From 1974 to 1985, curators, librarians, and scholars at the University of Illinois collaborated on a annual journal that celebrated our special collections. Their articles brought to light discoveries, offered interesting stories behind our acquisitions, and reminded readers of the research opportunities that await them in our vaults.\u00a0 The journal was called Non Solus after the motto of the Elzevier printing family, one of the great presses of early modern Europe.<\/p>\n
Now, as thoroughly modern bibliophiles, we are launching a blog, which we hereby dub Non Solus<\/em> <\/em>with a nod toward both our predecessors and the Elzeviers.\u00a0 Though the Elzeviers may have construed their motto as a sign of piety, we are sure they also understood it to mean that even when we are most absorbed in thought\u2014like the contemplative man beneath the tree in the Elzevier device\u2014we are not alone because our ideas are built upon the ideas of others.\u00a0 In a library, one is never alone.\u00a0 Here we gather together books by diverse thinkers, people who might have been enemies in life or whose cultures were as divergent as Lao-Tzu and Hildegard of Bingen.\u00a0 All come together in the library.\u00a0 It\u2019s like the paradise imagined by Dante–a gathering place for thinkers, dreamers, doers, and characters from the whole span of human history.\u00a0 They are all here in the library, each professing their views, each trying to persuade you.\u00a0 And through you, the reader, they are in conversation with each other.<\/p>\n The goal of the new Non Solus<\/em> is to bring you into contact with some of those characters and the books they created. We will write about interesting \u201cfinds\u201d in the stacks, fascinating histories behind our books and manuscripts, and other bibliographic wonders we come upon. We\u2019ll let you know about new acquisitions and new initiatives.\u00a0 And we\u2019ll keep you up-to-date on the many cultural programs, exhibitions, and public events sponsored by The Rare Book & Manuscript Library.<\/p>\n This is a collaborative blog (how could it be otherwise with a name like Non Solus<\/em>?) Every day, we work together, we share our discoveries, and we talk about books with one another.\u00a0 Now we will work together to bring you this blog.\u00a0 Curators, catalogers, teaching faculty, librarians, and students will contribute tantalizing tidbits.\u00a0 We\u2019ll sign off with our initials and put up a list with our names, positions, interests, and email addresses, so that you\u2019ll know who is behind each posting and where to turn if you want to know more.<\/p>\n And so, we\u2019re off!\u00a0 The blog is launched.\u00a0 But it\u2019s lonely here in front of my computer screen.\u00a0 I think I\u2019ll go into the vault where I always feel so very \u2018not alone.\u2019\u00a0 I\u2019ll let you know about any interesting encounters.\u00a0 VH<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" From 1974 to 1985, curators, librarians, and scholars at the University of Illinois collaborated on a annual journal that celebrated our special collections. Their articles brought to light discoveries, offered interesting stories behind our acquisitions, and reminded readers of the research opportunities that await them in our vaults.\u00a0 The journal was called Non Solus after […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":115,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[31,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-solus","category-vh"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/115"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2311\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/wordpress.library.illinois.edu\/rbx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}