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Peek in the Stacks: special collections

Home Remedies: The Old Age Medicine

Special Collections & Archives holds a few rare resources that contain home remedies for ailments using herbal medicines. When families were in need of medicinal help but did not have easy access to a doctor or presription medicine, they often used these types of alternative medicines. Both the Bess Lomax Hawes Student Folklore Collection and the Manuscript Cookbook hold some interesting historical fixes for all sorts of ailments.

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Two Photographers and a Poet in Point Lobos

Point Lobos is just north of Big Sur and just south of Carmel-By-The-Sea, situated on the central coast of California in Monterey County. Filled with Monterey Cypress trees, vast kelp forests, and a diverse range of birds and animals, the area is awe inspiring for many artists. Special Collections & Archives holds two extraordinary books....

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Forrest G. Houlehan and the Civilian Conservation Corps

The Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) was a federal government relief program launched as part of President Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in 1933, during the Great Depression. It provided manual labor jobs for unemployed and unmarried men in conservation and development....  

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Hiking through the Archives with John Muir

John Muir (1838-1914) was an American nature writer and an advocate for our National Park system. Born in Scotland, he moved with his family at the age of ten to Wisconsin, where his father farmed a homestead. Muir studied botany and geology at the University of Wisconsin; those disciplines informed his books and magazine articles...

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HIV & AIDS, the early years in the United States

In 1981 the first case of HIV was reported in the United States. HIV (human immunodeficiency virus), which left untreated can lead to AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome), was still a mysterious virus at the time where friends, family, and loved ones were lost in a short time span. Special Collections & Archives holds many documents and resources on the topic. With these materials we are able to able to get a glimpse into the early years of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the United States and its territories.

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"Passport to Peace": European Travel After World War II

The Nathalie Furst Gittelman Travel Ephemera Collection contains ephemera documenting her experience flying to Europe in 1949 during her time as a college student at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. World War II ended only four years earlier, leaving many scars on the landscape and the people that lived through the war. The official travel guides and brochures, many aimed at English-speaking audiences, provide insight into the ways travel associations and government bureaus attempted to regain travelers' trust and recreational interest in Europe after a devastating period of loss.

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Honey Recipes in the Archives

Special Collections & Archives’ Culinary Collection holds just under 700 cookbooks. In order to take a closer look at some of these unique holdings I selected a few recipes to recreate using my favorite ingredient—Honey. Honey is one of the oldest known sweets in the world. The nectar from the honey bee takes on the flavor of the flowering plants nearby and taste can vary depending on the plant.

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The Savoy Cocktail Book

When passage of the 18th Amendment in 1919 ushered in the era of Prohibition in the United States, an English bartender named Harry Craddock, who had mixed drinks at the Hollenden Hotel in Cleveland, OH and the Knickerbocker Hotel in New York City, left the US and returned to the UK so he continue working in his chosen profession...  

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Unknown: “Slaves of Sleep” and “The Ghoul”

In 1933, Street & Smith acquired Astounding Stories, one of the first pulp magazines to center the genre of science-fiction as its twenty-cent selling point. In the following years “John W. Campbell would join the editorial staff of Astounding Stories in September 1937, replacing F. Orlin Tremaine as editor in 1938 when Tremaine became editorial director.....

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Monster or Human? Pennyroyal’s Frankenstein

Special Collections & Archives houses a limited edition of Frankenstein that was published in 1984 by Barry Moser’s Pennyroyal Press. With only 350 copies ever printed, this version of Frankenstein is quarter bound with leather and features Barry Moser’s vivid woodcuts alongside Shelley’s original 1818 text. Included with the book is a portfolio....

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