on the magic of the...

From the Stacks: Skeletons

With Halloween right around the corner, here at the Clements Library our thoughts have turned to all things spooky that send shivers up your spine. While perhaps not as sinister as ghouls and goblins, the bare human skeleton has a disconcerting effect all its own that...

Palm Trees, Sugar, Slavery, and More

Post by Brian L. Dunnigan, Associate Director and Curator of MapsThe Clements Library is known to historians and scholars of other disciplines as a primary source repository of “Americana” dating between 1492 and 1900. For all too many members of the history and the...

The Carte de Visite Phenomenon

Post by Clayton Lewis, Curator of GraphicsA preoccupation with self-image swept across society when a new technology enabled a flood of inexpensive portrait photographs. The enthusiastic gathering of photographs of friends and public figures and the sharing of them in...

Today in History: Father’s Day

Post by Jayne Ptolemy, Manuscripts Curatorial AssistantIn 1880 William Brunton, a Unitarian minister from Boston, began composing a special diary that recorded the everyday activities of his young son, Herbert, whom he affectionately called Bertie. “It is a work...

Women’s History Month: Women in Men’s Clothing

Post by Jayne Ptolemy, Manuscripts Curatorial AssistantIn mid-July 1860, travelling salesman George P. Slade wrote a letter to a female correspondent about his experiences plying his trade in the Midwest. In his attempts to sell fruit trees, he covered a great deal of...