Collection highlights, news about acquisitions, events and exhibits, and behind-the-scenes looks at the work and services of Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC) at Notre Dame.
We join with The Library of Congress, National Archives and Records Administration, National Endowment for the Humanities, National Gallery of Art, National Park Service, Smithsonian Institution and United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in paying tribute to the generations of African Americans who struggled with adversity to achieve full citizenship in American society.
“Play Ball With Jackie”: Unboxing the Jackie Robinson Doll for Black History Month
In recognition of Black History Month, Rare Books and Special Collections is pleased to highlight its recent acquisition of the Jackie Robinson Doll, a 13-inch plastic composition doll of the baseball icon manufactured by the Allied-Grand Doll Manufacturing Company of Brooklyn, N.Y. in 1950.
The moveable and posable doll was sold fully accessorized with Robinson’s complete Brooklyn Dodgers uniform, miniature baseball equipment, and other accompanying commemorative items. The Jackie Robinson Doll was one of the earliest realistic African American dolls aimed at the general mainstream toy market and was a testament to the popularity and importance of Robinson, who several years earlier had famously broken major league baseball’s long-standing color line against Black players.
Despite Robinson’s widespread celebrity, the Jackie Robinson Doll was unusual on toystore shelves in 1950. Although African American designers and companies had long made dolls specifically targeted at the Black community, most mainstream American toy manufacturers at the time did not create realistic dolls depicting African Americans. As historian Rob Goldberg explains in his book Radical Play: Revolutionizing Children’s Toys in 1960s and 1970s America for most of the early twentieth century there had “been a painful history of demeaning representations and unjust exclusions of African Americans by the nearly all-white producers of mass-market toys” (page 86).
The story of the Jackie Robinson Doll began after the 1949 season when Robinson had won the National League’s Most Valuable Player Award. Over that winter, Robinson sought opportunities for extra income—especially during the off season—to support his growing family. He partnered with entertainment lawyer Martin Stone in hopes of capitalizing on his success and popularity to supplement his baseball salary. As later explained in a 1951 New York Herald Tribune article: “One day in 1949, Jackie Robinson walked into his [Martin Stone’s] penthouse office and wondered how he could make some money during the winter—up to then he’d been selling television sets in the off-season.”
Within the next couple of years, Robinson and Stone built a successful marketing campaign that produced the Hollywood motion picture The Jackie Robinson Story, a series of six Jackie Robinson comic books (featured in a previous RBSC blog post), the Jackie Robinson Radio Show broadcast on New York’s WNBC, t-shirts, and, in total, “about thirty franchises,” according to the Herald Tribune.
The Jackie Robinson Doll, which was sold individually or as a packaged set with the first issue of the recently published Jackie Robinson comic book, was another popular branded item that received considerable public attention. The doll was one of only a handful of items mentioned by name in a March 1950 newspaper article, “Toy Fair Opened; 100,000 Items for the Yule Trade on View.”
Advertisements from 1950 Alabama Tribune (left) and 1950 Harrisburg Patriot-News (right).
Toy dealers widely advertised the doll in newspapers around the country. An ad in the Alabama Tribune, an African American newspaper in Montgomery, Alabama, informed potential customers: “Here he is! Jackie Robinson in doll form dressed in his Dodger’s uniform. Doll comes boxed with ball bat, sweatshirt, baseball game, and the life story of the great hero!” Similarly, the Harrisburg (Pa.) Patriot-News daily newspaper ran an ad for the local Bill’s department store that described Robinson as “America’s Favorite Athlete.” The store declared, “First time in Harrisburg … everybody can have a doll of America’s Athletic hero.” In May 1950, the Associated Negro Press reported that the Jackie Robinson doll was even in stock at the famous Macy’s department store in New York City.
RBSC’s example of the Jackie Robinson doll apparently includes all of the original accessories that accompanied the doll. Housed in its original 15X15 inch square cardboard box, the doll wears a Brookyln Dodgers hat and jersey, uniform pants, socks, and shoes. The set also includes a wooden bat with a facsimile of Robinson’s signature, a promotional tag shaped like a glove, a plastic ball, a copy of the Jackie Robinson comic book, and a simple spinner-based Jackie Robinson baseball game.
The Jackie Robinson Doll is open and available to researchers during regular RBSC business hours. So stop by if you would like to “Play Ball with Jackie!”
Sources Cited
Tex McCrary and Jinx Falkenburg, “New York Up Close: Martin Stone, Lawyer in Show Business,” New York Herald Tribune 30 July, 1951, p. 7.
“Toy Fair Opened; 100,000 Items for the Yule Trade on View,” New York Herald Tribune 7 March 1950, p. 23.
“Jackie Robinson Doll and Life Story!” [advertisement], Alabama Tribune 15 December 1950, p. 6.
“Bill’s” [advertisement], Harrisburg Patriot News 2 July 1950, p. 44.
“Robinson Dolls at Macys,” [Lincoln, Nebraska] The Voice 6 May 1950, p. 3.
Title page of book, printed in Venice by Melchiorre Sessa in 1516. It displays the characteristic printer’s device of the Sessa family, while the imprint and publication date are given in the colophon, as was common for early printed books.
Pliny the Elder’s Naturalis Historia (Natural History) is one of the most important books to survive from the ancient world. Written in the first century CE, it is the earliest surviving encyclopedia and one of the most ambitious works of knowledge ever attempted. In thirty-seven books, Pliny gathered information on astronomy, geography, anthropology, zoology, botany, pharmacology, mineralogy, and art, drawing on hundreds of Greek and Roman sources as well as his own observations (Siegfried, 2023). For more than a thousand years, this work shaped how Europeans understood the natural world.
Pliny believed that knowledge should be practical and widely shared. His encyclopedia was not meant only for philosophers, but for farmers, physicians, craftsmen, and administrators. Although modern science has corrected many of his claims, Natural History remained a foundational reference throughout the Middle Ages and the Renaissance because it compiled and preserved ancient learning that would otherwise have been lost (Stannard, 2026).
Pliny’s commitment to understanding nature is reflected in the dramatic circumstances of his death. In 79 CE, while serving as commander of the Roman fleet at Misenum, he witnessed the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Instead of fleeing, Pliny sailed closer, both to observe the phenomenon and possibly to help people trapped along the coast. He died during the eruption, most likely from poisonous gases. Our knowledge of this event comes from letters written by his nephew, Pliny the Younger, who provided the only surviving eyewitness account of the destruction of Pompeii and Herculaneum and narrated the story of a scholar who sacrificed his life in the pursuit of knowledge (Open Culture, 2022).
Woodcut marking the opening of Book II, which is centered on topics such as astronomy and meteorology.
Pliny’s influence continued through the centuries. During the Renaissance, his encyclopedia was rediscovered, printed, and translated for new audiences. A key figure in this renewed interest was Cristoforo Landino, a humanist scholar who translated Natural History from Latin into the Florentine dialect, which is the foundation of modern Italian. By making the text available in the vernacular as early as 1476, Landino allowed readers without formal knowledge of Latin to engage with ancient science and natural history (Ashworth, 2021). Landino’s translation reflects a broader effort, supported by the recent introduction of movable-type printing, to make learning more accessible beyond universities and monasteries.
Woodcut marking the opening of Book III. Books III–VI focus on geography and ethnography, while Book VII is devoted to anthropology.
Early printed editions of Pliny’s work were often richly illustrated with woodcuts. These images served a dual purpose. On one level, they decorated the book making it more appealing to readers and, at times, marking the transition between sections. On another, more important level, they helped readers visualize the animals, plants, and places described in the text. In a time when direct observation was becoming increasingly valued, woodcuts acted as visual tools for understanding nature, even when the images were imperfect or imaginative. These illustrations show how early modern readers tried to reconcile ancient texts with what they could see in the real world (Dlabacová, 2018).
Woodcuts marking the openings of the four books devoted to zoology (Books VIII–XI).
Even more revealing than the printed images are the handwritten notes left by readers in the margins. Marginal annotations show that Natural History was not treated as an unquestionable authority. Readers compared Pliny’s descriptions with their own experience and observation, added new information, and sometimes corrected or expanded the text. For modern scholars, these annotations provide rare insight into how early readers interacted with scientific texts.
The copy of Pliny’s Natural History held at the University of Notre Dame offers a remarkable example of this practice. In the margins, a reader describes a giant sea turtle caught by fishermen off the coast of Lisbon. The annotator states that the animal, which measured approximately seven and a half feet long and nine feet wide, was initially believed by some people to be a sea monster and records that it was presented to the king of Portugal. The reader also reports having seen the animal firsthand and identifies it with the turtle described by Pliny on the same page where the annotation appears.
Illustration of a turtle and the annotation on folios LIXv and LXr, at the page where Pliny discusses these animals in Chapter IX (on aquatic animals).
Text of the annotation and translation:
“Nel anno MDXXXXII nel mese di Aprile i piscatori olysiponesi presero sul mare oceano una testuggine la quale io stesso vidi & disegnai come si vede qui acanto; era lungha piedi sette e mezo, larga d’un corno ad altro (ouer’ alle) piedi noue / hauea il guscio amodo di liuto, il color nero, insomma fatta in tuto come qui discriue Plinio negli Tragloditi trouarsene. Ma credetero alcuni ch[e] no[n] fosse testuggine ma altro animale o mostro marino prodotto dal mare, della parte di sotto era di biancho e nero machiatta, era assai bruta & mirabile & fu portata inanzi il sereniss[imo] RE di portoguesi.”
In the year 1542, in the month of April, the fishermen of Lisbon caught in the ocean sea a turtle, which I myself saw and drew, as can be seen here beside this text. It was seven and a half feet long, and nine feet wide from one horn (or fin?) to the other. It had a shell shaped like a lute, black in color; in short, it was made entirely as Pliny describes the turtles found among the Troglodytes. However, some believed that it was not a turtle, but another animal or a sea monster produced by the sea. Underneath it was spotted white and black, it was quite ugly and remarkable, and it was brought before his serene highness the King of Portugal.
Alongside this annotation are three detailed drawings of this creature, likely a leatherback turtle, placed directly next to the relevant passage in Pliny’s encyclopedia. Elsewhere in the margins, a reader drew the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza, next to the section of the book with Pliny’s descriptions of these monuments. These drawings and the numerous annotations, in more than one language and likely from multiple hands, found in various sections of the book, show how readers used both text and image to connect ancient knowledge with contemporary experience.
Drawings of the Sphinx and the Pyramids of Giza (Book XXXVI – leaf CCXLVIII). Books XXXIII-XXXVII cover materials and applied arts, highlighting the role of minerals and stones in making metalwork, statues, sculpture, and gemstones.
Together, the translation, woodcuts, and marginal annotations reveal how Natural History functioned as a living book. Pliny’s encyclopedia was not only read, it was questioned, illustrated, updated, and personalized. These traces remind us that knowledge is shaped through the interplay of texts, images, and lived experience.
For modern researchers, books like this are invaluable. They reveal not only what people knew about the natural world, but how knowledge was shared over time. Marginal notes document early attempts to identify species and reconcile classical authorities with new discoveries from travel and exploration. The presence of drawings alongside text shows how observation and visual evidence became central to scientific understanding. Preserved in Special Collections, volumes like Pliny’s Natural History remain essential sources for understanding how modern scientific thinking emerged and why the dialogue between past knowledge and present observation still matters today.
Join Professor Guyda Armstrong (University of Manchester) and Dr Giles Bergel (University of Oxford) for an interactive workshop showcasing new digital methods for studying early modern printing. This session will introduce the research questions and first findings of Envisioning Dante c. 1472-1630: Seeing and Reading the Early Printed Page, funded by the UK government (c. £1 million; 2022-25). Participants will be given practical, hands-on demonstrations of the techniques and new digital tools developed by the project for analyzing and comparing early printed books.
This exhibition highlights stories of survival, contemplation, competition, protest, and learning, from six distinct collections in Rare Books and Special Collections. Each section, presented by a different subject curator, focuses on an example of how people over time and in different places, construct community and cultivate hope.
Curated by Rachel Bohlmann, Ph.D. (Curator, American History and American Studies), Gregory Bond, Ph.D. (Curator, Joyce Sports Research Collection), David T. Gura, Ph.D. (Curator, Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts), Matthew Knight, Ph.D. (Irish Studies Librarian and Curator), Natasha Lyandres (Curator, Rare Books & Special Collections), and Payton Phillips Quintanilla, Ph.D. (Librarian and Curator for Latin American and Iberian Studies).
This and other exhibits within the Hesburgh Libraries are generously supported by the McBrien Special Collections Endowment.
Rare Books and Special Collections welcomes students, faculty, staff, researchers, and visitors back to campus for Spring ’26! Here are some things to watch for in Special Collections during the coming semester.
Special Collections Welcomed a New Postdoctoral Research Associate during the Fall 2025 Semester
Ruben Celani (Photo by Matt Cashore / University of Notre Dame)
Ruben Celani, Ph.D., joined the Hesburgh Libraries in October as a postdoctoral research associate in Italian Studies and Zahm Dante Collection curatorial fellow. He works in Rare Books & Special Collections as a subject liaison for Italian studies and curator of the Libraries’ extensive rare Italian collections, while also pursuing his own academic research.
Prior to joining the Hesburgh Libraries, Celani served as an adjunct lecturer in the Department of Literary Studies at Ghent University in Belgium. He holds a Ph.D. from Ghent University in Literary Studies with specialization in Italian Studies, as well as a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Archival and Library Sciences from the University of Rome “La Sapienza.” Ruben has experience working in libraries in Rome, The Hague, and Antwerp.
This exhibition highlights stories of survival, contemplation, competition, protest, and learning, from six distinct collections in Rare Books and Special Collections. Each section, presented by a different subject curator, focuses on an example of how people over time and in different places, construct community and cultivate hope.
Curated by Rachel Bohlmann, Ph.D. (Curator, American History and American Studies), Gregory Bond, Ph.D. (Curator, Joyce Sports Research Collection), David T. Gura, Ph.D. (Curator, Ancient and Medieval Manuscripts), Matthew Knight, Ph.D. (Irish Studies Librarian and Curator), Natasha Lyandres (Curator, Rare Books & Special Collections), and Payton Phillips Quintanilla, Ph.D. (Librarian and Curator for Latin American and Iberian Studies).
In honor of Dr. Martin Luther King Day (January 19th), the birthday of Jackie Robinson (January 31st), and Black History Month (February), Rare Books and Special Collections is pleased to highlights examples from its collection of souvenir fan pennants from the Negro Baseball Leagues. The colorful collectible felt souvenir pennants represent leading Black baseball teams of the 1930s and 1940s and feature large screen-printed graphics of African American baseball players in action.
Curated by Gregory Bond (Curator of the Joyce Sports Research Collection).
Created across multiple centuries, geographies, and cultures, pre-Hispanic clay sellos (flat and cylindrical stamps and seals) are celebrated as the earliest manifestation of Mesoamerican print culture. This cross-repository Spotlight Exhibit presents a selection of sellos stewarded by the Raclin Murphy Museum of Art; two emblematic publications of sello designs, preserved in the Hesburgh Libraries’ Rare Books and Special Collections; and contemporary examples of sello-inspired visual arts.
Curated by Payton Phillips-García Quintanilla (Librarian and Curator for Latin American and Iberian Studies).
These and other exhibits within the Hesburgh Libraries are generously supported by the McBrien Special Collections Endowment.All exhibits are free and open to the public during regular hours.
Special Collections’ Classes & Workshops
Throughout the semester, curators will teach sessions related to our holdings to undergraduate and graduate students from Notre Dame, Saint Mary’s College, and Holy Cross College. Curators may also be available to show special collections to visiting classes, from preschool through adults. If you would like to arrange a group visit and class with a curator, please contact Special Collections.
Rare Books and Special Collections is open this week through Friday, December 19, 2025. However, the reading room will be closed on Thursday and Friday (December 18–19). Over the holiday break, the department will be closed from Monday, December 22, 2025, through Friday, January 2, 2026, in observance of the campus-wide holiday break for all faculty, staff, and students.
RBSC will reopen on Monday, January 5, while the reading room will reopen on Wednesday, January 7, 2026. It’s always best to make an appointment if you plan to visit us.
This is the last blog post for 2025. Happy Holidays to you and yours from Notre Dame’s Rare Books and Special Collections!
Page from “An American Original” by Carol Stevens (Print magazine, v. 42 no. 1, 1988), showing the use of the above illustration as an advertisement.
As a final installment of our look at the materials in the Special Collections’ Edward Gorey Collection (EPH 5004) in recognition of the centenary of Edward Gorey’s birth and the 25th anniversary of his death, we turn to some of his Christmas images.
Gorey created title pages and book covers, greeting cards, advertisements, magazine articles, and even a book he authored and illustrated himself (The Haunted Tea-Cosy: A Dispirited and Distasteful Diversion for Christmas, published in 1997). An illustration of the last three verses from the Twelve Days of Christmas was used as a holiday subscription advertisement for The New York Times—our holdings include a poster of the illustration alone, as well as an issue of Print magazine from 1988 that includes a reproduction of the ad in an article about Gorey.
197519791981
Over the years, Gorey designed various Christmas cards. Above are three of the limited run cards he created with Albondocani Press (only four hundred to four hundred and fifty copies printed). These cards were not sold at the time, but rather were “to be used as a holiday greeting by the artist and publisher.”
In 1979, with royalties from the New York Dracula production, Gorey purchased a home in Yarmouth Port, Massachusetts, traveling there for the summers from the one-room apartment he rented in Manhattan, close to his publishers and the New York City Ballet. In 1983, he left New York City to live there exclusively. Below are two card sets from 1989-1990 featuring illustrations by Gorey and sold to raise funds for “Cape Cod’s neediest citizens during this holiday season”.
Since July 2015, when we first welcomed readers to the Rare Books and Special Collections blog, we have enjoyed using this forum to tell readers about recently acquired and newly described items, as well as well-known materials and hidden gems. We publish posts to help you—our readers—better know who we are and what we do, and we provide regular updates on exhibitions and events hosted by RBSC.
To mark the ten-year anniversary of our blog, we have selected a few of the 471 posts we have published so far, written by a variety of curators, librarians, and guest authors. Continue scrolling to find a sample of interesting topics from our second five years.
The tag “RBSC scholars” gathers posts relating to, and sometimes by, the people who do their research within Notre Dame’s Special Collections. (A sometimes related category are posts in the Category “Instruction and Class Visits.”)
In her speech to celebrate the opening of Christine Dunlap Farnham’s Archive at Brown University, feminist historian Joan Wallach Scott reflected on the lack of attention to women’s personal collections and archives that memorialize their lives.1 The exhibit “Social Media Networks in the 19th and 20th Centuries: The Albums of Esmeralda Cervantes, Teresa Puelma de Orrego, Luz de Sagaceta, María Enriqueta Camarillo,” recently installed in Rare Books and Special Collections (Hesburgh Libraries, University of Notre Dame), seeks to build on Scott’s insights by highlighting women’s friendship albums and scrapbooks as vital historical documents that deserve a place on display.
Curated by members of the upper-level Spanish course “Women’s Culture in 19th Century Latin America” at the University of Notre Dame, this exhibit focuses on preserving and showing the importance of women’s stories through material culture. In this course, we explore the cultural and intellectual contributions of women in 19th- and early 20th-century Latin America, examining how gender shaped ideas of citizenship, sexuality, and education in post-independence societies. Among our study of literature, periodicals, and other women’s public interventions, albums emerge as a novel object for understanding 19th- and 20th-century sociability.
19th century albums were typically blank books that served as repositories for various collectible objects and writings. For women, in particular, albums were a crucial medium for engaging with writing and visual culture, shaping identity, and creating bonds outside the domestic sphere. Pages within the albums vary in content, including personal letters, poetry, pieces of artwork, and autographs, among others. Each album serves as a tangible representation of the illustrious life of the woman who curated it.
As part of the coursework, we were also introduced to the fascinating world of Rare Books and Special Collections, a space that allowed us to work hands-on with the friendship albums and scrapbooks of four women from the 19th and early 20th century Hispanic world held at the Notre Dame’s archives: Esmeralda Cervantes, Luz de Sagaceta, Maria Enriqueta Camarillo, and Teresa Puelma de Orrego.
Researching them revealed a challenging but fruitful journey. We found that women’s stories were poorly cataloged or entirely absent from historical archives, while the information on similar works of male counterparts from their time were easily accessible through a simple Google search. This lack of documentation is not accidental but rather revealing of a greater theme: the historical discrimination of women in academic spaces and historical accounts, even among elite women. Traditional academia has undervalued their work, and left it outside of the literary canon. Our research, however, reveals the profound importance of their activities in shaping the culture and politics of their era. By reconstructing women’s stories through their friendship albums and scrapbooks, objects often dismissed as trivial or not relevant outside the private sphere, we engage in an act of recovery and critical analysis. Each page becomes evidence of an intellectual world that has always existed but was never fully recognized. Our goal is not simply to display their work but to restore women’s historical presence by centering the very objects and writings that belonged to them.
Album coverFirst page of the album signed by Argentine writer Adolfo Mitre during Cervantes’s visit to Buenos Aires.Letter signed by Spanish writer and feminist Emilia Serrano, who was also traveling in Latin America during Cervantes’s tour.Album amicorum de Esmeralda Cervantes, 1875-1877 (MSH/LAT 0094)
The album belonging to Clotilde Cerdá (1861–1926), better known by her artistic name, Esmeralda Cervantes, meticulously documents her highly publicized Latin American tour between 1875 and 1877. Born in Barcelona, she had achieved renown across Europe as a prodigious harpist by the age of fourteen. The prominent selection of “Esmeralda” rather than “Clotilde” to be hand-embroidered on the album’s center signifies her wish to delineate her professional trajectory from her private identity, asserting that she be primarily remembered for her musical accomplishments. Though the velvet cover has faded with time, the enclosed collection of drawings, poems, and dedicatory letters—all paying homage to her—preserves the intellectual and artistic worldview she cultivated through her art.
Album coverPoem in English with botanic motifs adorning the page. Albums were usually multilingual and spoke of the transnational connections of their owners.Album amicorum de Teresa Puelma de Orrego, 1851-1893 (MSH/LAT 0119)
The album of Teresa Puelma de Orrego, who was born in Santiago de Chile in 1861, offers a glimpse into the upper-class world of Chile during the 19th century. She was the daughter of an aristocratic family and lived most of her life in Chile. Her album contains a collection of letters and signatures from prominent politicians and generals, family mementos, and prayers in French, English, and Spanish. Notable entries include a condolence letter from Chilean President Jorge Montt and a hand-drawn map of the War of the Pacific (1879–1884), fought between Chile and an alliance of Peru and Bolivia and originated from a territorial dispute. The album itself is highly ornate: the cover is made of thick dark green fabric with her name embroidered in gold thread on the front. There is little information about her other than what exists in this album, inviting us to “read” the silences surrounding her as part of the historical record itself, and work to fill in those silences with our own original research.
Album coverPainting by Roberto MontenegroPoem by Jesús Valenzuela, 1904Album de recuerdos de la Señorita Luz Sagaceta, 1904-1905 (MSH/LAT 0095)
Luz Sagaceta was born in 1886 in Mexico City and was eighteen years old when her album was assembled. Through newspapers and the works in her album, we know that she was part of Mexico’s Porfirian elite. As members of this social class, she and her family were well-known enough to be noted in print culture and had the means to travel. Her album reveals the privilege she possessed, a privilege few women enjoyed: the opportunity to create an album, a subtle space of authorship. Luz’s album includes contributions from authors such as Jesus E. Valenzuela, Amado Nervo, Ruben M. Campos, and Jesus Urueta. These authors dedicated poems to her; some were inspired by Luz’ beauty, while others addressed topics of personal significance, such as the important women in their lives. This demonstrates that Luz had sufficient significance for them to offer genuine, personal tributes.
Album coverTitle page of the first volumeClippings of portrait and literary profile of the author published in the literary journal Album de Damas, Mexico, 1908.Juicios de prensa acerca de María Enriqueta y de sus libros: recortes y copias de opiniones publicadas en diarios y revistas de varios países, 1897-1940 (MSH/LAT 0118, t. 1-3)
Maria Enriqueta Camarillo, a celebrated Mexican novelist, poet, translator, and educator, used her meticulously kept albums to showcase her multifaceted talents, intellectual collaborations, and commitment to community, offering an analogue to contemporary social media. These collections, filled with her work, scholarly praise, sketches, and photographs, functioned as social connectors, highlighting her versatility, her international image, and the significant professional and personal relationships that were central to her life and Mexican culture. For the modern reader, engaging with Camarillo’s scattered yet beautiful albums provides an invaluable perspective—a welcome into a 19th-century life that otherwise might not have been fully told—and serves as a formative lesson in accepting historical complexity and narrative ambiguity rather than seeking immediate, structured answers.
Exploring the lives of these women through their albums was an enlightening experience. As a class, we were able to travel back in time to learn about their lives and gain insight into the society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first step of this process was reading about our albums from materials provided in class. Then, we had the chance to step outside of the classroom and into Special Collections to work with the physical albums. Working closely with library staff, curators, and specialists allowed us to fully immerse ourselves in the materiality of women’s archives. We gained tangible access to the lives of these women, feeling the texture of the album fabrics and carefully turning their pages.
Curating the physical exhibit proved equally enriching, as we took ownership of every step: from item selection and display design to writing introductory texts and labels—a long process requiring intensive collaboration with library specialists. This hands-on experience transformed us from simple student observers into the main actors of a historical recovery project, contributing to something larger that the audience would later enjoy.
The influence of these albums is still evident today in the digital tools and platforms we use to curate and preserve our own memories. Digital content, including posts on Instagram and videos on YouTube, effectively creates a personal digital archive—a collection of memories that visually represents an individual’s most significant social ties and interests, essentially acting as a form of “writing with scissors,” as coined by Ellen Gruber Garvey. While the medium has transformed from handwritten cursive to the digital scrapbook, the fundamental purpose—to preserve selfhood and community—endures, allowing these personal archives to leave a lasting impact on all who encounter them.
The project extended this hands-on approach to a general audience through the “Create Your Own Album Page” activity held on specific dates. This initiative has been a great source of direct and immediate feedback from visitors, including library staff, faculty, and students. Their most frequent reaction has been surprise and delight that the archives are not only part of an undergraduate class but also the inspiration for a collective and participatory project.
With this activity, the archives are truly brought to life. Our proposal of thinking of the albums as the precedent of social media creates a more direct, intimate connection with every visitor: guests are invited to contribute their own unique page to a communal album. Contributions have spanned songs, original poems, verses by renowned writers in various languages, thoughtful collages, dedications to loved ones, and letters—mirroring the rich and diverse content found in the 19th- and 20th-century albums we studied. Visitors of this exhibit become active participants in the enduring legacy of “writing with scissors,” experiencing firsthand the fundamental human impulse to curate and share selfhood.
Bella Barraza, Isabella Cioffi, Ryan Farrell, Meghan Garrity, Luke Grantz, Sophia Hohman, Marshall Horton, Ella Johnson, Kate Kirwan, Elizabeth Larsen, Felipe Nino, Thomas Phillips, Monica Schleg and Jhoseline Trejo, enrolled in ROSP 40790, Women’s Culture in 19th-Century Latin America, taught byVanesa MiseresPh.D. (Associate Professor, Romance Languages and Literatures).
The Conference first organized in November 1923, when a group of priests, bishops, and laity met in St. Louis, Missouri to address a need for more official church attention to rural Catholics in the United States, as well as the lack of priests and parochial schools in rural parishes. By the 1930s, during the Great Depression, the Conference added concern for social and economic justice, as it promoted solutions to problems of farm tenancy. In 1940 the Conference moved its headquarters to Des Moines, Iowa. Currently, it operates from St. Paul, Minnesota.
This mid-century pamphlet provides prayers and biblical readings that farm families could use throughout Thanksgiving day. One prayer, composed by Archbishop John Carroll in 1791, was “For Church and State,” another was “A Farmer’s Prayer of Thanksgiving.” The publication ended with a novena in honor of St. Isidore, “the patron of all farmers and rural people.”
This exhibit traces the global journey of Dante’s masterpiece through rare and valuable printed editions, highlighting how translators, artists, and printers have popularized and reshaped the Commedia. These volumes reveal a dynamic dialogue between Dante’s poetry and the world. A global literary perspective transforms Dante from a monumental yet isolated figure of the European Middle Ages into a central presence in the ongoing international conversation about humanity, the universe, time, eternity, and the power of literature.
This exhibit is curated by Salvatore Riolo (Notre Dame, Italian Studies doctoral candidate), and co-curators Giulia Maria Gliozzi (Notre Dame, Italian Studies doctoral candidate); Inha Park (Notre Dame, Italian Studies doctoral candidate); and Peter Scharer (Yale, Comparative Literature doctoral candidate). Theodore J. Cachey Jr. (Notre Dame) and Jacob Blakesley (Sapienza Università di Roma) served as consultants on the exhibit.
MSH/LAT 0095 (Luz de Sagaceta)
The current spotlight exhibits are Social media networks in the 19th and 20th centuries/ Las redes sociales de los siglos XIX y XX, curated by the students (Bella Barraza, Isabella Cioffi, Ryan Farrell, Meghan Garrity, Luke Grantz, Sophia Hohman, Marshall Horton, Ella Johnson, Kate Kirwan, Elizabeth Larsen, Felipe Nino, Thomas Phillips, Monica Schleg and Jhoseline Trejo) enrolled in ROSP 40790, Women’s Culture in 19th-Century Latin America, taught by Vanesa Miseres Ph.D., and Bibliomania: The Library of Sir Thomas Phillipps, curated by Anne Elise Crafton (2024-2025 Rare Books and Special Collections Postdoctoral Research Fellow).
All exhibits are free and open to the public during business hours.
RBSC will be closed December 2 from 11:00am–2:30pm for the Hesburgh Libraries and ND Press Christmas Luncheon, and during the University of Notre Dame’s Christmas Break, December 24, 2025–January 2, 2026.
Rare Books and Special Collections is pleased to highlight its recent acquisition of the George Koyt Short Track Motor Racing Photographs Collection (MSSP 10150). Consisting of 459 photographs from the 1970s through the 1990s, the Koyt Collection visually documents short track and/or dirt track motor racing tracks mostly in small towns and cities around the United States. Shot over the course of three decades by racing enthusiast and avid amateur photographer George Koyt, some photographs feature the racing action on the track, but many of the images focus instead on the racetrack as place. Koyt’s images tend to center the physical structures of the tracks, the signage at the tracks, and the crowds of fans who attended the races. Koyt’s vernacular photographs provide an enduring and substantial visual record of the culture and the built environment at hundreds of the small-town and local racing tracks that dotted the countryside in the late twentieth century.
George Arthur Koyt (1939-2010) lived most of his life in Bucks County Pennsylvania where he worked as an auto mechanic and was a well-known collector of motor sports memorabilia and a respected amateur historian of auto racing. George and his wife Margaret were both fans of short track and dirt track racing, and they were regular attendees at several different tracks in southeastern Pennsylvania and central New Jersey. Starting in at least the 1970s, the Koyts also frequently traveled to visit local race tracks in different parts of the country. George Koyt’s camera documented their experiences at more than one hundred local tracks in 27 states and one Canadian province.
During his travels, Koyt routinely photographed racetrack signs. These sample images from the collection provide a sense of the different types of signage at local tracks in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s.
Macon Speedway, Macon, Illinois, 1989 (MSSP 10150-11)West Central Speedway, Fergus Falls, Minnesota, 1982 (MSSP 10150-38)Southern Speedway, Altamahaw, North Carolina, 1980 (MSSP 10150-52)Cedar Lake Speedway, Cedar Lake, Wisconsin, 1989 (MSSP 10150-96)
Koyt also regularly photographed the structures at racetracks, taking pictures of admission booths, spectator stands, judging booths, and other buildings.
Rockford Speedway, Rockford, Illinois, 1989 (MSSP 10150-12)Capitol Speedway, Plymouth, Indiana, 1992 (MSSP 10150-15)St. Francois County Raceway, St. Francois County, Missouri, 1990 (MSSP 10150-41)Schmuckers Speedway, Schmuckers, Pennsylvania, 1976 (MSSP 10150-82)
Koyt also took pictures of the fans and spectators at the racetracks he visited. These images show the people attending the races and document the community who supported tracks in cities around the country.
George Koyt died in 2010 at the age of 71. His dual interests in short track racing and amateur photography helped to preserve the local and grassroots visual history of this persistently popular spectator sport. The George Koyt Short Track Motor Racing Photographs Collection is open and available to researchers.
