Kenny Jones, library assistant for University Libraries at the School of Information and Library Science, displays a pop-up adaptation of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland outside Manning Hall. The book is one of 1,800 pop-up books in the University’s collection. (Jon Gardiner/UNC-Chapel Hill)
The University Libraries’ collection of pop-up books at the UNC School of Information and Library Science is one of the country’s larger such collections, with more than 1,800 titles on everything from obscure subjects to today’s popular culture. Each has unique ways to fill readers with wonder.
“If there’s a subject and a pop-up book on it, we probably have it,” said Kenny Jones, library assistant.
With their beginnings in the 13th century, pop-up or moveable books began to be mass produced in Europe during the mid-1800s. American firms first published them in the late-1800s. “The Aquarium,” one of the first titles published in America around 1880, is the oldest pop-up book in Carolina’s library.
The collection was small until 2015, said Rebecca Vargha, information and library science librarian. That year, the late Sterling Hennis, professor emeritus in the School of Education, and his wife Anita donated more than 1,300 pop-up books to the University Libraries. Since then, other donations and purchases by library staff have enlarged the collection for use by students, scholars and the public.
[Clip]
Most daily use of the collection, Jones said, is by people who hear about the books and come in by themselves or with children. “People are curious. They want to see what a pop-up book is and how it moves. It depends on the complexity of the paper engineering, but if the paper mechanics are interactive, they’re great for children of all ages.”
Gary Price (gprice@gmail.com) is a librarian, writer, consultant, and frequent conference speaker based in the Washington D.C. metro area.
He earned his MLIS degree from Wayne State University in Detroit.
Price has won several awards including the SLA Innovations in Technology Award and Alumnus of the Year from the Wayne St. University Library and Information Science Program. From 2006-2009 he was Director of Online Information Services at Ask.com. Gary is also the co-founder of infoDJ an innovation research consultancy supporting corporate product and business model teams with just-in-time fact and insight finding.
From the University of Victoria, Canada: Canada’s genocide is getting harder to deny. So too is the growing recognition that human rights and the perspectives of Indigenous Peoples offer solutions ...
From the American Library Association: With funding from the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources program, the American Library Association (ALA) has published “Programming with Primary Sources: Women’s Suffrage,”a resource ...
From a PEN America News Release: James Patterson, the best-selling author, has donated $2 million to PEN America to build communications capacity and help the premier writers’ organization speak louder ...
From a Introductory Blog Post by Dylan Ruediger and Danielle Miriam Cooper: Today, Ithaka S+R releases findings from one of the largest in-depth studies of teaching practices across social science ...
From Stateline/Pew: There are more than 600 oral history recordings housed where Lina Ortega is an associate curator for the Western History Collections at the University of Oklahoma Libraries. Ortega speaks ...
From the University of Louisville: The current and former ownership of one of America’s most respected newspapers has made it possible for a treasure trove of an estimated 3 million ...
Elsevier Appoints Emily Singley to the Newly Created role of Vice President, North American Library Relations Exploring the Potential Role of Citizen Science in the Warning Value Chain for High ...
From the UC Berkeley Library The UC Berkeley Library is full of stories — and not just the ones that line its shelves. The facts you’ll find here are at ...
From The Chicago Tribune: Last week, city and Chicago Public Library officials declared Chicago a sanctuary city for those stories, by establishing “Book Sanctuaries” across the city’s 77 distinct community ...
From Penn State: Penn State University Libraries has expanded its robust scholarly research potential of one of America’s foremost 20th-century writers through the acquisition of the Toby and Betty Bruce ...
From Politico: Far from the trenches in states like Florida and Texas, organizations in deep-blue New York are stepping into the fray by directly lending 25,000 books to non-residents since spring, ...
From the Associated Press: A roundup of some of the most popular but completely untrue stories and visuals of the week. None of these are legit, even though they were ...
