Friends Support Library Acquisitions
February 23, 2024
Spread of Robert Hooke's Micrographia
A Friend in Need is a Friend Indeed—and we are indeed grateful for the generous support that the Friends of Oberlin College Libraries provides for library acquisitions each year. This year we were able to purchase electronic access to: Klassiki, a streaming video platform focusing on films from Eastern Europe and Central Asia; Babel Scores, a digital platform consisting of scores composed in the past few decades; an additional year of access to the Henle Library App of digital scores; an additional volume of Music Online's Classical Scores Library; and perpetual access to six online Oxford Bibliographies. We also added new fonts with diacritics for the Letterpress Studio, a set of children's books called the Infant's Library to Special Collections, and two antique commercial glass lantern slide projectors that will help Visual Resources support emerging curricula from multiple departments.
With the support of the Sacks Fund for English Literature, Special Collections has acquired the first edition, second issue of Robert Hooke’s Micrographia (1667), the most influential work in the history of microscopy and a landmark in scientific writing in English and environmental studies. A marvel of illustration and graphic design, the work has 38 beautiful illustrations by Hooke depicting microscopic views of everything from cork to fleas. Hooke has been called England's Leonardo for his writing, his ideas, his art, and his contributions to architecture. Hooke’s prose style has been praised by 21st-century scientists such as the oceanographer Ellen Tan Drake for treating difficult subjects and unfamiliar ideas in innovative forms of expression understandable to all. This is a primary source text by a true polymath whose literary style, personal history, art, and discoveries will engage many classes and students across the curriculum.
A complete list of Friendly Acquisitions is included in the Libraries' Annual Report each November.