Ask A Librarian

A Visit to the Rare Book Room: A Tweet Story

Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
April 3rd, 2017

Blog post by Stewart Plein, Rare Book Librarian

When Sharon Kelly, WVU Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English, reached out to me to ask if her class could come to the Rare Book Room as an extra credit activity I jumped at the chance to share WVU’s rare book collection with Sharon’s students.  The following is a series of tweets between the instructor and her class documenting the process of arranging for a class to visit the Rare Book Room and the students’ excitement once they began to experience the collections.

 


When faculty set up a class visit to the Rare Book Room I like to schedule a preliminary visit in advance so that the faculty member can see the space, how the room is set up, and select material.  Sharon gave me guidelines and we discussed what the class had been working on.  From there it was easy to make selections from the collections.

 

 

For students who hadn’t been to the West Virginia and Regional History Center before, where the Rare Book Room is located, this tweet gave them a recognizable library landmark directing them to the right place.

 

 

Editor’s Note: The Snapchat story doesn’t seem to play in Internet Explorer, but works in Firefox and Google Chrome. If it isn’t working for you, try opening this blog post in a different browser.

 

Students were really excited by the great selection of books Sharon and I picked out for the class.  Above is a snapchat story a student made of some of her favorite books

 

 

A few students weren’t able to attend the class session, so one student shared some of the great books they saw in the Rare Book Room.

 

 

We’re having fun examining a 15th century choir book from a Spanish monastery!  Every aspect of the book, from the leather covers, to the vellum pages, to the ink, is all made by hand!

 

 

Want to visit the Rare Book Room?  Give me a call or send an email! 304-293-0345 or Stewart.Plein@mail.wvu.edu.

 

 

Thanks to Sharon Kelly and the students of English 262 for this tweet story!

 

 

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