THE PICTUREIT RARE BOOK READER
The E-Sylum (3/14/2010)
Book Content
Modeled on similar projects at The British Library and the National Library of Medicine, our "PictureIt" site puts some of the most beautiful and soughtâ€after items in our collections into the hands of readers worldwide - virtually.
The first of our treasures accessible in this way is volume one of John James Audubon's Birds of America. Our eightâ€volume, doubleâ€elephant folio edition of Audubon's magnificent work was the first purchase by the Regents for the University Library. The Regents paid $970 - an extraordinary expenditure in 1838 - for the set, a significant act of faith for a university that had yet to offer a single class or construct its first building.
I have mixed feelings about it. It's nice to let more people have access to a rare book. (In this case, there are only about 120 sets extant). But it's nothing like seeing the book. In fact, I find Pittsburgh's own presentation of the same images to be more useful.
And neither compare to the weekly visits I made to the Amherst College Library's Special Collections to see the next page. Of course, even over 4 years I didn't get a chance to see all 435 plates. Eight years of grad school should been enough to see the remainder but I don't think I knew that Michigan also owned a set and they didn't have it on view back then.
To read Birds of America with PictureIt, see: PictureIt Rare Book Reader (www.lib.umich.edu/news/pictureit-rare-book-reader)
To see the University of Pittsburgh presentation, see: Audubon's Birds of America (digital.library.pitt.edu/a/audubon/)