After the first year, we created an exhibit showcasing our favorite posts, so we thought it was about time to repeat this. With some 1,079 posts it’s pretty hard to pick favorites, or even to remember what we’ve blogged! So, rather than choosing ourselves, we decided to exhibit the all-time most popular of the blog posts. To do this, we looked at the 23 most popular posts. It turned out that this was a pretty eclectic mix. It also turned out that some of the pieces were simply too big to fit in the cases (looking at you Plantin Polyglot Bible!) or were just not very visually appealing despite being associated with an incredible story (cough, cough, Ada Blackjack collection). In the end, we were forced to winnow down the selection to represent just 14 of those top 23.
The results are still pretty eclectic, but they’re all interesting. The topics run the gamut from a local train disaster, to an early George Washington document, to a stunningly beautiful Book of Hours produced in Florence in the late 15th century.
We hope you enjoy this cabinet of curiosities that we’ve produced! The exhibit was curated by Peter Carini, College Archivist, and Scout Noffke, Rauner Library's Reference and Adminstrative Specialist. You can download a handlist of the exhibit items here.