Discover Special Collections

Have you seen the treasures that MSU’s libraries hold? HST 475/ENG 475, a seminar course, will examine the history of books, reading, and printing from the late Middle Ages until the present. Created and taught in conjunction with the staff of the Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections at the Main Library, the seminar will consider the evolution of print culture by using specimens from MSU’s varied collections. Discussions will emerge from readings on book history as well as on interactions with the librarians who investigate, preserve, and organize the collections. The focus of the seminar will be on print in all its forms: From manuscripts to comic books, from early print to newspapers and mass market publishing.

One of a handful of surviving copies of Shadows from the walls of death; facts and inferences prefacing a book of specimens of arsenical wall papers (Lansing, 1874) by Professor Robert C. Kedzie, a physician turned chemistry professor who for many years taught at Michigan Agricultural College is held in Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections. Appointed to the first State Board of Health for Michigan, Kedzie wrote of the deaths that resulted from wallpaper tinted with arsenic (Paris green). Kedzie cut up 80 rolls of wallpaper containing the deadly arsenic-green and produced 100 copies for distribution to state libraries along with his scientific conclusions. The copy in Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections has been conserved and the wallpaper specimens encapsulated to protect staff and patrons.

The Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections is pleased to hold a large collection of books by Gervase Markham (1568-1637) who, in the late 16th and early 17th century, wrote on a variety of topics.  Our latest acquisition is the scarce second edition of Hungers prevention, or, The whole art of fowling by water and land : containing all the secrets belonging to that art, and brought into a true forme or method ..., which provides instructions and charming illustrations for gathering and hunting for food. It is also the first book to describe the existence of flintlock and its use on sitting fowl.

The Stephen O. Murray and Keelung Hong Special Collections holds a beautiful and very large “Antiphonale” probably dating from the 15^th century. It was donated in 1951 by the E.K. Warren Foundation, but little else is known about the manuscript except that marginal notations suggest it spent a portion of its life in a Spanish monastery and was probably copied for the Benedictine Order of the Catholic Church. An “Antiphonale” is a collection of liturgical chants surrounding the Psalm verses appropriate to the day of the Church year. The chants would be sung in unison by the choir in alternation (antiphonally) with the officiant who would chant the Psalm verses. You can listen to six verses of the Advent hymn, “Conditor alme siderum,” which precedes the antiphons in this manuscript. It was probably sung daily at or near the opening of the service and the hymn is still in use today; the most common translation is “Creator of the Stars of Night.”