New Acquisitions

November 11, 2002

A Reception in Celebration of the Western Printing Collection A Gift from Richard B. Yale

Renowned printer, journalist, publisher, photographer, historian, and book collector Richard B. (Dick) Yale has selected Special Collections and University Archives as the repository for his extensive collection. Yale, a San Diego resident, has donated books, manuscripts, photographs, correspondence, ephemera, and other materials relating to the history of printing, California, and the American West to be preserved and used by researchers. A third-generation printer, Yale established the Butterfield Express: Historical Newspaper of the Great Southwest, in 1962, which features articles printed in the style of the Old West. Part of his donation includes the Washington hand-printing presses, drawers of wood-type specimens, and vintage cameras that he has used during his lengthy career.

Yale is a long-time member of the Zamorano Club, an illustrious Los Angeles-based group of book collectors, printers, and librarians. Over the years, he has retained keepsakes, memorabilia, and publications that are typically given only to club members; these items are now housed in the collection and offer a rare glimpse into the activities of this organization. Yale is often called the Honorary Mayor of Old Town, San Diego. The collection includes a wood certificate given to him when he received that title.

Yale's decades of collecting have led to an accumulation of rare books on the printing process and the life histories of its artisans. Among these treasures are handmade, limited editions, such as The Life Work of Dard Hunter, by Dard Hunter II, which highlights the experiences of this early 20th-century printer who worked for the Roycrofters Studio; The Wood Type of the Angelica Press; De Little's Wood Type Specimens by Robert De Little; and American Wood Types, 1828-1900: Volume One, collected, cataloged, and printed by Rob Roy Kelly. The collection also includes rare texts on California history. One example is Splendide Californie! by Claudine Chalmers, a publication based on a California Historical Society exhibition that featured 18th- and 19th-century French artists' paintings inspired by the California landscape. While the collection will particularly interest scholars of American Western and California history, as well as printing historians and practitioners, students and San Diego community residents can also benefit from learning more about this local personality.

October 28, 2002

Calling all Zinesters!

We are building a Zine Archive in the Special Collections and University Archives at SDSU, a repository for fine, unique, and unusual books, periodicals, manuscripts, oral histories, and other documents. The Archive's aim is to provide a protected space for D.I.Y. collections while advancing public access to these important works. Please have a look at our call for zines and send us your zines!

August 19, 2002

Additions to the Norland Collection

Clarissa Salter, sister of Calvert E. Norland, professor of zoology at SDSU from 1947 to 1976, has donated additional materials to her uncle's collection. Professor Norland's collection, which consists of his and his wife Elisabeth's personal library of scientific works, as well as letters, manuscripts, prints, and artifacts, has been housed in Special Collections and University Archives since 1974. The collection contains rich sources of information on the history of biology and the sciences. Salter's recent contribution to the collection includes research papers on such topics as entomology prepared by Norland for students in his history of biology course during the 1960s and 1970s. Yet it also features a paper on the philosophy of conservation--partly written in his own hand--and an outline of the history of the world through the Renaissance. Additionally, several reprints of articles that Norland consulted for his research and teaching are part of the new accession, covering such topics as coastal sand dune plants of California and eighteenth-century scientists in New Spain.

June 2002

A Generous Gift from the Friends of the Library

Thanks to a generous gift from the Friends of the Library, three rare and significant 16th- and 17th-century works have been purchased to enhance our early astronomy collection. Mauro Fiorentino (ca. 1490-1556) published a 1550 edition of Annotationi sopra la lettione della Spera del Sacro Bosco by Joannes de Sacro Bosco (John Holywood, d. 1256), a monk of English origin who was also a professor of astronomy in Paris. A diagram and four pages of contemporary Florentine astronomical manuscript, dated May 29, 1564 and entitled "Del'anno solare et altre sorte et altre sorte di anni. et del anno bisestile" ("Concerning the solar year and types of years. And concerning the leap year") follow the manuscript text. See a more detailed image of the book here.

The 1574 edition of another work by Sacro Bosco, La Sfera Di M. Giovanni Sacrobosco Tradotta Da Pier-Vincentio Dante de Rinaldi, is the second in this trio of recent acquisitions. Sacro Bosco's reputation is based largely on this brief work, a compendium of spherical astronomy that was originally published in approximately 1220 and was used as a text book, resulting in nearly one hundred scholarly editions in print before the mid-17th century. See a more detailed image of the book here.

Originally printed in French in 1642, the 1655 edition of Gviliemi Blaev Institvtio Astronomica De usu Globorum & Sphaerarum Caelestium ac Terrestrium: Dvabvs Partibvs Adornata by Guiliemi Blaeu (1571-1638) addresses both the Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomical systems. Blaeu, a celebrated Dutch geographer and typographer, was a friend and disciple of noted Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe. He worked with Brahe at Brahe's observatory on the island of Hven, Denmark, before settling in Amsterdam where he established himself as a merchant of maps and globes. Interest in navigation and cartography had greatly increased in Holland at that time because the country was actively sending its fleets to Africa, America, Asia, and the Arctic. In 1633, Blaeu became the official cartographer of the East India Company. See a more detailed image of the book here.