New Haven, Conn. — An exhibition of aerial photography by noted photographer Robert B. Haas is now on view at Yale’s Haas Family Arts Library, 180 York Street.

The main exhibition has a limited engagement through December, while 16 large pictures by the photographer will remain on permanent display at the Haas Library. An artist’s talk and reception will be held at 5:15 p.m. on November 20. The free event is open to the public.

Yale University Librarian Alice Prochaska said, “Robert Haas is an accomplished artist whose works have been exhibited in New York, Washington, D.C., Europe, South America, China and Australia, and also published in National Geographic Magazine and Time. We are honored that he accepted our invitation to display these extraordinary and moving works of art in Yale’s Haas Family Arts Library.”

The exhibition, “Capturing the Inaccessible,” includes both published and unpublished photographs from three of Haas’ books: “Through the Eyes of the Gods: An Aerial Vision of Africa” (2005), “Through the Eyes of the Condor: An Aerial Vision of Latin America” (2007) and “Through the Eyes of the Vikings: An Aerial Vision of Arctic Lands” (forthcoming), all published by the National Geographic Society. According to Haas, aerial photography weaves together a set of themes into artistic impression. These themes are the vantage point of the winged creature, the view of what lies below and humankind’s exaggerated notion of where it fits into a larger scheme.

Haas is the author and photographer of a series of seven books of photography and the chair of Haas Wheat & Partners, a Dallas-based private investment firm. A graduate of Yale College (1969) and Harvard Law School, he has endowed professorships and has been a frequent lecturer at both institutions. Haas has focused on aerial photography since 2002, and throughout his artistic career he has donated all royalties to schools, libraries, non-profit foundations and wildlife conservation organizations around the world.

The Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library opened in 2008 in the renovated Paul Rudolph Hall and the new Jeffrey H. Loria Center for the History of Art. The library brings together the collections, staf, and other resources from the former Art + Architecture and Drama libraries and the Arts of the Book Collection, as well as staff and services for the Visual Resources Collection. It serves as the library for the Schools of Art, Architecture, and Drama, as well as the Department of the History of Art and the Yale University Art Gallery.

A series of exhibits in Sterling Memorial Library are helping to mark the Yale Whiffenpoofs 100th birthday. Founded in 1909 at beer-fed Monday night songfests at the old Mory’s Bar on Temple Street, the Whiffenpoofs remain a signature part of “Old Yale.” Today, members of the nation’s oldest collegiate a capella group serve as Yale's musical ambassadors in performances all over the United States, on national television, and in dozens of countries.

Items on display in the exhibits, which are being held in a number of locations in Sterling Memorial Library throughout the summer and fall including the Gilmore Music Library, the Memorabilia Room, and the Sterling Nave, explore the history of the famous "Whiffenpoof Song” and feature historical memorabilia, souvenirs, and artifacts. The exhibits also pay tribute to the Whiffenpoofs’ rich history, their musical legacy, and honors noted alumni like Cole Porter, Senator Prescott Bush, and Fenno Heath.

The founding of the Whiffenpoofs in 1909 also marks the beginning of the American tradition of collegiate, close-harmony a cappella singing groups. The exhibits will cover a timeline from the beginning of the Whiffenpoofs as an extension of the Yale Glee Club, through their role in inspiring college singing groups among Yale underclassmen and throughout the Ivy League, and culminating in the current extracurricular phenomenon of over one thousand a cappella groups in colleges and secondary schools around the country.

The exhibits in Sterling Memorial Library run until late fall 2009. The Gilmore Music Library exhibit will close in September. All exhibits are free and open to the public. Sterling Memorial Library is located at 120 High Street.

Yale's Medical Historical Library houses one of the world’s finest historical medical collections. The collection contains over 130,000 books, bound manuscripts, journals, and pamphlets. This includes 325 incunabula (books printed between 1450 and 1500), a wonderful Renaissance, Arabic and Persian manuscript collection, and hundreds of bound manuscripts from the 16th to the 20th centuries.

The Cushing/Whitney Historical Library also houses the Fry Collection of Prints and Drawings that spans five centuries, an additional 2,500 portrait engravings and over 2,000 original photographs. The Library also has an artifact collection that includes over 1,000 medical and scientific instruments and the Streeter Collection of Weights and Measures containing several thousands items.

The Preservation Librarian for the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library began working in August 2005 to establish a program that will preserve and conserve these collections. The exhibit, which will be on view until August 28, illustrates issues of preservation and solutions that can be achieved to safeguard this priceless collection. For more information, visit: http://elibrary.med.yale.edu/blog/?p=609.

Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven
Until September 2009

This exhibition on Islamic art and architecture celebrates buildings and artwork commissioned by the rulers of the Islamic Empire and found in the Middle East and parts of Europe.

The books on display feature a variety of structures including mosques and minarets; madrasahs (schools); palaces and private homes; hospitals; hospices; castles and citadels; caravansaries; Sufi zawiyahs, khalwahs, tikiyahs and khaniqahs (religious centers); tombs and mausoleums; sabils (public drinking water fountains); public baths; covered bazaars; glass, ivory, silver gold, jewelry, brass and wood works; ceramics, textiles, embroideries and carpets. Taken together, they explore the important and lasting influence of Islam on European art and architecture.

Divinity School Library, 409 Prospect Street

This exhibit at the Divinity Library provides a glimpse into the life and work of Charles and Joy Sheffey, American Methodist medical missionaries who served in Wembo Nyama, Belgian Congo between 1922 and 1946. Letters and writings of the Sheffeys record their reactions to the African culture and environment they encountered in the Congo. The collection is notable for a large number of artifacts including a messenger drum, musical instruments, woven textiles and handicrafts, jewelry, and a “witch doctor’s magical gourd.”

The exhibit runs until September. For directions and hours, visit the Divinity Library's web site.

An Exhibition in the Memorabilia Room, Sterling Memorial Library
Until August 21, 2009

The “utopian impulse” is the desire to imagine or create a perfect society. Focusing on examples from the 15th through 18th centuries, this exhibition examines the many ways that Early Modern Europeans at home and abroad expressed the utopian impulse, seeking to fashion and explore new or "discovered" ideal societies, paradises lost and found, and perfect, harmonious built environments. Objects on view include architectural treatises and plans, utopian tracts, travel narratives, and maps of real and imagined places.

"The Utopian Impulse" is a collaboration across the collections of the Yale University Libraries, featuring works from the Anne T. & Robert M. Bass Library, the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library, Manuscripts and Archives, the Irving S. Gilmore Music Library, the Robert B. Haas Family Arts Library, the Sterling Memorial Library general collections, and the Yale Map Department of Sterling Memorial Library. The exhibition was generously funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and curated by Mia Reinoso Genoni, Mellon Special Collections Humanities Postdoctoral Fellow. Warm thanks to all who helped make this exhibition possible.

A new student curated exhibit, “Franco-Belgian Comics”, in Sterling Memorial Library celebrates comics, a 20th century art form found in newspapers, books, journals, and graphics novels. The Franco-Belgian bande dessinée (comic) tradition is one of the strongest in the world and began in newspapers in the 1920s with strips such as Hergé’s Tintin in Belgium’s Le Petit Vingtième weekly supplement. This exhibition will look at the evolution of Franco-Belgian comic strips over a number of decades.

Curated entirely by students, the exhibit also focuses on different aspects of comics, including masters of the bande dessinée, politics in the bande dessinée, movement and stasis, uses of color, realism and surrealism, wordplay, and physical presentation.

The exhibit is on view in the Sterling card catalog gallery from April 30 to July 30.

The Cushing Rotunda
Cushing/Whitney Medical Library
333 Cedar Street
April 23-May 28, 2009

In 1928, Venereal Diseases and the Fight Against Them, a portfolio of forty posters for exhibition and use in public lectures, was distributed throughout the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic by the People’s Commissariat on Health. “The Soviet government is waging a relentless battle against venereal diseases” the first poster of the series announced. “Participation in this battle is everyone’s duty…”

The exhibit, prepared by Alexander Kazberouk, Yale College Class of 2010, and Curator Susan Wheeler, displays a selection of posters from this recent acquisition to the library’s collections and explains how the posters were used for public education. An on-site computer is available to view the entire set of posters with an English translation.

French Liberty. British Slavery. British Responses to the French Revolution
Lewis Walpole Library, 154 Main Street, Farmington, CT
April 17-August 28, 2009

This exhibition explores British responses to the French Revolution and focuses on the period of 1789-1794, from the beginning of the Revolution until the end of the Reign of Terror in France. Whether depicting the brutality and depravity of the events in France, the political divisions in Britain, or considering the nature of liberty and patriotism, the exhibition will look at the British response sparked by the French Revolution, as reflected in satirical prints by James Gillray, Isaac Cruikshank, and others, as well as political pamphlets by Edmund Burke, Mary Wollstonecraft, Richard Price, and others, and manuscript letters from Horace Walpole. All of the works in the exhibition are from the collection of the Lewis Walpole Library. The exhibition was curated by graduate student Julia Elsky (Yale French Department) and will be on view through August 28.

Transportation to Farmington will be available from New Haven for Yale students on a limited basis on April 24 and May 1. Please contact the Library at (860) 677-2140 or walpole@yale.edu for details.

The Lewis Walpole Library is open Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday 8:30 a.m. - 4:45 p.m., and Tuesday 9 a.m. - 4:45 p.m. The Library is closed on University holidays. The exhibition gallery is open Wednesdays, 2:00-4:00 p.m. when exhibitions are on view. No appointment is required. For more information, visit: www.library.yale.edu/walpole/.

A new exhibit in Yale’s Sterling Memorial Library, The Art of the Ketubah: A Study in Jewish Diversity, celebrates the ketubah (plural ketubot), the marriage contract that Jewish law requires a groom to provide for his bride on their wedding day. The ketubah is intended to protect the woman by establishing the man’s financial obligations to her in case of divorce, as well as provisions for shelter, clothing, and food. Signed by two witnesses and read aloud during the marriage ceremony, the ketubah is an important public and cultural document. The ketubot on display in the exhibit are from the Yale University Library’s Sholem Asch Collection and span from four centuries and many countries. A virtual companion to the exhibit is available here.

Although many Jewish communities have historically decorated their ketubot, during the 17th and 18th centuries Italian Jews perfected the art of ketubah illumination. Italian ketubot from this period commonly feature rich floral ornamentation and images from the Bible as well as from Greek and Roman mythology. They often depict biblical personalities whose names were identical with those of the bride and groom, or they use images to identify their individual attributes like virtue and charity. A special feature of the ketubot of the Jews of Rome is the extended, rounded bottom edge which gave an opportunity to feature either a coat of arms, an object such as an urn, or a floral or geometric design which often include micrographic designs.

Ketubot from Jewish centers in Muslim world, including those in Iran and Afghanistan, are more conservatively decorated, reflecting the prohibition of the creation of graven images, but feature dazzling floral and animal motifs. Those of the Sephardic Diaspora (Jews of Spanish and Portuguese origin) reflect the rich heritage and unique identity of these communities.

The exhibit will be complimented by a lecture by Professor Vivian B. Mann on Tuesday, April 28 at 4:00 p.m. in the Sterling Memorial Library lecture hall (128 Wall Street, New Haven). Mann is Director of the Master’s Program in Jewish Art at the Graduate School of the Jewish Theological Seminary, and Curator Emerita of the Jewish Museum in New York. Her talk, which is co-sponsored by the Judaic Studies Program, is titled “Jewish Marriage Contracts as Documents of Acculturation.”

The exhibit will run until June 30, 2009 and is free and open to the public Monday-Thursday 8:30 a.m.-5:45 p.m.; Friday, 8:30 a.m.-4:45 p.m.; Saturday 10:00 a.m.-4:45 p.m.; Sunday 12 noon-5:45 p.m. Hours will change on May 12 and a detailed schedule can he found here.

Image: Ketubah (or marriage contract) from Isfahan (Iran), 1856, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

D.I.Y.: Instructions, Directions, Rules, and Recipes from Manuscripts and Archives is a new exhibit that features items which explain how to do things. Taken from a range of manuscript collections and from the University Archives, the directions cover academic grading and testing, proper behavior in the dorms, knitting, childrearing, traveling abroad, office filing, using gas masks, and a supposedly guaranteed gambling system, among other activities.

The exhibit is on view in the Memorabilia Room in Sterling Memorial Library, Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m.-4:45 p.m through the middle of May. It is free and open to the public. Sterling Memorial Library is located at 120 High Street, New Haven.

A new exhibit in Sterling Memorial Library (across from the stack elevators) explores the history of printed Arabic books and the gradual introduction of the printing press and printing techniques in the Arab world. The first Arabic book printed using movable type was published in Fano, Italy in 1514, and presses supported by the Catholic Church subsequently printed books for the benefit of the Arabic speaking Christians in the Ottoman Empire. Over succeeding decades, religious and secular authorities in the Arab world sought to suppress presses over fears that printers might tamper with sacred religious texts or publish seditious literature. While presses were established in Aleppo (Syria) and Constantinople in the early years of the 18th century, it was only after Napoleon's invasion of Egypt in 1798 that the printing using movable type was widely adopted in the Near East.

The books displayed in the exhibit are drawn from the University Library's Near East Collection. Many volumes were printed using movable type, while others were printed using lithography, a technique invented at the end of the 18th century. Lithography is based on the chemical repellence of oil and water. Designs or text are drawn or painted with greasy ink or crayons on specially prepared stone. The stone is moistened with water, which the stone accepts in areas not covered by the crayon. An oily ink, applied with a roller, adheres only to the drawing and is repelled by the wet parts of the stone. The print is then made by pressing paper against the inked area.

The exhibit is free and open to the public and will run until the end of June, 2009. For more information, contact Simon Samoeil, Curator of the Near East Collection.

A new exhibit on view near the Sterling Memorial Library's Starr Main Reference Room displays some of the beautiful, charming, and surprising finds from the Library's digitization project. In September 2007, Yale University Library began a large-scale project to digitize 100,000 books from its collections. This was Yale's first mass digitization initiative and was initially sponsored by Microsoft Corporation. The books selected had to meet a specific set of criteria: they had to be in English, printed before 1923 (and thus in the public domain), in good condition, and from specific subject areas, such as Art, Art History, History and Religion. The books were sent to Kirtas Technologies in Wallingford, Connecticut for digitization.

When selecting books, digitization project staff inspected each item to make sure it could withstand scanning. During this inspection process, each book was opened and carefully examined, and sometimes surprises awaited. Staff soon realized that readers stashed all sorts of little treasures in books, from cross-stitch samples to photographs to dried flowers. Leftover paging slips and circulation notices provide information about Yale University Library history. Staff even found a four-leaf clover. (Unfortunately it was too fragile to display.)

Besides items left in books, digitization project staff found many treasures on the pages of the books themselves. Beautiful cover art, illustrations, amusing dedications, and reproductions can be found in many of the books, and they will soon be accessible online and available to any researcher with an Internet connection.

Even though Microsoft withdrew its support from the project in May 2008, the large-scale digitization project will have digitized 35,000 books by June 2009. Currently, staff are selecting books held at the Seeley G. Mudd Library (now closed to readers) and have expanded selection criteria to include other languages and collections, such as the Divinity Collections at Mudd. The Latin American collection at Mudd is particularly rich with treasures and fascinating foldout maps, historically important works, and interesting but inaccessible books are being digitized and will be linked to Yale's online catalog.

The exhibit is free and open to the public and is on view Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m.-5:45 p.m.; Saturday, 10:00 a.m.-4:45 p.m., and Sunday 12 noon-5:45 p.m. Sterling Memorial Library is located at 120 High Street, New Haven.

The University Library is celebrating the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin on February 12, 1809, and the 150th anniversary year of his publication of On the Origin of Species with a series of exhibits.

Darwin presented a masterful argument for evolution, synthesizing a wealth of information in a variety of scientific fields including animal husbandry, horticulture, taxonomy, biogeography, geology, paleontology, comparative anatomy and morphology, and embryology. His mechanism for evolutionary change challenged a worldview in Britain and America dominated by natural theology -- the belief that adaptation in the natural world manifested the wisdom and providence of the Creator.

The exhibits, which are free and open to the public, are on display across the library system and examine Darwin's influence on a variety of subjects including music and theology.

Books Written by Charles Darwin and Their Recent Impact
Kline Science Library Lobby, Kline Biology Tower Lower Level
February 1 – April 30

Charles Robert Darwin: February 12, 1809 – April 19, 1882
Kline Science Library Reading Room, Kline Biology Tower Lower Level
February 1 – April 30

Christian Responses to Darwin
Divinity Library Rotunda
February 1 – April 30

From Natural Theology to Natural Selection: Celebrating the Darwin Bicentenary
Medical Library Rotunda
February 1 – April 17

The Nightingale and the Crow: Darwin and Music
Gilmore Music Library
March – April

“Your sincere and heteredox friend” :Charles Darwin’s Letters to James Dwight Dana
Sterling Memorial Library Nave
January 19 – March 27

Fore more information, visit the Library's Darwin website: http://www.med.yale.edu/library/exhibits/darwin/other.html.

Sterling Memorial Library
Free and open to the public

"Your sincere and heteredox friend": Charles Darwin's Letters to James Dwight Dana,
1849-1863 celebrates both the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and the warm corresponding relationship between these giants of 19th century science and discovery. Darwin and Dana, Silliman Professor of Natural History and Geology in Yale College from 1850 to 1892, never met, but their association as explorers, scholars, and pioneering scientists fostered a rich correspondence between 1849 and 1863. The exhibition features 13 of the 23 letters written by Darwin to Dana and held by Manuscripts and Archives.

Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven
Free and open to the public

Sponsored by Yale’s East Asia Library, this exhibit celebrates hangul, the alphabet developed in the fifteenth-century by the Korean King Sejong and a group of scholars he convened for this purpose. Featuring print and manuscript books from the Yale Library’s collections, as well as calligraphy by the distinguished artist Dr. Yoo Sung Lee, the exhibit traces the development of hangul styles over time, ranging from early geometric forms through gothic styles and finally to pure abstraction in art.

Until the promulgation of hangul by King Sejong in 1446, Chinese was used to represent the Korean language in print. Chinese characters were ill-suited for this purpose due to major differences between the two languages. Reliance on Chinese was also considered an impediment to the spread of literacy. Even after the systematization of hangul, Chinese continued to be used by elites during the remainder of the Choson dynasty (1392-1910). Even today, Korean can still be written with a mixture of Chinese characters and hangul. This gradual transition is illustrated through the works selected for exhibit.

Dr. Yoo Sung Lee is a professional calligrapher in practice for over thirty years. The pieces on display were chosen to show the development of hangul forms over time and in varying contexts. Some of the works on display were created especially for the exhibit. A native of Seoul, Korea, Dr. Lee has taught, lectured, and demonstrated the art of calligraphy widely. He has exhibited in the United States, France, China, and Korea. He is a member of the Korean American Calligraphy Association and the Art of Ink in American Society and also serves as President the Aram Calligraphy Group. Dr. Lee is the author of the chapter on Korean calligraphy in the World Encyclopedia of Calligraphy (forthcoming, 2009). He currently teaches at the Art Students League of New York.

The books on display are drawn from a number of collections at Yale, including East Asia Library works in Sterling Memorial Library, the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, and the Haas Family Arts Library Special Collections. The exhibit will run through March 31 and is free and open to the public. Sterling Memorial Library is located at 120 High Street and open Monday through Thursday 8:30 a.m.-5:45 p.m. and Friday 8:30 a.m.-4:45 p.m.; Saturday 10:00 a.m.-4:45 p.m.; Sunday 12 noon-5:45 p.m. The exhibit runs until March 31, 2009.

Word and Image
Sterling Memorial Library Nave
120 High Street
Until March 8, 2009
Free & open to the public

Word and Image has been curated by students in the Yale College seminar Word and Image led by Catherine Labio of the French and Comparative Literature departments. The exhibition examines the relationship between text and image in European, American, and Japanese art and literature. Students have drawn on the many resources of Yale University's libraries and art galleries and designed works of their own to create a theoretical space filled with tension, experimentation and exciting dynamism, where artists and writers from ancient times to the contemporary era interrogate the distinction between drawing and writing, narrative and illustration, reading and seeing.

Memorabilia Room, Sterling Memorial Library
128 Wall Street
Free & open to the public

Arab Cinema Posters, on view in the Memorabilia Room, displays a selection of some of the 1,200 movie posters recently acquired by the Near Eastern Collection and housed within Manuscripts and Archives. The first Arabic film was produced in Egypt in 1923 and the Arab world boasts an active and prodigious film industry. Advertising films produced in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, and Iraq, the colorful and engaging posters offer unique insight on both cinematic and social history in the Arab world.

Portraits of Painters: Drawings by George Vertue and Horace Walpole's Anecdotes of Painting in England
Lewis Walpole Library
Farmington, Connecticut
On view until February 25, 2009
Gallery Hours: Wednesday 2:00-4:00 p.m.

The exhibition includes drawings by George Vertue (1684-1756) as well as the related prints published in volumes of Horace Walpole’s Anecdotes of Painting, published between 1762 and 1771.

The Lewis Walpole Library is a research library for eighteenth-century studies and the prime source for the study of Horace Walpole and Strawberry Hill. Its collections include significant holdings of eighteenth-century British books, manuscripts, prints, drawings and paintings, as well as important examples of the decorative arts. Housed in an historic frame house in Farmington and given to Yale by Wilmarth Sheldon Lewis and Annie Burr Lewis, the Lewis Walpole Library is a department of Yale University Library.

Long Road to Freedom: A 90th Birthday Tribute to Nelson Mandela
Sterling Memorial Library
October-December 2008

This exhibition traces important events in Mandela's life including his early years and schooling, his increasing militancy, political activities, arrests, and imprisonment, as well as his release and election as the first post-Apartheid president of South Africa. The exhibit also features fascinating Mandela-related ephemera, such as a pillow, a placemat, an apron, tee-shirts, a handbag, and a puzzle. Materials on display are drawn from Sterling Memorial Library, the African Collection in Manuscripts and Archives, and the collection of Dorothy Woodson, African Collection curator.

The exhibit is free and open to the public Monday through Thursday, 8:30 a.m. to 5:45; Friday 8:30 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.; Saturday 10:00 a.m. to 4:45 p.m.; and Sunday 12 noon to 5:45 p.m. Sterling Memorial Library is located at 120 High Street, New Haven. “Long Road to Freedom” runs until December, 2008.

An exhibition celebrating the 250th birthday of lexicographer Noah Webster has opened in the Memorabilia Room in Sterling Memorial Library. Titled "Noah Webster: American Patriot and Yale Loyalist," the exhibition demonstrates that Webster, Yale class of 1778, M.A. 1781, and Honorary Doctor of Laws 1823, was far more than just a brilliant compiler of dictionaries. His astoundingly various contributions to his country and his proud identity as a Yale man are vividly displayed in this collection of manuscripts, books, and artifacts, reflecting a lifetime of accomplishment, innovation, and unflagging patriotism.

Webster played a major role in the drafting and ratification of the Constitution and played a crucial impact on the development of the American educational system. The father of copyright legislation in the United States, Webster also served in elected offices both in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and played an important role in the creation of Amherst College.

These diverse achievements and more are represented in the sections like Webster the Yale Man, Webster the Patriot, and Webster the Historian, but Noah Webster was also a lawyer, a teacher, an ecologist, a geographer, a moralist, and above all a founding "uncle," if not a founding father, of his country. His triumphant achievement as a landmark lexicographer of the English language has hitherto overshadowed his many and important accomplishments in other areas.

The exhibition will be on display through the end of November. It is free and open to the public during scheduled library hours. Sterling Memorial Library is located at 120 High Street, New Haven, Connecticut.

Until September 30
Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven, Connecticut

This exhibition in Sterling Memorial Library's exhibit corridor showcases original art, photographs, and decorative objects by the talented and creative staff of Yale University Library. The exhibition is sponsored by the Library Staff Association.

Tang Dynasty robe, excavated in the Caucasus.
Hermitage Museum, St. Peterburg, Russia

The Silk Road
July 1 - September 30
Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven, Connecticut

This exotic name for the trade routes, or rather the trade networks, connecting China with the Mediterranean and Mongolia with India was only invented in the nineteenth century. However, trade and cultural exchange has flourished along these routes for millennia, in spite of natural barriers, such as the tallest mountains in Asia, vast deserts, frequent earthquakes, not to mention different languages, religions and cultures. Archaeological excavations in China and the Middle East show us the extent to which ideas, designs and forms were exchanged already in the 2nd millennium BC.

On display are photographs and objects from the Babylonian Collection. The exhibition is free and open to the public during regular library hours.

Of Typewriters and Sleigh Bells: A Celebration of Leroy Anderson
June 27-August 29 2008
Gilmore Music Library, Sterling Memorial Library

This exhibition in honor of the 100th anniversary of the birth of composer Leroy Anderson features seven musical manuscripts in Anderson’s hand, including the immortal Sleigh Ride, as well as unusual artifacts such as Anderson’s baton, the typewriter that was used as a musical instrument in The Typewriter, and Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell’s official proclamation declaring June 29, 2008 Leroy Anderson Day.

The exhibition is free and open to the public during regular library hours.

"The Eponymous Dozen": Naming Yale's 12 Residential Colleges
Until August 28, 2008
Sterling Memorial Library, across from entrance to Starr Main Reference Room
120 High Street, New Haven, Connecticut

This exhibition tells the stories behind the names of Yale's existing colleges. It includes photographs and artifacts related to the eleven men (including the two Yale presidents named Timothy Dwight) and two places for which Yale's colleges have been named.

Family and Community Archives Project
May 28-July 2008
Exhibits Corridor, Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven

This exhibition of materials assembled by students from New Haven's Cooperative Arts and Humanities High School tells the stories of their families and neighborhoods. It was created through the Family and Community Archives Project, an initiative conceived by twenty-one Yale University Library archivists to introduce New Haven high school students to the archival profession and the work of professional archivists. Over nine weeks, 113 juniors and their teachers in “United States History II” learned how to find and care for photographs, documents, and artifacts, and learned how to do research using primary sources.

The exhibition is free and open to the public and runs until the end of July, 2008

Memorabilia Room, Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven

An exhibition in Sterling Memorial Library's Memorabilia Room celebrating the class of 1958 and their 50th reunion year. Materials on display include the many published works produced by members of the class over the past five decades.

The exhibition is free and open to the public during regular library hours.

Treasures from the Special Collections of the Music Library
and the American Musical Theatre Collection

May-June 2008
Gilmore Music Library, Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven

A sampling of music manuscripts and editions, photographs, and realia aimed to please many tastes in music.

A World of Letters: Yale University Press, 1908-2008
May-July 2008
Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven, Connecticut

This new exhibition celebrates the centennial of Yale University Press, founded in 1908 to advance learning through the publication of books that contribute to an understanding of human affairs in arts or sciences. Items on display include Yale University Press catalogues, memorabilia, historical documents, and examples of just some of the eight thousand books printed by the press over the last one hundred years.

The exhibition is also the first to installed in the newly reconceived exhibition space under the arches of Sterling Memorial Library.

A World of Letters: Yale University Press, 1908-2008 is free and open to the public.

For more information on Yale University Press, visit their web site.

The Passover Haggadah: Modern Art in Dialogue with an Ancient Text
Until June 27, 2008
Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven, Connecticut

The Passover Haggadah is a composite text made up of biblical, rabbinic and liturgical passages and ancient folk songs. Scholars believe that the earliest versions were assembled sometime in the first century of the Common Era, during the late Second Temple Period in Palestine. The Haggadah was--and still is--read on Passover eve during the Seder, a ceremony commemorating the Israelites’ delivery from Egyptian bondage.

February-May 2008
Memorabilia Room, Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven, Connecticut

Art lovers don't often think of the library or archive as a place to study original works of art, but this exhibition showcases pencil sketches, watercolors, cartoons, caricatures, and ephemera from the records of the University or from the collections of personal or family papers in Manuscripts and Archives.

Until May 27, 2008
Exhibitions Corridor
Sterling Memorial Library
120 High Street, New Haven, Connecticut

An exhibition of books by and about the North African scholar Ibn Khaldun (Tunis 1332- Cairo 1406) in the Yale collections. Featuring modern and contemporary editions in Arabic, Bahasa Indonesia, English, French, German, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Russian, Spanish.

Ibn Khaldun is free and open to the public.