On September 24, the Otto G. Richter Library at the University of Miami hosted a Book Traces day. The two principal investigators for Book Traces @ U.Va., Kara McClurken and Andrew Stauffer, traveled to Miami to give guest presentations on Book Traces and how the project has influenced preservation work at the University of Virginia’s Alderman Library. The Richter Library stacks were open all day for student searchers to hunt for “hidden treasures” in the collection.

Here is one of the highlights from an article about the event by the Miami Hurricane:

“Book Traces is a project to get students to think about the book as an object and not just a source of textual information,” said Special Collections Librarian Jay Sylvestre, who helped organize the event. “All the parts of a book, from the cover, to the illustrations, to any notes added by readers, tells us a story. Book Traces helps students find and follow that story.”

The students found numerous examples of unique copies in the Richter collection, with marginalia and other reader interventions ranging from the cheerfully comic to the touchingly tragic. It has been great for us to see the number of unique copies uncovered in the stacks during one-day Book Traces exercises at Columbia University and now Miami. It goes to show that the U.Va. collection is not unique in having numerous donated books with artifactual value.

If you are interested in hosting a Book Traces day at your library, please contact Prof. Stauffer.