The Who2 Blog

Great Fun for Book Lovers

Do you like looking at book collections? At creative gifs of old photos and miniature oddities?

The Tumblr from the Special Collections & Archives of the University of Iowa is terrific.

Take ten minutes and look.

It’s just plain fun. You’ll see things like secret “fore-edged paintings” from 19th century books. These are paintings you can’t see unless to fold back the pages of the book. Here’s a video that explains it:

And here are some of the University of Iowa gifs that make it more understandable and wonderful.

The site has historical features — look at these scans from J.R.R. Tolkien and Charles Dickens (the latter a first edition print from 1843!):

And one of the best parts of the Tumblr is their “Miniature Monday” posts. 

Hindu devotional books that fit into a matchbook (from 1999):

And oddball historic children’s books the size of half-dollars:

The blog is a treat. They specialize in very entertaining gifs and miniatures.

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