New exhibits in Perkins Library

If you’ve walked through the lobby of Perkins Library in the past few days you’ve surely noticed the beautiful new exhibit cases that were installed there last week. The other morning on my way in I saw Mary Walter, the Assistant Director of Development for the library, taking photos of the new cases and the shimmering reflections from the lights above them. It reminded me a little bit of the Georges Rousse Bending Space project in downtown Durham a couple of years ago, and I asked Mary if I could post a photo here (see one of them here on the right).

The new exhibit cases are now full, with materials from an exhibit titled Pivotal Books / Personal Reflections, which explores the personal nature of books and the relationships that exist between reader and written word. We hope you’ll visit the exhibit in the lobby, and also the exhibit web site, where we invite you to submit your own reflections on books that were pivotal to you and see what other visitors to the exhibit have already sent in.

Just around the corner from the Perkins lobby, in the hallway between the Rare Book Room and the Special Collections Reading Room, is another new exhibit, featuring photographs by Olive Pierce, documenting life in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Maine fishing communities, and Iraq. This exhibit will be up through December 2008.

Both of these exhibits, as well as other library exhibits from the past, are available on the exhibits page on library web site.