These manuscripts can be found through the library catalog by searching Special Collections holdings.  In the catalog, limit the search to Special Collections and perform a genre search using the keywords “manuscripts, arabic” or “manuscripts, persian.”

The exhibit will be viewable in L. Tom Perry Special Collections’ lobby area through the month of October.

Here is a look at two items from this collection:

This 1866 arithmetic textbook was once owned by Lucy Woodruff Smith, the wife of George Albert Smith, who served as President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints from 1945-51.

This Civil War-era reader features hand-colored illustrations on the title page and the first page, shown here.  It was published in New York in 1861.

The Stationers’ Company records are the most important existing source on the history of the English book trade.  The microfilm edition reproduces records spanning from 1554 to 1920 and is supplemented by a printed guide by the Company’s archivist.  These records contain a wealth of information about the Company’s activities, including membership and financial records and copyright registers for printed books.  The records provide quantitative data about the output of the London book trade as well as details about the lives and careers of printers, publishers, and other members of the Company.

Researchers can access the microfilm records in Special Collections’ reading room during our normal operating hours.

A multi-year project to digitize the pamphlets is now underway.  Over 500 pamphlets were digitized during year one of the project and are now available online at http://www.lib.byu.edu/dlib/fpp/.  This site includes a fuller description and commentary on the French Political Pamphlets collection and a bibliography of the collection along with browsable images.

Special Collections has a few first-hand accounts of the storming of the Bastille, including a political pamphlet entitled La capitale delivrée par elle-même and a celebratory poem, Les nouvelles philippiques, ou, Le Te Deum des françois, après la destruction de la Bastille. These and other primary source materials related to the French Revolution can be found by performing a subject search in the HBLL catalog, using the search string “France History Revolution 1789-1799″.

One Provo resident loved to go to Pioneer Park and listen to musicians playing from the bandstand.  She developed a dream of having a gazebo in her own yard. She envisioned a “gazebo, decorated with red, white, and blue buntings and flags . . . specifically for a Fourth of July music performance” (FA14 8.7.1.1.1).  Her family would sit in the gazebo and play music while she sat in the audience and cried–patriotic tears.  In 1990 her dream became a reality and a new family tradition was born.

Another family holds a family reunion every day around the Fourth of July. Part of the reunion involves a gift exchange.  “The reason for the gift exchange is similar to gift giving for Christmas. [They] try to keep the Christmas spirit alive the whole year through and although gift giving is not [particularly] representative of the Christmas spirit in itself, it reminds us that we should be always giving of ourself.  Also, the gift needs to be hand made which makes it more personal” (FA14 8.7.1.3.1).

However you choose to celebrate this Fourth of July, have a wonderful time.

Lithographed plate from The Flower Grower's Guide, 1898

Gardening, whether indoors or out-of-doors, was as popular a pastime in the Victorian Era as it is today. Like modern publishers, Victorian printers produced a wide array of books and periodicals for the avid gardener, from deluxe botanical illustrations to how-to manuals and hobbyists’ magazines. Many such works were profusely illustrated. Typically, illustrations were created as wood or metal engravings, which could be left as black and white prints or hand-colored. Lithography was another process which allowed color illustrations to be produced on a printing press. Both lithography and hand-coloring could be highly labor-intensive, and the final products could be quite expensive.

Hand-colored plate from Moore's British Ferns, 1859

The Victorian and Edwardian collections contain a number of illustrated works on botany and gardening, including the cultivation of flowers, vegetables, and that most popular houseplant of the Victorian era, the fern. These items can be found by performing a subject search of Special Collections holdings in the library catalog on one of the following terms:

• Botany
• Floriculture
• Gardening
• Horticulture

A woman who nursed the sick in 1918 passed along the following wisdom:  cut an onion in half, covering the cut surface with sugar to draw out the juice.  Place onion in the oven to warm.  The resulting syrup which is derived from the mixture of onion juice and sugar is used to cure the flu. (FA 10  1.9.4.1.1)

One interviewee recalled that during the flu season of 1918 he had to wear a “package of acifidity [sic] around his neck . . . and it looked to me like a plug of tobacco.”  (FA 10 1.9.4.4.1)

Another woman recalled that “during the flu epidemic in 1918, when she was 12 years old, a doctor told her mother to pour [sulphur] powder on top of the old fashioned stove several times a day and for the family to live outdoors as much as possible.  The sulphur sparked on the stove as it was applied, and the family skied, went sleigh riding and spent hours our of doors and escaped the dread epidemic.  The nest year they moved into a small town, the family caught the flu and several members nearly died.” (FA 10 1.9.4.6.1)

If none of these catch your fancy, you might want to resort to a common practice dating to the early days of Sanpete County–”a person should never change his underwear and . . . only bath[e] on Saturday night.” (FA 10 1.9.4.3.1)