L. Tom Perry Special Collections is pleased to announce the availability of a newly digitized collection: Nancy Alexander Tracy autobiography (MSS 2214). This item includes an eighty-two-page holograph where Nancy Tracy, an early Utah pioneer, reflects on her early life in New York state; marriage to Moses Tracy in 1832; conversion to Mormonism in 1834; …
The L. Tom Perry Special Collections has recently digitized a small collection of about 50 Arabic manuscripts. The images can be accessed at https://archive.org/details/arabicmanuscriptsbyu. The manuscripts date from the 13th to the 20th centuries, and include scientific, legal, grammatical, and religious texts (such as an 18th century Qur’an and several hadith and prayer books). A …
One of the more recent additions to BYU’s Rare Japanese Collection is a manuscript which recounts the adventures of Japanese sailors shipwrecked in Vietnam in 1794. The 16-man crew of the fishing vessel Daijomaru spent a year in Vietnam before making their way to Nagasaki via Macao, Canton, and Saho. The manuscript describes the shipwreck …
Today’s post was written by Dr. Jack Stoneman of BYU’s Department of Asian and Near Eastern Languages. Dr. Stoneman and his student assistants have been researching the provenance of a collection of rare Japanese books and manuscripts assembled by collector Harry Bruning, which was acquired by the Lee Library around 1980. Today marks an anniversary …
If you’re looking for early Latin American primary sources, this new resource compiled by Special Collections intern Tyler Broadhead lists Special Collections’ holdings of books, maps, and manuscripts about Latin America or produced in Latin America before 1800. The document also includes modern facsimiles of Mesoamerican codices like the one pictured here, as well as …
Here in the library we have an amazing collection of Arabic Manuscripts in the L. Tom Perry Special Collections, which date as far back as the 9th century. These manuscripts range in topic from religion to science and astrology. Most of these manuscripts are bound in leather wrappers and were hand-written in Arabic. The item …
Dante, Chaucer, Beowulf — have you ever wondered what medieval literature looked like to medieval readers? Special Collections has hundreds of facsimiles of medieval manuscripts available for researchers, including facsimiles of some of the most celebrated examples of medieval bookmaking, like the Book of Kells or the Bible of St. Louis, and facsimiles of works …