ACRL College & Researc Libraries News

College & Research Libraries News

Feature your collection on a C&RL News cover

C&RL Newswould like to feature on its covers some of the many unusual and interesting items academic and research libraries have in their collections. Photographs of items with seasonal themes or themes related to the book arts, libraries, printing, publishing, or computing are especially sought. The July/August cover featured an attractive menu from a 1914 New Year’s Eve party from Cornell University; this issue’s cover has a seasonal theme.

If you have material in your collection that you think would make an attractive cover for C&RL News please send us a photograph and a brief description of the item and the collection it illustrates. (Brief articles highlighting a special collection— such as “Menus: Their Use and Collection in an Academic Library” by Katherine S. Laurence [C&RL News, July/August 1991] are also sought.)

Photographs may be either color or black and white and should be 5" x 7" or 8" by 10". Those photographs with a vertical orientation will work best for the CirRL News cover format. All photographs will become the property of CirRL News. Photographs should be sent to C&RL News Covers, 50 E. Huron St., Chicago, IL 60611.

About our cover this month…

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, an era when most Americans lived on farms and in small farming communities, one of the staples of American gardening—the seed catalogue—appeared in almost everyone’s mailbox without fail in huge numbers from spring to spring and autumn to autumn. A significant portion of agricultural histoiy and lore is chronicled in these ephemeral publications which poured from the growers to the American reading public. The front cover of the 1906 Annual Catalogue of the Springfield Seed Company (Springfield, Missouri) is illustrated here. Located at the comer of Campbell and Walnut Streets, the Springfield Seed Company was a wholesale and retail dealership, “growers and importers of seeds of all kinds,” as well as suppliers of bee-keeping and farming equipment. Part of a large collection of 19th- and 20th-century rare, colorful seed catalogues and trade catalogues in the Mercantile Library, this collection is a component of the library’s important sources in agricultural and horticultural history.

Ed. note:Cover photo courtesy of John Neal Hoover, associate librarian, and the St. Louis Mercantile Library Association.