Special collections

The digital release marks the 100th anniversary of A Vision, his complex theory of philosophy and human history and includes notebooks, draft manuscripts and automatic writing sessions conducted with his wife, Georgie.

Well, to tell us about the 18-month project to conserve and scan the 10,000-item collection, we're joined in our studio now by Cronon O'Divlin, Head of Special Collections at the National Library.

Good morning and welcome to the programme.

Let's start with a vision.

All right, and people can log on to the website and get those in about two minutes' time.

So thank you very much for speaking with us this morning.

Cronoan O'Divlin, Head of Special Collections at the National Library.

It is a minute and a half to nine now.

Two of the books on the book list, 20 and 35, I'm particularly interested in these, were written or translated by Garrett Barry, a soldier from Munster who was, David Barrymore was his patron.

And a copy of number 20, I haven't had a chance to have a look at it, But a copy of number 20, The Siege of Breda, in the Bolton Library, now in the Special Collections in the Glucksmann Library at the University of Limerick, has Barry's signature on it.

I haven't had a chance to look at it.

What I started to kind of get interested in was trying to think about some of those Irish books, Christopher Sivthorpe's book and so on and so forth, which is only published in Dublin.

That's not gonna work in this sucker." So I'm going to just tootle down there.

I'm starting at 8:00 at the Special Collections to do research, and then I'm gonna go to the library to do research, and then I will eat at some point and walk around and stay hydrated.

Then I will go, uh, talk to the students at 6:00.

So it's gonna be a long day, but I'm excited, I'm motivated, and, um, there's just so much going on.

My memoir-related writing has appeared in Stat News, POZ, and on my Substack.

I'm connected with several hemophilia organizations and have spearheaded a collaboration with the UCSF Archives and Special Collections Library to preserve the history of this tragedy.

Thanks to you and Valerie for reading my pages.

I'd welcome the opportunity to share more of this story with you.

We may never know for certain, Ricardo admitted, though I confess I rather hope they did.

Ines eventually donated the letters to the National Library's Special Collections, accompanied by her and Ricardo's careful research documenting everything they'd managed to reconstruct about the correspondence's likely authors and eventual fates.

The library's curator, moved by the story's romantic mystery, arranged a small public exhibition featuring the letters alongside Tomasa's final published poetry collection, drawing considerable local interest from Lisbon residents fascinated by the decades-old, unresolved love story.

It was during that exhibition's opening evening that Inés finally learned the story's true ending, approached by an elderly woman who introduced herself as Tomás Ferreira's niece, carrying with her a small, private family record that filled in exactly the details Inés and Ricardo's research had been unable to fully establish.

There's a letter in the Betty and Barney, Betty's file at UNH.

They're wonderful records to go there to Special Collections.

I spent hours looking through them.

Yeah.

That's actually in Athens, Georgia.

It's at their Special Collections library.

September 8th.

Okay, I'll see you there.

So anyway, then I started looking around for geological maps that would be equivalents to or similar to what was in the 1867 museum.

There was a map in the special collections at the library.

They have a map collection there too.

But it was a reproduction and it was a very low quality reproduction.

And it's a very touching

photo.

I believe that that camera is at the Special Collections in Transylvania University as well.

Yeah.

And the Doctrine and Covenants allows us to see what it looks like when the canon is open and can be added to by inspired men and women called of God who receive revelations from God.

Come with me now as we head to BYU to explore the Special Collections at the Harold B. Lee Library.

All right.

Hi, Greg.

Hi, Casey.

Welcome to Special Collections.

Thanks for having us.

It looks like you've got some amazing stuff here for us to see.