Blogs

By Henry Handley

A Living Library, the Marian Library’s first exhibit this fall, is a twist on the “recent acquisitions” exhibition genre. The exhibit contextualizes current collecting highlights with the labor involved in making them available, from the Marianists whose librarianship, scholarship, and dedication to the Virgin Mary paved the way for the collections as we know them to today’s cataloging, preservation, instruction, digitization and alignment with the University of Dayton’s strategic goals.

Two books in the exhibit recently became available in digital form in eCommons, UD’s institutional repository:

• Wild Flowers from Palestine by Protestant minister Harvey Bartlett Greene (circa 1899) was recently rediscovered in conversations around collecting Marian themes in botany — a perennial favorite subject of patrons and staff, thanks to the work of the book’s former owner, John S. Stokes Jr., with Mary gardens. The collection of pressed flowers and poetry is part of a tradition described by library specialist Melanie Fields in a previous Marian Library blog post. 
• An Ethiopian devotional manuscript — a psalter, or Dāwit, in Ge’ez, the liturgical language of the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, was acquired from rare book and manuscript dealer Stephen Butler in 2021. It contains the Psalms of David, canticles (hymns derived from Biblical texts other than the Psalms), the Song of Songs, and two devotional texts for Mary — Wəddase Maryam (Praises of Mary) and 'Anqäsä Bərhan (Gate of Light).

The psalter is one of three Ethiopian manuscripts with Marian texts and images that the Marian Library has acquired since 2019. They are an important representation of devotion to Mary in text and image in the Ethiopian manuscript tradition. We know, too, that at a predominantly white Catholic institution in the midwestern United States, the manuscripts are not likely to reach many of the people for whom they hold religious, cultural and scholarly importance — at least not without intentional outreach and digital access.

With this digitized manuscript and the A Living Library exhibit, we hope to continue a tradition of community outreach and access established by the Catholic, Marianist tradition in the Marian Library, as well as the University’s commitment to inclusive excellence.

Exhibit dates and hours

A Living Library is open to the public from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday through Oct. 28, as well as 1 to 4 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 1. Find out more about the Marian Library’s hours and directions on the website.

— Henry Handley stewards the Marian Library's rare, reference and circulating books, as well as its extensive collections of pamphlets and periodicals.