Project Lead: Laura Michelson, Assistant Professor and Project Archivist
Vivero Fellow (2022-2023): Saury Khanal
The Salisbury House Library Collection (https://salisbury.speccoll.sites.grinnell.edu/) came to Grinnell College Special Collections in 2019. Acquired from the Salisbury House & Gardens estate museum, the collection was built by the Weeks family of Des Moines mainly throughout the 1920s and 1930s, with materials spanning from the 12th century to the 1960s. This collection of rare books and manuscripts is turning the page on a new chapter and is ready for research! Coming from a private collection, much of the unique material has never before been available to researchers. One of the areas of international interest in the collection are 14 incunabula, early printed European books produced from 1440 to 1500.
A Vivero Fellow assisting the SHLC Incunabula Project will be an integral part of developing a digital site to feature fully digitized incunabula, help with digitization and metadata creation, collaborate on research and interpretation, and work with rare historical books. The Fellow will help research options for a platform (Scalar, Omeka, WordPress, etc.), providing input in the creative design; gain skills in handling rare material and digitization, creating metadata, and description; explore book history research, learn more about researching early print, and contribute to international scholarship surrounding incunables. Depending on your interests, a Fellow could contribute as a guest blogger to the collection website, assist Special Collections events, dig into provenance research, or assist future exhibits. For this position and work with Special Collections material and tools, availability to spend 2+ hour once a week during SpecColl open hours (8am-5) would be beneficial, but can be flexibly scheduled and change as the year progresses.
