Colouring Our Collections

Post Date:
Feb 7, 2023

During the Fall semester of 2022, librarians at W.D. Jordan Rare Books and Special Collections and the Bracken Health Sciences Library launched the Ol' Medical Colouring Book. Designed by HIST 212 student Carolyn Kane, the colouring book showcases images from antiquarian anatomy and botany texts within the Queen's University Library’s Special Collections. Selected works include Andrea Vesalius’ De humani corporis fabrica libri septem (1555), Browne & Scarburgh’s Myographia nova sive musculorum omnium (1687), and Blackwell’s Herbarium Blackwellianum (1765) among others. The Ol' Medical Colouring Book was received with great enthusiasm by students at two pop-up events during the December exam period which included direct engagement with some of the original texts and discussion with the librarians. During and since these events, 600 printed copies have been distributed.

Now, the library is excited to announce that the colouring book has been registered for the New York Academy of Medicine Library’s 2023 Color Our Collections campaign, an annual colouring festival in which libraries, museums and other cultural institutions are invited to share images from their collections as colouring book content. This is the first time in several years that Queen's University Library will be participating in the #ColorOurCollections event, which runs February 6-10. Jordan Library's Kim Bell has been a driving force behind actively promoting special collections using social media and first experimented with the idea of colouring images from the Jordan's collections in 2016. The Ol' Medical Colouring Book is now posted on the Color Our Collections 2023 website, alongside other incredible contributions by organizations from around the world. Don't forget to follow the W.D. Jordan Library on Twitter and Instagram

 

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