"Scholarly Treasures" of University Library to go on display

By Andrea Lynn

One of the best-kept secrets in the scholarly world is about to go public.

The largely unknown scholarly treasures of the UI Library - considered one
of the greatest libraries in the world - are going on display Oct. 14
through Dec. 19. More than 100 rare and important items will be open to
public viewing at the university's Krannert Art Museum.

The exhibition is being mounted to give the world its first "general
overview of the riches of our special collections," said University
Librarian Robert Wedgeworth, who recently was re-elected president of the
International Federation of Library Associations.

An exhibit catalog, written by UI English professor George Hendrick and
head of Special Collections Nancy Romero, will be distributed widely to
show the depth and breadth of the library's holdings. Wedgeworth said that
while a good number of scholars regularly travel to Illinois to use the
university's remarkable special collections, most of the general population
hasn't a clue about the gems that are shelved alongside the 8 million
volumes and 7 million other items. Among the treasures being toted out of
the Rare Book Room and Special Collections Library, and the University
Archives and into the spotlight:

 * A French coronation manuscript, a manual of directions prepared for the
   1326 crowning service of Charles IV. Marks indicating where the sign of the
   cross was to be made with the consecrated oil on the king's body lead
   scholars to believe that this was the very manuscript used in the ceremony.
 * A fragment of a Gutenberg Bible published about 1455 and considered
   particularly significant because it seems to have been produced before
   Gutenberg settled on the 42-line bible as his standard.
 * Eliot's "Indian Bible." This is the entire text of the Bible translated
   into the Massachuset dialect by the Reverend John Eliot, the so-called
   "Apostle to the Indians." Published in 1663, it was the first complete
   Bible printed in the New World.
 * The Marcel Proust Papers. The largest collection of letters to and from
   Proust, largely due to the efforts of the late UI professor Philip Kolb.
   Kolb's monumental work identifying and dating Proust's correspondence led
   to the publication, just before Kolb's death, of 21 volumes of Proust's
   correspondence. "One would expect to have to go to France to be able to
   study this kind of research archive, but it's right here at Illinois,"
   Wedgeworth said.
 * The H.G. Wells Collection. More than 1,000 first-edition books by Wells,
   60,000 letters to Wells, and 2,000 letters from Wells, one of the century's
   most remarkable literary figures and thinkers.
 * The Carl Sandburg Collection. The immense collection of books and papers
   document Sandburg's life as a poet, Lincoln biographer, journalist and deft
   writer of stories for children.
 * Important collections of outstanding UI alumni, including James Reston,
   who won a Pulitzer Prize in journalism, and novelist William Maxwell, the
   fiction editor of The New Yorker magazine.