Editor's note: During the Spring 2026 semester, Rare Books & Special Collections (RBSC) will highlight examples of survival, contemplation, competition, protest and learning in their exhibition, “Cultivating Community: Stories from Special Collections.” 

Curated by six faculty members from the Hesburgh Libraries and featuring pieces housed in six of RBSC’s distinct collections, “Cultivating Community: Stories from Special Collections” showcases the universality of constructing community and cultivating hope across time and place.

Throughout the semester, the Hesburgh Libraries website will feature news articles about each of the six faculty curators, providing insight into the stories behind their individual exhibits.

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From the moment Europeans encountered the New World to the early days of the Republic, people sought to understand their world amid an unfamiliar and sometimes changing landscape.

So how did individuals learn, answer their questions, and seek to build community in early North America? That is what Rachel Bohlmann, American history and American Studies librarian and curator, wanted to answer as she searched RBSC’s collections for items to display in her part of RBSC’s spring exhibition.

What she found was an early account of Virginia by mathematician and scientist Thomas Hariot, published in 1590; a copy of Poor Richard’s Almanack, issued by Benjamin Franklin in 1752; a sermon notebook kept by Protestant minister Nathaniel Rogers; and a commonplace book created by a young woman named Maria Hegeman Onderdonk, among others.

Each item serves as a testament to how individuals in colonial America and the early Republic pursued and documented knowledge for themselves and others. They, along with several other pieces from the collection, comprise Bohlmann’s exhibit, “A Community of Learners in Colonial America and the Early Republic,” one of six distinct displays as part of the semester-long exhibition “Cultivating Community: Stories from Special Collections.” 

“Putting together the exhibition as a whole was an interesting exercise in thinking about the commonalities we have across these very broad collections, from medieval to late 20th-century, European to American, manuscripts, handwritten books, pop art and ephemeral pieces,” Bohlmann said.

For her part, the curator chose to focus on a community of learners, showcasing the different ways individuals sought to gain a deeper understanding of their new continent, its government, its religious practices and even themselves.

“Examining the items on display, one thing that stands out is their evident demonstration of people’s persistent curiosity about the world and how people were exploring that curiosity by reading texts with diverse perspectives and ideas,” Bohlmann said. 

Adding that each item on display helps visitors gain insight into how, at a time when much was unknown, individuals seized knowledge anywhere they could. 

“They’re grappling with all of the new knowledge that they’re encountering,” she said. “Whether it’s a 1590 report of early explorations of Virginia, where they’re trying to understand the people, resources, geography and environment that they’re seeing for the first time. Or looking at the sermon notebook that Rogers kept from the 1630s to the 1640s, where he’s wrestling with the new religious experiences and practices of a Puritan minister, we can see the different ways that people learn and have recorded that learning in various formats.”

The items on display in Bohlmann’s exhibit all come from RBSC’s North American Collection, which includes materials from North America and Canada.   

“They capture different perspectives and experiences from this historical time period that we can’t get any other way,” Bohlmann said. “I hope seeing the exhibit helps visitors reflect on the variety of sources we have access to in today’s world that can help us understand who and where we are now.”

Bohlmann says she also hopes the unique items in her or any of the other curators’ exhibits in the “Cultivating Community” exhibition will spark visitors’ interest and entice them to return to RBSC.  

“All of these sources on display are available for people to study,” she said. “After seeing these, I hope people will want to come back to RBSC and use these and other materials in our collections.”

“Cultivating Community: Stories from Special Collections” is generously supported by the McBrien Special Collections Endowment. The exhibition is open to the public and will remain on display in 102 Hesburgh Library, Rare Books & Special Collections, through June 15.