Category Archives: Libraries & Archives

Project CHART at the Brooklyn Museum

The Institute of Museum and Library Services has been an important supporter of several initiatives to make the Brooklyn Museum’s collection much more accessible to a wider audience. One good example of this initiative is the M-LEAD Project which has … Continue reading

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Help us pin Brooklyn to the map!

If you know and love Brooklyn we need your help to get 300+ images from our collection pinned to Historypin’s map before their launch on July 11, 2011.  If we don’t get cracking, Brooklyn is going to be woefully under-represented … Continue reading

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Skylar Fein and Abraham Lincoln: a look into Brooklyn’s collections

With the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War it is a good moment to look back through time and how Americans have been depicted over the years in both the objects we live with and through the popular press. … Continue reading

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History Continues with the Cold War, Vietnam, and Early Apple Computer Kiosks

This is the final post in a tour through the Museum’s historical exhibition press releases, taking us up to the 1980s. If you’ve enjoyed this peek into history, you’re encouraged to visit the Museum’s Exhibitions database, where you can browse … Continue reading

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Press Releases from World War II and beyond

The previous post on the Museum’s recently completed digitizing of historical exhibition press releases highlighted some excerpts from the 1920s, 30s, and early 40s. There are many interesting releases from World War II and its aftermath—so many, in fact, that … Continue reading

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The 20th Century through the Museum’s Press Releases

We’ve just completed digitizing and making available on our website the hundreds of exhibition press releases the Museum has issued since the 1920s.  Though it’s almost always the case that production and presentation of objects is influenced by the historical … Continue reading

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Brooklyn Museum books online!

About a year ago, inspired by LACMA’s Reading Room, we started thinking about digitizing some Brooklyn Museum publications. We were excited to learn that many of the Museum’s publications had already been digitized–Google Books, Microsoft, and university digitization projects have … Continue reading

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Native America: Images from the Brooklyn Museum Libraries and Archives

The Tipi: Heritage of the Great Plains exhibition provides us with a wonderful opportunity to showcase the Museum’s Native American collections and resources. As someone who has studied Native American art and whose Grandmother was Native American, I am very … Continue reading

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Cards from the Library Catalogs – Want some?

One of the results of projects to bring our Libraries and Archives into the digital world is that we have boxes of cards—mostly typewritten or computer generated—available for the taking and ready to be transformed into a second life.  Since the Library … Continue reading

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Wilbour and the Stela of the Seven Years’ Famine: Part II

The first part of this story showed the American Egyptologist Charles Edwin Wilbour discovering and translating a long rock-cut text on the island of Sehel. Wilbour was very excited by the text. It described a seven year long famine in … Continue reading

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Wilbour and the Stela of the Seven Years’ Famine: Part I

Wilbour’s letters to his family, kept in the Museum Archives, give a vivid picture of his travels in Egypt and the research he carried out there. Much of this work consisted of his checking earlier publications of Egyptian monuments against … Continue reading

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Fashion Design and Costume History in the Library’s Collection

The fashion plates, magazines, photographs, and scrapbooks now on view in the Library display cases complement two exhibitions: Healing the Wounds of War: The Brooklyn Sanitary Fair of 1864, in the Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art Herstory Gallery, … Continue reading

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Wilbour in Egypt: The Maiden Voyage of The Seven Hathors

In her introductory blog Deirdre discussed Charles Edwin Wilbour, the American Egyptologist whose collections form the backbone of the Museum’s Egyptian holdings. This post is about Wilbour’s interest in Egypt. Some of the photographs and documents illustrated here are in … Continue reading

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Wilbour: One Man’s Obsession with Egypt

It’s a well known fact that the Brooklyn Museum has a great Egyptian collection but did you know that we have one of the best libraries devoted to the study of Ancient Egypt that is open to the public? We … Continue reading

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Egyptian Objects Before Egyptology: Discoveries in the Wilbour Library

My work in the Wilbour Library involves keeping an eye out for books the Library needs, and carrying out archival research into the history of the Egyptian collections in support of the Library’s educational mission. In the Library’s Special Collections … Continue reading

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