Along with others across this ‘big blue marble’, staff from Moody Special Collections spent most of the spring semester researching and finding solutions to the move to an online educational environment. We were pleased with our success in moving our scheduled in person experiences with archives and rare materials into an online assignment. Many thanks to our partners Julie Holcomb in Museum Studies and Nathan Hays in Truett Seminary.

This summer we’ve continued to build online content, clean up past class assignments with pull lists, and many other behind the scenes work that helps us run efficiently. While Andrea Turner and I worked on these projects, Frank Jasek was able to create additional storage for our rare items.

We are so grateful to Baylor for allowing us to continue our work from home and supply us with the necessary tools.

Outreach Spotlight
We were disappointed when 3 of our major events for the spring were postponed; however, prior to moving into quarantine, our team was able to engage 642 people to the collections with through appointments, classes, or events. During this past fiscal year, our total number of people engaging with special collections = 5,218!!

Partnership with Spiritual Life has been exciting with very creative ways to bring the St. John’s Heritage Edition into the Baylor Community. From a beautiful all day Ash Wednesday service to a photo shoot with a snow machine outside the window!

Current projects

• This Summer we are continuing a new project that will provide a new portal into our rich Bible collection with the creation of a Biblical Image Database. This is a collaborative project with Steve Reid (Truett), Bill Hair (Religion Librarian), Josh Been (Digital Scholarship Librarian), and advice from Heidi Hornick-Parsons (Art Department). Stay tuned! We hope to get a first phase of this project up and running during the Fall Semester.
• We are building new guides for the classes we have worked with in the past to provide an online option for engaging with our rare collections. The Rare Books and Manuscripts Section of the Association of College and Research Libraries has been in regular communication with members regarding best practices in moving online, and we value these conversations as we move to build new expertise.

New Acquisition
Professor Lauren Barron (Medical Humanities) is one of our favorite partners in presenting the world of rare books to our students. This last year she recommended acquiring this volume and we were excited to see it come in this spring.

Andreas Vesalius’ De Humani Corporis Fabrica (1555). Thanks to Facsimile Finder, we were able to purchase this beautifully bound facsimile. Vesalius (1514-1564) was one of the most famous anatomists of his time. This books includes more than 250 woodcuts representing the different parts of the human body. These woodcuts portray the human body in poses similar to Classical sculpture.

If you are interested in more information on the Moody Special Collections, please send us an email at RareCollections@baylor.edu, or call at 254-710-3679 (Beth Farwell).

We miss seeing you all, but look forward to our virtual meetings! We will communicate when we will be open for appointments later this summer, until then – Stay safe!
Beth Farwell
Andrea Turner
Frank Jasek