The Provenance Project at MSU Special Collections is an ongoing effort to systematically catalog marks of ownership and marks of use in rare books here at Michigan State University. A team of library employees and volunteers documents and studies the copy-specific features of these rare books, such as bookplates, owner signatures, bookseller’s notes, library markings, unique bindings, handwritten annotations, and more. By looking at these clues, we hope to learn more about the “life stories” of our books: where they have been, who owned them, and how they might have been read and used. A detailed provenance record can also shed light on the world outside of our books, giving us crucial insight into the habits of readers, the popularity of particular works and genres, as well as the history of the book and the book trade. One volume that rewards such close study is our 1537 printing of the Florentine Chronicle by Giovanni Villani. A previous owner has filled the margins of this important historical work with extensive annotations, providing commentary on the text and illustrating several of the author’s key points.
