In old books, discoveries for UMass students

For her final class project this spring, Jennimae Cronan had to step into the past.

The honors student at the University of Massachusetts at Boston was assigned to create an exhibition using materials from the Boston Public Library's Rare Books Room on any subject that interested her.

Autism was her first choice, but since most of the room's materials predated the discovery of the disorder, Cronan, a nursing major, turned to one of her personal heroes.

Cronan used priceless artifacts of Florence Nightingale, such as a hand written correspondence to a deceased patient's mother, as part of a project that was presented to her class and is now being exhibited at the library.

"I had no idea that Florence Nightingale wrote so many publications," said Cronan. "It was really interesting to find out something new about her."

Cronan's class was the second from UMass-Boston to work with the library's Rare Books Room as part of a relationship that initiates students in the art of curating exhibitions for the public.

In an age where information can be accessed through a few clicks of a mouse, more and more people, especially the young, are eschewing traditional institutions such as public libraries for their research. But this convenience comes at the expense of a sense of history -- a sense that staffers of the Boston Public Library and UMass-Boston hope to restore.

The idea of a collaboration between the two institutions was born at a convention of the Commonwealth Honors Council held at the library's main branch in Copley Square two years ago. Cheryl Nixon, a professor of English at UMass-Boston, found a rapport with Earle Havens, the library's acting keeper of rare books. The two shared a passion for books, as well as a desire to share that passion with a younger generation.

Nixon said the effort is "committed to giving students access to rare books, to the primary sources or 'raw stuff' of literature and letting them become excited and inspired by these materials."

Nixon's graduate English class organized an exhibition titled "Crooks, Rogues, and Maids Less Than Virtuous: Books in the Streets of 18th-Century London." The project examined a wide range of books pertaining to the creation and rise of the novel, prominently featuring the works of "Robinson Crusoe" author Daniel Defoe, who is extensively represented in the Rare Books Room.

Putting the exhibition together was a lengthy process for Nixon and her class, which met during the summer last year, mostly in the Rare Books Room .

The culmination of their efforts showcased nearly 150 selections from the shelves of the Rare Books Room. The display opened Dec. 12 in a ceremony attended by library president Bernard Margolis and UMass-Boston's chancellor at the time, Michael Collins, and ran for six months.

Seeing the success of Nixon and her class, UMass-Boston honors professors Rajini Srikanth and Dick Cluster designed a yearlong course that began last fall in conjunction with the BPL.

The result was "Googling Alexandria -- Libraries and the Construction of Knowledge," a symposium that Cluster taught in the fall semester.

For the second semester, Cluster handed over the reins of the class to Srikanth as the students started their work in the Rare Books Room, enabling them to get their hands on treasured artifacts.

On the third floor of the library's McKim Building, the Rare Books Room is home to an extensive collection of the library's most prized possessions. Thousands of volumes of books, documents, pamphlets, and various forms of literature and media can be found there, from five Babylonian cuneiforms dating to 2350 BC to the cassettes of 1940s radio comedian Fred Allen.

The students' final project will be on display this month in the lobby of the library's Johnson Building. The items on display range from Cronan's exhibition on the legendary British nursing pioneer to a look at published versions of Aesop's Fables over the last 400 years and personal letters of Harry Houdini.

UMass-Boston and the library are looking to expand their relationship, perhaps beyond the Rare Books Room.

"We would like this to lead to future courses and exhibitions," said Nixon. "We've just received a large grant that will allow us to create new projects, such as student internships or a lecture series. We want to keep applying for funds, expanding on this great idea of increasing access to and excitement for rare books."