Rare Book Collections @ Princeton

During stack reorganization this past summer, staff at the Princeton University Library discovered the only surviving copy of a 1930s Princeton newspaper. When The Local Express began publication on Thursday, October 24, 1935, it described itself as “a newspaper devoted to the interests of the people of Princeton and vicinity.” As part of the local celebration of “Princeton in the 1930s,” all four volumes have been scanned and made publicly available on the Library’s “Digital Collections” website.

“The Local Express is a valuable addition to the body of information available about Princeton in the late 1930s, and its digitization should make it available to a broad audience,” said Howard Green, co-curator of the exhibition “Princeton in the 1930s” currently at the Historical Society of Princeton. “In particular, the paper seems more sympathetic to Roosevelt and the New Deal than the other Princeton weeklies, the Herald, and the Packet.”

The first several Local Express issues were distributed as complimentary copies. William L. Stout and Lloyd Dilks published the newspaper and gave Dilk’s home, 87 Jefferson Road, as its office address. Stout and Dilks were young men, as indicated by listings for their families in Polk’s Princeton Directory for the late 1930s. In an era when jobs were scarce, it made sense to try to capitalize on one’s local knowledge and youthful energy. An early partner, Joseph R. Bourne, dropped out after the first issue and was replaced quickly by Henry A. Rosso. Stout and Dilks quit the paper just six months later, leaving Rosso on his own in late March 1936. Rosso dubbed the Express “Princeton’s Progressive Newspaper,” clearly trying to distinguish it from the two well-established local newspapers, The Princeton Herald and The Princeton Packet.

With the issue of May 12, 1938 (vol. 3, no. 30), The Local Express became The Princeton News. Rosso was sole editor, with Edward E. Felker serving as business manager. Clearly costs were affecting production: the new title was smaller in trim size and printed on cheaper paper stock. The final issue appeared March 9, 1939.

Content of the day was much like today’s local news: politics, schools, business, social, entertainment, and sports. A novelty is the one-time appearance of a color-printed comics section on September 24, 1936 (vol. 1, no. 49), including the following strips: “Happy,” “Peggy Wow,” “Silly Willie,” “The Jamms,” “Pop’s Night Out,” and “Adventures of the Red Mask.”

The University Library received issues of the newspaper as they were published, then bound them for addition to the Library’s PB (Princeton Borough and Township History) collection. An important source for local history, the PB collection was formed by the Library sometime between 1900 and 1920, and new materials were added regularly for several decades thereafter. The PB collection is now in the care of the Rare Book Division at Firestone Library.

Scanning of The Local Express was done by Roel Muñoz and the Library Digital Projects staff during this fall. Cataloguing and interpretative notes were prepared by Joyce Bell and Steve Ferguson. Final arrangements for Web display were done by Jon Stroop and his colleagues in the Digital Library Group.

“The timing of the newspaper’s re-discovery and digitization couldn’t be better, as Princeton in the 1930s continues to be on view through July 13, 2008,” said Eileen K. Morales, Curator, Historical Society of Princeton. “Once the exhibition is closed, the digitized version of The Local Express and the original photographs and manuscripts at the Historical Society of Princeton will continue to enable members of the public to learn about this important decade in Princeton’s history.”

Other local Princeton history materials are available on the Library’s Digital Collections website, such as the Historic Postcard Collection. See: http://diglib.princeton.edu

Click here for directions regarding zooming in for details.

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the publication of Description de l’Égypte, Princeton University Library is currently presenting the exhibition Egypt Unveiled: The Mission of Napoleon’s Savants.

Despite the failure of Napoleon Bonaparte’s 1798 military campaign in Egypt, the work of the scholars who accompanied him on the expedition was an incredible success. A group of 151 scientists, engineers, and artists was recruited to explore, describe, and document every aspect of the country. From the great temples and tombs of ancient Egypt to contemporary customs and trades, from Egyptian animals, plants, and minerals to local topography, the savants—or scholars—captured it all.

The single greatest archaeological discovery made by the French in Egypt was a dark gray granite slab found in July 1799 near the town of Rosetta, east of Alexandria. Measuring forty-seven inches tall and thirty-two inches wide, the scholars immediately recognized the importance of the artifact. The same decree from 196 B.C. is inscribed on the stone in three scripts: Greek (bottom), Egyptian demotic (middle), and Egyptian hieroglyphics (top). The Rosetta Stone proved to be the key to decoding ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, allowing the language to be read for the first time in fifteen hundred years.

Description de l’Égypte, the comprehensive result of all of the scholars’ work and research, was published beginning in 1809. Comprising twenty-three volumes and 837 engraved plates, it is considered an extraordinary scholarly achievement as well as a foundational work of modern Egyptology.

Egypt Unveiled: The Mission of Napoleon’s Savants is on view through Sunday, May 10, 2009, in the Main Gallery of Firestone Library. The exhibition was organized by Jen Meyer, Assistant to the Curator of Rare Books. Former Assistant, Paula Entin, also contributed. For more information, visit: http://www.princeton.edu/~rbsc/exhibitions/main.html

Note regarding the exhibition poster: The scholars enjoyed drawing each other at work in Egypt. In this sketch, an expedition artist contemplates a mighty granite statue of Rameses II in Thebes. Citation: “Thèbes. Karnak. Vue d’un colosse placé à l’entrée de la salle hypostyle du palais.” Antiquities. Vol. III, pl. 20. Description de l’Égypte: ou, Recueil des observations et des recherches qui ont été faites en Égypte pendant l’expédition de l’armée française. Paris: Imprimerie impériale, 1809-1822. Gift from the library of Ralph E. Prime (1840-1920), presented in 1921 by his sons, Ralph E. Prime Jr., Class of 1888, and William Cowper Prime Jr., Class of 1890. Rare Book Division. Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library.

To be published. Scheduled to be available after Wednesday January 20, 2010.

Cartographies of Time: A History of the Timeline.
Authors: Anthony Grafton, Daniel Rosenberg
Publisher: Princeton Architectural Press, 2010
8-1/2 x 10-1/2 in; 272 pp ; 268 color and 40 b/w images
ISBN-13: 9781568987637
ISBN: 1568987633

Details: http://www.chroniclebooks.com/index/main,book-info/store,books/products_id,8500/path,1/title,Cartographies-of-Time/

Professor Daniel Rosenberg writes

“Cartographies of Time is a history of graphic representations of time in Europe and the United States from 1450 to the present. The book argues that this history may be divided into two main phases, the period from 1450 to 1750, during which scholars relied heavily on the tabular system of representation developed by the fourth-century Christian scholar Eusebius, and the period from 1750 to the present during which the simple, measured line displaced the tabular matrix as the standard mechanism for representing historical chronology.

The story that we tell in the book has many twists and turns—it takes detours through sixteenth-century astronomy and follows Canadian missionaries to Oregon, turns up little known works by famous figures including a historical chronology by the mapmaker Gerardus Mercator and a chronological board game patented by Mark Twain—and, as I will shown in a few slides, the table and the line are only two of many possible ways of graphing history. In the book, the circle, the tree, and many other figures get due consideration. Nonetheless, the book argues that in Western history and chronology, the table and the line hold a peculiarly central place. The book is a study of these two favored forms in relation in relation to a changing ecology of images and ideas.”

Preliminary draft of the introduction

In preparing this book, Professors Grafton and Rosenberg spent many, many hours in Princeton’s rare book reading room closely researching the Library’s extensive holdings of chronological charts, tables, and timelines.