The Hesburgh Libraries offer a number of exhibits that are open to the public as well as to campus students, faculty and staff. See Exhibit Guidelines and Request Form
Current displays:

• Hesburgh Library Concourse
• Second Floor Display Case
• Rare Books and Special Collections

In addition, various departments within the Libraries are creating Web-based exhibits and collections of digital texts and images. For a listing, see:

• Online Exhibits and Digital Collections

Hesburgh Library Concourse Exhibits

Women and Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America
It chronicles the history of Catholic sisters in America and describes how these independent women served as nurses, teachers, and social workers to help shape the nation’s social and cultural landscape.

 

Banned Books: Listen to the reading of Tango Makes Three by Peace Studies Librarian Doug Archer

 

Chem Demo Team Brings Science Alive

 

Second Floor Display Case

Rare Books and Special Collections

August 22 to December 16, 2011 102 Hesburgh Library, at the west end of the 1st Floor Concourse Open to the public 8:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., Monday through Friday

Currently on Display All Roads Lead to Rome: New acquisitions relating to the Eternal City The proverb "All roads lead to Rome" derives from medieval Latin. It was first recorded in writing in 1175 by Alain de Lille, a French theologian and poet, whose Liber Parabolarum renders it as 'mille viae ducunt homines per saecula Romam' (a thousand roads lead men forever to Rome). The first documented English use of the proverb occurs more than two hundred years later, in Geoffrey Chaucer's Astrolabe of 1391, where it appears as 'right as diverse pathes leden diverse folk the righte way to Rome.' The proverb's origins may relate to the Roman monument known as the Milliarium Aureum, or golden milestone, erected by Emperor Caesar Augustus in the central forum of ancient Rome. All distances in the Roman Empire were measured from this point and it was regarded as the site from which all principle roads diverged. As such, artists such as Giacomo Lauro, whose rendition of the Milliarium Aureum appears in this exhibit, often used it as a metaphor for the intensely cosmopolitan culture that has long been present in Rome. The materials on view in this exhibit are recent purchases made through the Library Acquisitions Grant Program. Titled "All Roads Lead to Rome," this generous grant sought to strengthen the Library's scholarly holdings within the subject areas of cartography, monuments, and travel. Within these categories, interdisciplinary purchases pertaining to archaeology, music, history, and the development of the Vatican were also made. This exhibit presents a selection of these recent acquisitions that are now available for use by faculty and students within the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections.

 

OnLine Exhibits and Digital Collections

Rare Books and Special Collections

The Rare Books and Manuscripts Unit of the Department of Special Collections has produced a number of exhibits featuring selections from major collections as well as several digital collections which aim to provide a comprehensive online catalog for specific holdings:

Online exhibits:

• Power and Politics in the 19th-Century River Plate – books and manuscripts from the O'Grady Collection at the University of Notre Dame
• Familia Praedicatoria - in the University of Notre Dame Library - medieval manuscripts, incunables, and sixteenth-century books containing texts and images of the Order of Preachers
• Inter Folia Fructus - a survey of significant acquisitions related to Medieval British Studies
• Nos Los Inquisidores – selections from the Harley L. McDevitt Collection on the Spanish Inquisition
• "Renaissance Dante in Print (1472-1629)"
• Selections from the Library of José Durand

Digital Collections:

• Colonial Currency
• Coins of Colonial and Early America
• Manuscripts of the American Civil War
• Washington Tokens
• Wolf Collection of Irish Postage Stamps

Edmund P. Joyce Sports Research Collection

The Edmund P. Joyce Sports Research Collection in the Department of Special Collections offers the following online exhibits:

• Autographed Baseballs in the Joyce Sports Research Collection
• Selections from the Harry E. Winkler Collection of Boxing Photographs

Medieval Institute Library

The Medieval Institute Library has produced the following exhibits and digital collections of its holdings:

Online exhibits:

• Access to the Middle Ages: Medieval Manuscripts in Facsimile

Digital Collections:

• Medieval Seals: A Collection of Facsimiles at the Medieval Institute
• Inventory-Catalogue of the Drawings in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana, Milan

Anastos Byzantine Library

A new Byzantine Studies Library is being built around the recently-acquired collection of the late Milton V. Anastos. While the collection is being cataloged and housed, you are invited to take a brief "walking tour" through the history and culture of Byzantium.

Devers Program in Dante Studies and the ItalNet Consortium

Established in 1995 to support rare book acquisitions in the John A. Zahm Dante collection and to fund an annual lecture series and visiting professorship in Dante studies, the Devers Program is also a founding member of the international ItalNet Consortium, whose mission is to make available scholarly Internet resources of literary and historical materials relating to Italian studies. Selected digital projects produced by ItalNet include:

• Opera del Vocabolario Italiano database of early Italian texts
• Franco-Italian On-line Archive (FIOLA)