Emily: So we are here in the rare book room with Christine. What do you do here in the library?
Christine: I am the museum librarian and head of library collections here at the Field Museum.
Emily: We are in a particular room in the library this isn't what the rest of the library looks like.
Christine: So we are in the
Mary W Reynolds rare book room and this is about
7,500 volumes of rare materials that are
Most easily described as the history of Natural History and early travels and voyage. It's about Natural History.
Emily: So these aren't just like the oldest books that you have in the collection.
Christine: Exactly so people often think that
rare books are all old and they're not necessarily,
There's several different criteria that make up rare books, so something could be a particularly important
association copy, have a very important first owner.
It could have high market value or there could be very
limited numbers of a particular work that were ever created.
Emily: And you pulled some of these things that we can go look at today.
Christine: Yes, I did.
Emily: I'm super excited.
Christine: Cool.
Emily: Let's go.
Emily: Christine, so what makes this rare book rare?
Christine: So one of those other
Criteria that makes a material rare is when
it's something that is completely unique, so somebody may be like a handwritten
manuscript. In this instance these are
actually original
pattern and proof plates that were part of
this book that was published in 1887 called American medicinal plants.
And this was done by Charles Millspaugh
who is an early curator in the Department of Botany, here at the Field Museum. And all of these went into
the final work that you see here, which is multiple part work.
Emily: So this is the original painting that he sat down and did
by hand and this is the plate reproduction of that thing.
Christine: Yes, and sometimes with these there are multiple versions of these within this particular
volume. So the final version may have ended up in
the book, but there may have been an earlier copy inside of here.
Emily: But it's only this is the only place you could see this particular work.
Christine: Exactly, exactly.
Emily: So that's one
criterion just how old it is can also be criterion alone for being in the rare book room.
Christine: Right so for that
1801 is oftentimes a cut-off so anything published prior to 1801
is often considered rare and would be inside of a room like this.
Emily: And you have a book that's older than 1801.
Christine: Yes, I do.
Christine: So this is actually from
1554. It was created by a man named Ippolito Salviani and this is one of the earliest books in natural history
filled with species descriptions of fish from the Mediterranean region.
And what's interesting about
this is it's one of the first books where the illustrations were done by copperplate
engraving where wood cuts were very popular at the time.
And this really makes these images pop out at the user's.
Emily: And so is this something that somebody could
see online?
Christine: Yes, you can actually see this online
but
what we've discovered over the years is that that's seeing them
online often times sparks people do want to see them in person.
Emily: So they might not necessarily be like an ichthyologist
studying fish, curious about the fish in the Mediterranean from the 1500s,
but they might want to know about the artist (Christine: Exactly) who do the engraving.
Christine: So, this is a book called the investigations and studies in Jade.
So it is filled with all of these lovely images of Jade objects,
ornaments, jewelry, things like that and this is number 96 of only 100 that were ever created.
This was actually published in 1906, the Jade collection itself is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
But then they created two volumes.
This is only one of the volumes that has all of these lovely images in it and what's also pretty interesting
about this is once they publish these books
they destroyed the plates that they used to make these books so that they could never make any more of them.
Emily: Wow, that's amazing.
But also like a lot of pressure
And you're like oh, please I know.
Well, it's beautiful.
Christine: It is.
Emily: Is there like a functional reason it has to be this big or was it just because they wanted to make a point?
Christine: They could be or you want to show the objects in their original size,
things like that. (Emily: I see) They really pop out that way
Emily: That's cool book.
Christine: So this is Charles Darwin's Origin of Species.
So this is arguably one of the most important texts in the history of natural history
Emily: So what makes this copy more rare than the copy that I got that was printed like in the 80s?
Christine: So this is a first edition from
1859 good way to tell that you have a first edition is that if you go to page
20 of the book you'll see right here that the word species is misspelled is one of the indicators.
Emily: Do you know how many copies were issued in the first edition?
Christine: So there are about twelve hundred and fifty that were originally
issued. This has actually been documented as part of the Darwin census project which was out of Cambridge
University and the Huntington Library, so we actually have two copies of this work
and both of them are documented in this census.
Emily: Well, that's amazing. I didn't know that they did the census on books like they did a census on people.
(Christine: Yes, they do) Oh, well. I guess if you're Darwin.
Emily: The final book that we're going to talk about
isn't just special in one unique way.
Christine: Yeah, it's special in several different ways it hits several different criteria.
One its size. This is a double elephant folio of John James Audubon's Birds of America.
So, this is our volume two. The other aspect of this is that this is filled with hand colored illustrations
and this also does have a high market value.
So this is a 12-year publishing enterprise that started in
1826 and then continued over that span of time. If people wanted to own these particular volumes.
They would subscribe to them and what they would receive in the mail
Would be five plates then when they had what would be considered to be a complete volume.
They would take it to a bookbinder who would put it together
into one particular volume, so a complete set is four volumes.
We do have all four volumes of it. Where our volume is even more special is that our set has
What are called composite plates and it has all 13 of those
composite plates. That means that again over this 12-year publishing enterprise or may have been particular bird species that were
misidentified or some other reason that they may have been put together sort of with unassociated
species. So, for example so we have
this particular plate of the Louisiana, Louisiana Tanager and the Scarlet Tanager,
and you have these four birds right here, and then on the very next plate,
which is the composite. So this particular
species was previously on a different plate
and then he realized later on that he really belongs in this grouping of birds so that he was added on later.
Emily: So they were like, oh shoot
I can't just like open up the digital project file and Photoshop that thing in, I gotta , like,
repress the whole thing. (Christine: Exactly.) So how did we end up with one of the most unique complete
copies of the birds of America?
Christine: It was actually purchased at auction on our behalf in
1969 and then donated to the institution and that's how the room is now named to the Mary W
Reynolds rare book room because it was through the generosity of her that we have this
beautiful set.
Emily: And why does this book need to be as big as it is?
Christine: Because Audubon wanted to have these illustrations
in the life-size of all of the species.
Emily: So if you had like a scarlet tanager
which you wouldn't have a dead one, but you held it up. It would (Christine: yes) It match.
I wouldn't recommend doing that.
Emily: So now that we've seen some of the books that you pulled
if somebody were interested in looking at some of those materials
where could they go?
Christine: So, yes,
we have been working very hard over the last ten years
through our partnership with the biodiversity heritage library to
digitize the contents of this room. We are at over 50 million pages of digitized literature
that we are making freely available on the web.
Emily: I love it.
I use the biodiversity heritage library all the time
when I'm looking up even if it's like old museum bulletins or like beautiful
illustrations for videos that we've made or like
I read this account about fresh water bivalves in the button industry from 1908.
Don't know how I would have found that anywhere else.
Christine: Yeah, it's an awesome resource.
Emily: I loved it so much, so you should go check it out.
Well. Thank you so much for taking the time today.
Christine: You're welcome.
It still has brains on it