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University of Chicago Special Collections Research Center The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center is home to the University of Chicago Library's Archives, Rare Books, and Manuscripts.

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From the Collection: Fine Peepshow of Acrobats engraved by Martin Engelbrecht, ca. 1740 Peepshows, also known as tunnel ...
10/19/2026

From the Collection: Fine Peepshow of Acrobats engraved by Martin Engelbrecht, ca. 1740

Peepshows, also known as tunnel books, date back to the 18th century. The hand-colored paper panels are spaced out so a person looking through the hole at the front sees a three-dimensional theatrical scene. Martin Engelbrecht is credited with inventing peepshows along with his brother and fellow engraver, Christian.

This work is featured in our web exhibition "But Is It A Book?". You can view this item and many more in the exhibit from anywhere by following the linktree in our bio and clicking on “Web Exhibits”.

Pictured:
Fine Peepshow of Acrobats
Martin Engelbrecht, engraver
Augsburg: ca. 1740
Purchased on the Celia and Delia Austrian Study Fund
Call Number: GV1525.E64 1740

Upcoming Event: The Kim-Park Program for the Study of the Book is pleased to present a guided exhibition tour of Created...
10/17/2026

Upcoming Event: The Kim-Park Program for the Study of the Book is pleased to present a guided exhibition tour of Created Equal: The Premises and Promises of the Declaration of Independence with Curator Eric Slauter, Deputy Dean of the Humanities.

🗓 Monday, October 26th at 3:30 PM in the Special Collections Exhibition Gallery, Regenstein Library

This program is free and open to all. Advanced registration is strongly recommended.

Learn more and register for free here: CE-CuratorTour.eventbrite.com

About the exhibition:
The Declaration of Independence asserted the revolutionary right of a people to alter or abolish a government, grounding that principle in the “self-evident” claims that “all Men are created Equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights” and “that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness.”

Over time, many readers have come to consider the radical philosophical premises in the Declaration as founding political promises of the United States. In doing so, they transformed an indictment of the British King and a manifesto of secession from the British Empire into an American charter of liberty, equality, and rights.

But the Declaration’s meaning has never been solitary. From the start, readers disagreed about what its authors intended. Since 1776, radically different interpretations of the Declaration’s ideas have been put to different ends—from demands for the legal, political, and social equality of all persons, to claims for the rights of states to secede from the union, to calls for the revolutionary overthrow of the government.

How did the Declaration’s premises become its promises? Drawing on rare materials from the seventeenth century to the present, this exhibition invites you to explore the document’s meanings in its own time, to consider contested interpretations across history, and to reflect on what the Declaration means today.

From the collections for its 100th anniversary: Winnie-the-Pooh first edition copy with the original dust jacketOn this ...
10/14/2026

From the collections for its 100th anniversary: Winnie-the-Pooh first edition copy with the original dust jacket

On this day (October 14th) in 1926, Winnie-the-Pooh by A.A. Milne was published by Methuen & Co in London with illustrations by E.H. Shepard. The book was the debut of not only the honey-loving Pooh Bear but also his friends Piglet, Eeyore, Rabbit, Kanga, Roo, Owl and Christopher Robin.

Milne’s main inspiration for the characters came from his son, Christopher Robin Milne’s stuffed toys. Christopher Robin named his teddy bear Winnie the Pooh after Winnie, a bear at the London Zoo and a swan that the young Milne called Pooh.

Due to the book’s success, a sequel book titled The House at Pooh Corner was published in 1928 and introduced Tigger to the Hundred Acre Wood. The Walt Disney Company acquired the licensing rights to Winnie the Pooh in the 1960s and throughout the decades have released several films and TV shows featuring Pooh and his friends.

Pictured:
Winnie-the Pooh
A. A. Milne & Ernest H. Shepard
London: Methuen & Co., 1926.
Call number: PZ167.M65W5 1926

From the collections: Photograph of a Native Hawaiian weaving Lauhala mats, Island of Hawaiʻi, 1936.The Hala tree is a ...
10/12/2026

From the collections: Photograph of a Native Hawaiian weaving Lauhala mats, Island of Hawaiʻi, 1936.

The Hala tree is a palm-like tree from the Pandanus family found in Hawaiʻi. Dry hala leaves, called Lauhala, are gathered and used by master weavers to craft mats that can be used as a base to make art and other artisan objects such as baskets, jewelry boxes, and hats. While this photo captures a women weaving Luhala in 1936, Luahala weaving is a living art in Hawaiʻi.

Pictured:
Title: Hawaii
Scientific Plant Name: Pandanus tectorius
Common Plant Name: Hala (Hawaiian screwpine)
Photograph Date: 1936
Location: Hawaii County, Hawaii
Collection: University of Chicago Department of Botany Records
Repository: University of Chicago Library, Special Collections Research Center
Image Identifier: apf8-01261

Happy Birthday to Oscar Brown Jr., born October 10th, 1926, in Chicago, IL. Brown passed away in 2005, but today marks t...
10/10/2026

Happy Birthday to Oscar Brown Jr., born October 10th, 1926, in Chicago, IL. Brown passed away in 2005, but today marks the 100th anniversary of his birth.

Brown was a musician, an essayist, poet, playwright, and activist. He is well known for his work in the arts and for promoting and committing to the liberation of the global Black diaspora through philosophy and active initiatives for self-improvement and self-determination. He created his own art form, Dramatic Organizations of Musical Expressions (D.O.M.E.s.), and wrote numerous plays, songs, and poems. Some of his more famous works include Kicks & Co., Big-Time Buck White, Great Nitty Gritty, and Cybersoul.

You can learn more about Oscar Brown Jr. at , thanks to his daughters, Maggie and Africa. They implemented the Oscar Brown, Jr. Archive Project at Logan Center for the Arts and donated his papers to the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center. Their work has continued Brown’s work by sharing his creations, most of which were never published. Oscar Brown Jr.’s legacy continues to live on and be explored.

Pictured is the cover of Oscar Brown Jr.'s book, ‘What It Is’. Released in 2005, ‘What It Is’ is a collection of Brown's poems and opinions.

Pictured:

Brown, Oscar, Jr. Papers, Acc. #2026-085, Box 5, Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago Library.

In honor of Banned Books Week 2026, swipe to see a selection of books in the SCRC Collection that have been banned or ch...
10/09/2026

In honor of Banned Books Week 2026, swipe to see a selection of books in the SCRC Collection that have been banned or challenged in the United States. Highlighted books are presented in publication order.

You can learn more about rising book bans via the UChicago Library Banned Books Initiative and explore the Library’s Collection of more than 2,000 banned books on the UChicago Library website.

Primarily organized by the American Library Association and Banned Books Week Coalition, Banned Books Week is an annual event that highlights the value of free and open access to information. The 2026 theme is “Let Books Be. Protect the Freedom to Read."

From the collections in honor of the anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire, which began on October 10th, 1871: Richard'...
10/08/2026

From the collections in honor of the anniversary of the Great Chicago Fire, which began on October 10th, 1871: Richard's illustrated and statistical map of the great conflagration in Chicago.

The pictured map depicts the burn district and some additional text and images related to the Great Chicago Fire and a brief account of great fires of modern times.

UChicago Library’s map collection “Before and After the Fire: Chicago in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s” is digitally available and presents a collection of maps to demonstrate how the fire impacted the Chicago. During these three decades, Chicago grew from a small city of 109,000 into a large one with a population of more than 1,000,000. It is often said that no city of the Western world had ever grown so quickly. Growth was only barely interrupted by the catastrophic fire of 1871 in which perhaps a quarter of Chicago's dwellings and most of its business district were burned. The Fire did force the city to establish a new building code and perhaps encouraged a new self-consciousness about planning. The years after the Fire saw the implementation of the city's "boulevard" system and the inauguration of parks along the Lakefront of which Lincoln Park (institutionalized in 1864) is perhaps the best known example.

If you’d like to view the additional digital materials in this collection, follow the linktree in our bio, click on "Digital Collections" and navigate to “Before and after the fire: Chicago in the 1860s, 1870s, and 1880s”.

Pictured:
R.P. Studley Co. Richard's Illustrated and Statistical Map of the Great Conflagration in Chicago. St. Louis: R.P. Studley Co., 1871.

Join the Kim-Park Program on 10/16 for a colloquium presentation, The Sociability of Paper and Isaac Newton’s Archive w...
10/04/2026

Join the Kim-Park Program on 10/16 for a colloquium presentation, The Sociability of Paper and Isaac Newton’s Archive with Scott Mandelbrote, fellow and Perne and Ward librarian at Peterhouse, University of Cambridge.

🗓Friday, October 16th at 3:00 PM

About the program:
Isaac Newton (1642-1727) perhaps needs little introduction either as a mathematician and physicist or as an administrator (or so-called ‘autocrat of science’). His archive has been the subject of sustained study since he died, particularly since the 1950s, with published editions of his correspondence, mathematical and optical papers, and online projects devoted to his chymical papers and to the archive as a whole. Very little of this interest, however, has considered the archive from the standpoint of the material history of the book: how (at a physical, material, and social level) did Newton read, write, and disseminate his ideas. With whom did Newton collaborate in making his work, in what contexts, and for what purposes? How did material constraints shape Newton’s own and others' sense of what he was doing and how did he deploy his own knowledge and control of his archive to manufacture intellectual stature and image?

This talk will consider whether, as we begin to take these questions into account, the picture of scientific authorship and authority which has been associated with Newton’s life might change, and whether, as a result, we should reconsider the form of scientific activity and publication in the late seventeenth century. The paper of the archive shifts from being a vehicle to transport readers into the mind of the author, and becomes a vehicle for exchange, facilitating communication and the sharing of ideas and experience among contemporaries.

This event is open to all with registration and will be held at Regenstein Library.

Learn more and register for free: https://NewtonsArchive.eventbrite.com

Curious what new archives, manuscripts, rare books, and digitized items are available at the Hanna Holborn Gray Special ...
10/03/2026

Curious what new archives, manuscripts, rare books, and digitized items are available at the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center?

You can see a list of everything that became available this September by following the link in our bio and clicking on "New at SCRC - September 2026" on the SCRC homepage.

Pictured:
Woodcut tailpiece, early 18th century
From Le Grand Dictionaire Royal by François Pomey, 1709

Call Number: PC2635.P78 1709

From the Collections: Carte des communications rapides entre Paris et le reste de la France, 1882 The pictured map is of...
10/01/2026

From the Collections: Carte des communications rapides entre Paris et le reste de la France, 1882

The pictured map is of rapid transport links between Paris and the rest of France from 1882, and travel times from Paris are shown by gradient tints. It is a part of the library’s collection of European transportation maps of the 19th century, a subset of the library’s larger Maps Collection.

UChicago faculty began collecting maps in 1927. Now housed in the Library, the collection includes over 475,000 maps, 10,000 air photos, 2,000 books, and hundreds of gigabytes of spatial data. Many of the items in the Maps Collection have been digitized, and you can also engage with the collection at Regenstein Library in the Map Collection Reading Room, located in room 370.

Pictured Item:
Martin, E. Carte Des Communications Rapides Entre Paris Et Le Reste De La France. [Paris: s.n.], 1882.
Call Number: G5831.P3 1882 .M3

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