Special Collections Contributes Rare Books to Dead Sea Scrolls Exhibit

Five rare books from the UWM Libraries' Special Collections are on display at the Milwaukee Public Museum as part of its exhibition "Dead Sea Scrolls and the Bible: Ancient Artifacts, Timeless Treasures." The books are:

Biblia Latina. Venice: Hieronymus de Paganinis, 1497.
An early "pocket" edition of the Bible. This printing demonstrates the continuation of manuscript traditions after the innovation of the printing press: the empty spaces left for initial capital letters were intended to be hand illuminated. A few Venetian Bibles of this period were small in size, demonstrating how price decreases, facilitated by mass-production, allowed the gradual evolution of the Bible from ornate relic to individually owned book for home study.

Biblia. Lugduni [Lyons]: Antoine Du Ruy for F. Turchus, D. Berticinius and J. de Giuntis, 1528.
A new Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek texts by the Italian Dominican monk Sante Pagnini. This 1528 Bible is the first printing of Pagnini's translation; a version esteemed for its closeness to the original tongues, but criticized by reformationist Martin Luther for excessive literalism and "Jewish scholarship." This closeness to the Hebrew was well received by Jewish scholars, who judged Pagnini's translation as the only adequate Christian Latinate version of the Bible.

The Holy Bible (King James). Philadelphia: Mathew Carey, 1811.
Irish-born Philadelphia printer Mathew Carey was one of the most prolific Bible publishers of the early republic. Most well-known for publishing the first Roman Catholic version of the Bible printed in the United States in 1790, Carey also printed numerous editions of the King James version, such as this copy.

New Testament of Our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ . . . . New York: American Bible Society, 1864.
These small, "Pearl" format pocket Bibles were distributed to U.S. soldiers by the American Bible Society, in continuation of a tradition begun by the Army and Navy in 1817. The Civil War posed a real dilemma to the New York based society: whether to continue distributing Bibles to its auxiliaries in the Confederate states despite its opposition to slavery. A splinter Confederate States' Bible Society was formed, but the American Bible Society continued to cross battle lines on both sides, distributing more than 3 million Old and New Testament volumes before the end of the war.

The Holy Bible: Containing All the Books of the Old and New Testaments. Designed and illustrated by Barry Moser. North Hatfield, Mass.: Pennyroyal Caxton Press, 1999.
This sumptuous two-volume set, designed and produced by the American illustrator, wood-engraver, and book artist Barry Moser, is the first fully-illustrated Old and New Testaments by a single artist since Gustav Doré's Bible of 1866, and the last letterpress-printed Bible of the second millennium.

The typefaces were designed by Matthew Carter and printed from polymer plates by Bradley Hutchinson at his press in Austin, Texas on custom-made paper by the Zerkall Paper Mill in Zerkall, Germany. The hundreds of illustrations are all original prints pulled directly from the resingrave blocks cut by Moser. The entire edition of 400 copies was hand bound in full limp vellum by Claudia Cohen and Sarah Creighton in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

The Libraries' Archives Department also contributed materials to the exhibit. Photographs of Golda Meir—who grew up in Milwaukee and attended UWM's predecessor institution before moving to Israel and eventually becoming Prime Minister—are used in a panel exhibit to illustrate one of the many connections between Israel and Milwaukee. Included is a photo (at right) from 1969 of Golda Meir sitting in her old desk in a classroom at the 4th Street Elementary School.

Max Yela

From the Director:

The campus announcement last semester that the Libraries and UITS will be receiving a percentage of grant indirect costs is good news for research efforts on campus, with the majority of the Libraries’ amount to be spent on journal subscriptions.

I want to thank Provost Rita Cheng and Vice Chancellor of Research and Graduate School Dean Colin Scanes for their support of this funding.

This year the Libraries have been allocated $200,000 to expand access to scholarly journals and databases. The mission of the Libraries is tied to the mission of the campus in facilitating research and scholarship by providing access to information. This new source of funding strengthens our ability to fulfill that mission.

Initially, the Libraries will employ Interlibrary Loan (ILL) and Document Delivery usage data as our starting point for identifying needed journals. Recognizing that faculty and graduate students in newer areas of research have yet to generate substantial ILL statistics or that some may acquire their articles through other avenues, we will also be soliciting direct feedback from faculty and research staff to identify critically needed journals.

In comparing the recently acquired Elsevier ScienceDirect database (which provides access to more than 1,800 full text peer-reviewed journals, mostly in the sciences, but some in business, economics, global studies, education, psychology and history as well), we discovered that half of the most often requested titles through ILL are now included in the ScienceDirect package. The remaining heavily requested journals are candidates for purchase. (The most frequently requested journal was asked for over 160 times in a three-year span.)

A portion of the funds will also be used to augment the growth of ILL and document delivery for the high-cost low-use specialized journals. Additionally, a small amount of the indirect costs monies will be set aside for open access at UWM. I thank Provost Cheng for her strong support of this initiative, a worldwide movement to improve the way scholarly research is shared, lower price barriers, and open access to research.

A taskforce appointed by the Provost will be drafting a blueprint for campus on open access and scholarly communications. Key actions include:

• Develop strategies to expand knowledge of open access and scholarly communication issues across the university.
• Foster meaningful change in the way that university research is shared.
• Help empower faculty members and campus administrators to support open access.

The University Library Committee worked closely with library administration to develop the proposal for indirect cost expenditures outlining the three areas of particular need: the acquisition of primary resources, expedited resource delivery and Open Access initiatives. These priorities were also supported by the Research Policy Committee. We see these three areas as crucial for meeting the growing research needs on campus.

I look forward to working with faculty and staff on these critical initiatives which will support University demand for access to scholarly materials to foster research growth. This long-term institutional commitment is of enormous significance and value to the UWM community.

Ewa Barczyk