Fisher Library

U of T Libraries

U of T Mississauga

An ancient book can tell a story in more ways than one.

A wooden cover can offer clues about the climate when the book was made. Its paper and ink can tell us about technologies that were used at that point in history.

Until Feb. 27, the ��Ƶ and Aga Khan Museum will reveal these stories and more in the collaborative exhibit, “Hidden Stories: Books Along the Silk Roads.”

“It’s truly a feast for the eyes,” says Alexandra Gillespie, vice-president and principal of U of T Mississauga. “When you go into the exhibit, you immediately start seeing objects that begin telling you a story about the transnational nature of the production of books in the pre-modern period.”

The exhibit is the fruit of a partnership between the Aga Khan Museum; the Book and the Silk Roads project, an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-funded initiative driven by the Old Books New Science (OBNS) Lab at U of T Mississauga; the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, N.J.; and ��Ƶ Libraries’ Information Technology Services (ITS), which is hosting a digital companion site for the exhibit.

Gillespie, the principal investigator with The Book and the Silk Roads project and director of the OBNS, says the ancient artifacts included in the exhibit – books, robes, scrolls and textiles – reveal how these objects shaped life surrounding one of history’s most important trade networks.

“We use the word ‘book’ to mean any kind of text-bearing object,” Gillespie explains, adding that the exhibit shows “conversations that are occurring between these objects.”

In addition to the artifacts, Gillespie says the exhibit will show visitors 3D MicroCT scans of books under non-destructive X-ray, which were conducted by U of T and Western University in collaboration with the Ontario Museum of Archaeology and St. Joseph’s Health Centre in London, Ont.

Gillespie says the MicroCT scans can reveal fascinating stories about a manuscript’s history – for example, craft technologies of the past.

Rachel Di Cresce, digital project librarian at the ITS department and the project librarian for U of T’s The Book and the Silk Roads project, says the exhibit’s digital companion site also includes MicroCT scans of some of the artifacts that are on display in-person.

Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, MS 01106, sagittal view. Micro-CT: Grasselli's Geomechanics Group, 2020.

One of those artifacts is a Book of Hours known as Canon Grandel’s Prayer Book, which was made in 15th century France and was added to the exhibition by Western University's Archives and Special Collections. Scans of the book reveal empty sewing holes and other traces of the original medieval binding, which was removed more than 300 years ago when the book was rebound with its current cover.

“We know at some point the book was taken apart. We have kind of lovingly referred to it as a ‘ghost binding’ because when it visually pops up in a scan, it looks a little ominous. And you can see that there's traces that the bookmakers have actually left behind. There’s some greater story to be told there that we don't fully know yet,” Di Cresce says.

She adds that the digital exhibit will also have multimedia features including an interactive map, videos exploring key exhibition objects, an audio track of a chant song from a 16th century Spanish choir book, and a zoom-in function to view intricately detailed manuscript paintings.

Online exhibit visitors will also be able to see some of the same items on display at the museum in a digital format, including items from U of T’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, Western University’s Archives and Special Collections, the Aga Khan Museum, the Royal Ontario Museum (ROM) and the Marshall and Marilyn Wolf Collection.

U of T's Fisher library has loaned a diverse selection of historical codices, pothi books and scrolls from Turkey, Ethiopia, Egypt, Tibet and Nepal, and ranging in date from the 11th to the 20th centuries.

“It’s quite an extensive collection,” Di Cresce says.

Whether visitors attend the exhibit online or in-person, Gillespie says they will be surprised by the beauty of these objects – including a 17th-19th century manuscript containing the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, on loan from the Fisher library.

“The beauty really shines from them,” Gillespie says. “We often think of books as utilitarian objects designed to carry a text ... but these are also objects of extraordinarily exquisite craft, of amazing human ingenuity.”

Explore Canada’s culinary history at U of T library exhibit and Doors Open event

Romi Levine — Wed, 16 May 2018 04:00:00 +0000

Explore Canada’s culinary history at U of T library exhibit and Doors Open event

Romi Levine Wed, 05/16/2018 - 00:00

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Children at the Lillian Massey School of Domestic Science and Art (which later became the Department of Household Science) learning how to prepare food (photo courtesy of U of T Archives)

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Faculty of Information

Jackman Humanities Institute

Graduate Students

Humanities

Museum Studies

U of T Libraries

If you want to stump a Canadian, ask them to describe their national cuisine.

Unlike pasta in Italy or tapas in Spain, Canada’s culinary culture is hard to pin down. But that’s what makes our food culture so unique, says Irina Mihalache, assistant professor of museum studies in the Faculty of Information.

Mihalache is co-curating an exhibit at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library that explores Canada’s culinary history through the voices of women from the 1820s to the 1960s using a range of artifacts, including rare cook books, manuscripts, culinary objects and photos.

Mixed Messages: Making and Shaping Culinary Culture in Canada will run from May 22 to Aug. 17.

The exhibition includes a bottle of curry powder from the 1890s and scent cubes – small museum-grade boxes that contain a scent (like pineapple or curry) that helps to tell the story of Canada’s culinary history. “We thought it was important to give visitors that sensory experience,” says Sadie MacDonald, Master of Museum Studies student and curatorial assistant (photo by Romi Levine)

“We wanted to deconstruct the idea of Canadian identity,” says Mihalache. “What we wanted to do is rather than say this is what Canadian culinary culture looks like, we wanted to show how chaotic and messy and impossible it is to pin down.”

Mihalache worked alongside Elizabeth Ridolfo, special collections projects librarian at Fisher Library, and Nathalie Cooke, professor and associate dean of library rare and special collections at McGill University, on curating the exhibition with the help of Master of Museum Studies students Cassandra Curtis and Sadie MacDonald.

Additional research was done by students as part of the Jackman Humanities Scholars in Residence.

On display are various editions of Catharine Parr Traill’s Female Emigrant’s Guide. “She could arguably be the first person to create Canadian cookbooks with Canadian people in mind and Canadian ingredients,” says Ridolfo. The book includes advice on what immigrants should bring to Canada from England, what seasonal produce to grow, and observations about Indigenous food (photo by Romi Levine)

The exhibition will touch on a number of themes, including how recipes were adapted during wartime when resources were scarce, how recipes were collected and distributed and who was left out of the conversation about culinary culture.

“We want to think about the absences and the forms of marginalization,” says Mihalache. “For example, the fact that you have Chinese recipes in a 1930s Chatelaine but you wouldn't have the voice of the Chinese community.”

The same goes for Indigenous recipes, she says. “When the settler Canadians came, they appropriated a lot of dishes Indigenous people were eating and they became Canadian.”

This community cookbook was published by the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation, a precursor to the NDP. Recipes are attributed to individual women, says MacDonald. “They crowd-sourced their recipes from a huge variety of people – including immigrant and Indigenous communities – and these recipes are credited" (photo by Romi Levine)

In addition to the Fisher Library exhibition, Curtis and MacDonald will be at Fort York during this year’s Doors Open on the weekend of May 26, running activities using the themes of Mixed Messages.

“The idea is to give people a behind-the-scenes look at the Mixed Messages exhibit,” says Curtis.

The Fort York programming will include a spotlight on the women behind Canadian cookbooks, an opportunity to try out culinary technology throughout the ages and, of course, a taste test of dishes like a wartime cake and mulligatawny soup.

“Learning about the history of culinary culture in Canada has been so eye-opening,” says Curtis. “I had no idea it was so complicated – so many different layers, all these different people coming from different places, contributing different things.”

Curtis and MacDonald will help to tell the stories of women in Canadian culinary culture at Fort York during Doors Open (photo by Romi Levine)

U of T Libraries’ giant collection of tiny books

geoff.vendeville — Tue, 22 Aug 2017 10:08:52 +0000

U of T Libraries’ giant collection of tiny books

geoff.vendeville Tue, 08/22/2017 - 06:08

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Letter from Galileo to the Grand Duchess Cristina, published in Italy in 1897, was probably a collector’s item, with its vellum binding. (photo by Geoffrey Vendeville)

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Great books in very small packages

��Ƶ Libraries has a few thousand mini titles – some even smaller than a paperclip.

The collection spans religious manuscripts from the Middle Ages to a modern edition of Romeo and Juliet that's fit for a doll.

U of T News visited the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library and librarian David Fernandez to learn more about seven of these tiny treasures.

1. Book of hours (France, late 14th century)

Nowadays, most people don't leave the house without their smartphone. But in the Middles Ages, they carried the book of hours, a prayer guide for the eight canonical hours of the day.

“The book was kept close to your body,” Fernandez says.

And like an iPhone, it could be personalized. “The binding would have been customized so the person who orders the book of hours, their personality, their religion, even their region and language, were captured in the book."

2. Rules to Examine and Discern the Interior of One's Soul (Mexico, 1635)

This is U of T Libraries’ oldest printed book from the Americas, published about a century after the introduction of the printing press to the New World.

The book of spiritual exercises and theology is small so readers could easily carry it with them where they went.

The black mark across its pages wasn't made by a clumsy library patron. It's a marca de fuego. “This was a tradition popular in Spain, Italy and later the New World," Fernandez explains. “A lot of the libraries of seminaries or churches would mark their books using a firebrand so that way they can identify items in their collection, because books were very valuable at the time.”

3. The Divine Comedy (Italy, 1629)

By the 17th century, religious literature wasn't the only material being printed in tiny editions. Hence this Divine Comedy-to-go.

“The Divine Comedy is such an important book and one that people have a very personal connection to,” Fernandez says. “They would learn different cantos by memory and recite them, using something like this to practise. ...The size tells you it was used for very personal and maybe constant reading.”

4. The Young Lady’s Book of Botany (England, 1838)

The 19th century was the heyday of the mini book. This guidebook on botany for “the young lady” was part of a wider tradition of Victorian books on the natural world, from bugs to seaweed. “A lot of these books have a very pedagogical and also Christian approach to them,” Fernandez says.

5. Collection of miniature books from the Borrower’s Press (United States, 1974-1987)

Though the era of the tiny book was long past by the late 20th century, it was not forgotten. Tiny-book nostalgia inspired a small press in Winterport, Me. to produce a set of mini marvels. Although they are novelties, all but a few of them contain actual text.

6. Two almanacs (England, 1778, and France, 1807)

Showing off is a custom even older than the miniature book.

These two almanacs with intricate covers and bindings were early examples of conspicuous consumption, Fernandez says. “Something like this wasn’t cheap. Readers invested in this because it was something they carry, and when they took it out of their pockets they would be making a statement.”

7. Letter from Galileo to the Grand Duchess Cristina (Italy, 1897)

Galileo wrote his friend, Cristina di Lorena, in 1615 about reconciling religion and science – 18 years before he was tried for heresy. This mini version could have been a collector’s item, Fernandez says.

“In the 19th century with more technologies available, people get more creative. If you look at this one, it’s bound in vellum [fine-grained animal skin] and it tries to imitate the style of the original 17th century letter.”

U of T’s One Spadina is front and centre at Toronto’s Doors Open

Romi Levine — Fri, 26 May 2017 16:25:23 +0000

U of T’s One Spadina is front and centre at Toronto’s Doors Open

Romi Levine Fri, 05/26/2017 - 12:25

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Take a tour of the new home of U of T's John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design at Door's Open (photo by Peter MacCallum)

Author legacy

Romi Levine

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John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

Cities

U of T Scarborough

Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy

This year’s Doors Open is celebrating 15 decades of Canadian architecture – a fitting theme for the public debut of one of Toronto’s most impressive buildings – One Spadina Crescent.

The new home of U of T’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design will be showcasing both its preserved heritage and its slick contemporary update at this year’s event.

“We are looking forward to welcoming the public – including alumni, industry professionals, prospective students and members of the greater Toronto community – to our almost, but not-yet finished new home,” says Daniels Dean Richard Sommer.

‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: Margaret Atwood's handwritten first draft at U of T's Fisher Library

Romi Levine — Mon, 24 Apr 2017 20:30:35 +0000

‘The Handmaid’s Tale’: Margaret Atwood's handwritten first draft at U of T's Fisher Library

Romi Levine Mon, 04/24/2017 - 16:30

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‘The Handmaid's Tale’ has been translated into numerous languages in countries around the world. Copies of the novel from Iran, Canada, Germany and China (photo by Romi Levine)

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Nobel laureate Derek Walcott dies: U of T's Fisher library has 160 boxes of his drafts, notes and sketches

ullahnor — Mon, 20 Mar 2017 20:01:00 +0000

Nobel laureate Derek Walcott dies: U of T's Fisher library has 160 boxes of his drafts, notes and sketches

ullahnor Mon, 03/20/2017 - 16:01

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U of T has more than 160 boxes of Derek Walcott's notes and drawings. Walcott in Italy in 2008 (photo by Vittorio Zunino Celotto/Getty Images)

Noreen Ahmed-Ullah

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A history of board games comes to U of T’s Fisher Library

Romi Levine — Wed, 15 Feb 2017 19:32:52 +0000

A history of board games comes to U of T’s Fisher Library

Romi Levine Wed, 02/15/2017 - 14:32

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“The new and diverting game of Alice in Wonderland” is on display at the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library (photos by Romi Levine)

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Romi Levine

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Frigid winter days are a great excuse to stay indoors with good company and a pile of board games.

As you roll the dice, reflect on this: you’re participating in a tradition of game-playing that dates back to ancient Mesopotamia.

This month, the more recent history of board and card games is being explored in an exhibit at the ��Ƶ's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library.

Curated by Fisher librarian Chris Young, “Ludos Ludere: Games to Play” looks at the ways games reflect the culture and values of the time they were created.

“One of our mandates with special collections is to try and collect not just a range of diverse cultures in whatever form they come – but also a wide range of printed material,” says Young.

A copy of H.G. Wells's 1911 “Floor Games” about children’s games is on display at the exhibit

While games in different forms have been played for many centuries, board and card games are a relatively recent invention.

“Card games and the books about card games were all made from the 17th century onwards when cards were easy to manufacture cheaply because of the printing press, cheaper paper materials, and mass production of ink and presses,” says Young.

The popularity of gaming rose to the point where even famed authors like H.G. Wells were keen on writing about the pastime. The science fiction novelist published Floor Games in 1911 about various children’s games – a copy of which is on display in the exhibit.

Most of the games on display are no longer played or manufactured but they all have ties to contemporary counterparts, says Young.

“You can see how games people tend to play today are derived from other early genres that may no longer exist.

Here are some of the games to check out at the exhibit:

Lotería: La suerte que habla, 2016

The only contemporary game on display, Loteria is a true reflection of today’s political and cultural landscape.

This modern take on a traditional Mexican game uses a board similar to Bingo with images instead of numbers. A riddle is read out loud, corresponding to a specific image – many of which are ripped right from the headlines.

The money game: how to play it, 1928

It was mere coincidence that this economics-based game was released at a time when the world was in financial turmoil.

The game looks like a book when closed, but it opens into a detailed set of instructions with a number of game pieces.

“You’re trying to gather resources at a cheap cost from other players based on how many of that specific resource they have,” Young says.

Myriorama: a collection of many hundred landscapes, 1824

There’s no winning or losing in this game – players can place the hand-coloured panels in any order they wish.

They are illustrated in a way that no matter what order they are played, the landscape will look complete.

The new and diverting game of Alice in Wonderland, 1898

Forty years after Charles Lutwidge Dodgson a.k.a. Lewis Carroll’s whimsical novel was published, this card game was released.

The aim of the game is to make complete sets of a certain type of card. Illustrations on each card have been adapted from the book’s original art drawn by John Tenniel.

“Cards were easy to be bought, distributed and played in almost any context because they fit in your pocket,” says Young.

U of T joins global Biodiversity Heritage Library to digitize, archive science literature

Romi Levine — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 17:19:27 +0000

U of T joins global Biodiversity Heritage Library to digitize, archive science literature

Romi Levine Tue, 01/24/2017 - 12:19

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Gerstein Science Information Centre uploaded 2.3 million pages-worth of science literature to the Biodiversity Heritage Library online archive. (Photo by Romi Levine)

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��Ƶ Libraries is the newest and only Canadian member of the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL), a massive digitization project that provides free online access to scientific literature from prestigious institutions all over the world.

Members include the Smithsonian, Harvard University and London’s Natural History Museum.

“We're really thrilled to be partnering with Biodiversity Heritage Library and all the other institutions that are part of it,” says Neil Romanosky, U of T Libraries’ associate chief librarian for science research and information.

U of T has the largest academic library system in Canada, ranked fourth in North America by the Association of Research Libraries. It has already contributed 3.3 million pages of literature to BHL from its of collection rare and unique books and journals spanning hundreds of years.

#Mollusks from our newest #BHLib Member, @uoftlibraries @GersteinLibrary for #MolluskMonday https://t.co/XPLlXBBPZO #MolluscMonday pic.twitter.com/92bcWBmhgW
— BHL (@BioDivLibrary) January 23, 2017

It’s part of U of T’s massive collection of natural history literature belonging to its 10 science libraries, which includes Gerstein Science Information Centre, Canada’s largest standalone science and health library, as well as the Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library, which holds a collection that includes original works by Charles Darwin.

“We felt Biodiversity Heritage Library's key values really aligned with those of ��Ƶ Libraries, specifically open access, collaboration among libraries, archives, museums and other kinds of organizations in making collections more freely available,” says Romanosky.

U of T Libraries has contributed books to BHL on everything from anatomy to botany. (Photo by Romi Levine)

U of T already hosts an Internet Archive scanning centre, so many of its historic collections are already available online.

Archiving material online allows researchers all over the world to gain access to hard-to-find material.

It’s the ultimate democratic gesture, says Vincci Lui, faculty liaison & instruction librarian at Gerstein.

“We're such a global economy now, it's so much easier to share your knowledge with someone across the globe – it's something libraries are huge proponents of,” she says. “Instead of reaching a tiny amount of people, you see thousands and thousands of people having access to these collections – it's a pretty cool thing.”

The Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London includes Isaac Newton's first mention of the Theory of Light and Colours. U of T contributed editions of this journal from the 1800s and a substantial number from the 1900s to the BHL database. (Photo by Romi Levine)

Digitizing also provides access to some of U of T’s more well-loved items that are hard to handle.

“Some of our books are very brittle so the ability to be able to preserve them and share them is amazing,” says Lui.

U of T students and faculty can access Gerstein's large collection of historic medical and scientific books on the bottom floor of the library. (Photo by Romi Levine)

As a new political era begins in the United States, the country’s commitment to climate, science and environmental issues hangs in the balance, making the BHL more imperative than ever before, Romanosky says.

“Open access and furthering the pursuit of knowledge and new knowledge generation around biodiversity is a great way to ensure that in this era of uncertainty, ��Ƶ has a way to keep the conversation going and to share the great strengths we have in this area more broadly and globally,” he says. “One of the great strengths of the libraries is that we are a crossroads within the institution and we really hold a great spot to further public discourse on these issues.”

Undead or unexplained? Photos, books on the paranormal at U of T's Fisher Library

ullahnor — Thu, 12 Jan 2017 23:01:35 +0000

Undead or unexplained? Photos, books on the paranormal at U of T's Fisher Library

ullahnor Thu, 01/12/2017 - 18:01

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Fisher Library’s collection of paranormal literature explores everything from spirit photography to seances (photo by Romi Levine)

Author legacy

Romi Levine

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While modern science helps us understand the world around us, it’s the unexplained that really captures our imagination.

��Ƶ’s Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library is celebrating our fascination with otherworldly beings in an exhibit called “Investigating the Paranormal,” on display until the end of January.

Curated by Fisher librarian Chris Young and archivist Natalya Rattan, the display draws from a collection of more than 1,500 items from the 18th century until today. The collection was donated by U of T alumnus Adam Crabtree, a former Catholic priest who has been interested for awhile in paranormal experiences.

The collection, which also available online, includes illustrated books, fictional pieces, journals and important literature pertaining to psychical research, which is the study of the paranormal.

This first edition of Puysegur’s work, is signed by the author. It’s of the most valuable books in the collection (photo by Romi Levine)

Crabtree was a Benedictine monk but decided to leave the monastery while studying philosophy at U of T.

After finishing his studies, he became a psychotherapist and began to explore paranormal phenomenon.

“I used hypnosis or trance states to make the work more effective in exploring the inner life of my clients, and in the process, I became very interested in understanding how hypnosis came to be and how the unusual things that were being revealed about the unconscious life of human beings came to light,” he says.

Crabtree’s collection includes books about the paranormal with interesting illustrated bindings (photo by Romi Levine)

Crabtree was attracted to the works of psychical research’s forefathers – Franz Anton Mesmer and his pupil Marquis de Puysegur.

“Puyesgur explored how people talked and what view of the world they had when they were in a mesmerized state,” says Crabtree.

This is the first illustration of a séance from the 18th century. It may even depict Mesmer himself (third from left). Patients are grasping iron rods protruding from the water. They applied them to ailing body parts, to transfer therapeutic magnetism to their bodies (photo by Romi Levine)

Though psychical research is considered a fringe science today, that wasn’t always the case, says Young.

“When it was starting off in the 19th century, people used contemporary scientific methods for it,” he says. “The problem at the time was there wasn’t enough evidential proof that these paranormal activities were actually happening. That’s why it never took hold as a scientific discipline along the lines of chemistry, biology.”

Mainstream fascination in the paranormal also began in the 1800s with social events meant to conjure spirits such as seances and table turning.

Spiritualist events like table turning were popular in the 19th century (photo by Romi Levine)

“Table turning is a type of a seance. Allegedly spirits are communicating with you, but somebody was probably turning it with their foot – who knows? It’s kind of like a ouija board,” says Rattan.

Early photographers also claimed to have captured paranormal phenomenon – a trend explored in the Fisher exhibit.

Ectoplasm is a substance that is said to be visible on mediums when photographed (photo by Romi Levine)

“Photography was fairly new and involved a lot of chemicals to be able to reproduce the photographs,” says Young. “So people would take photographs, and there would be this mirror image of a face or other types of lighting that had been captured and people couldn’t explain it.”

Rattan adds that people at the time thought the likenesses that appeared were people that had died who were important to them.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was a member of the Society for Psychical Research (photo by Romi Levine)

Psychical research was so popular in the 19th century that well-known figures like Sherlock Holmes author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle embraced it.

The topic may not be as readily embraced today, but Crabtree’s collection is beginning to spark interest: U of T scholars and even an American PhD student have looked into it.

Can you see the ghostly faces in this photo? Spirits are alleged to have been captured on camera (photo by Romi Levine)

'Unexpectedly beautiful' angling and fishing collection at U of T's Fisher Library

Romi Levine — Wed, 04 Jan 2017 18:06:47 +0000

'Unexpectedly beautiful' angling and fishing collection at U of T's Fisher Library

Romi Levine Wed, 01/04/2017 - 13:06

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U of T's Thomas Fisher Rare Book Library has received a massive fishing and angling book collection (photo by Paul Armstrong)