Sign in

Henry Handley

@bookgreeble.bsky.social
129 followers 83 following 153 posts

Rare books librarian (they or he) interested in making the world a little more bearable for each other, also cats.

PostsRepliesMedia
Reposted by Henry Handley
Dan Sinykin @dan-sinnamon.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
In 2012, I stood on a stage with Anne Carson as a volunteer grad student to help her perform BRACKO, an adaptation of Sappho, where my job was to say the word "bracket" every time there was a bracket, which was more than two hundred times
20674114
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 08/10/2026
When Anne Carson read at Barnard while I was there, she wore the sleekest tux jacket and the most ragged baseball cap. Still my all-time favorite poetry reading look.
010
Reposted by Henry Handley
Sarah Burke Cahalan @sarahbc.bsky.social · 07/10/2026
New rule: in October, you’re allowed to substitute in a bat wherever the Holy Spirit is depicted as a dove.
0143
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
Anyway my David Bowie READ poster from ALA (with $3 member discount) arrived so I suppose the contract is sealed, I will go to work again in the Improbable Requests for Even More Improbable Books Factory tomorrow.
020
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 30/09/2026
If you send your class of students who are mere WEEKS into their college careers off to special collections to request things in storage without communicating with special collections AT ALL please know you have exhausted and demoralized everyone involved including, eventually, yourself
130
Reposted by Henry Handley
BOO! k HistoriAAAH 🎃 @book-historia.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
If I had to travel back in time for a mundane reason, it would be to ask a variety of bookbinders what the fuck
3211
Reposted by Henry Handley
BOO! k HistoriAAAH 🎃 @book-historia.bsky.social · 27/08/2026
Thinking about books & publishing from a different perspective? Want to write a review of the new game/trend that foregrounds bookishness? Want to express how the Muppets have influenced your book history pedagogy? Submit a proposal to @sharpnews.bsky.social Features! docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...
A book with an eye in the center walking along on a metal stand
42511
Reposted by Henry Handley
Adam Koszary @adamkoszary.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
people underestimate the power of the curators. they can just pick up, like, a baked bean and put it in the collection. bean will be there for forever. bean will have a label.
35012
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
Shoutout to everyone searching their library or archives collections for Dolly in their grief and discovering a misspelling of patron somewhere
010
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 25/08/2026
This is wonderful, and I couldn't have imagined the title Mudflat Mania! (in Curlz MT??) would rival Frances Crane Lillie in favorite things here
000
Reposted by Henry Handley
Per Engzell @pengzell.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
Academia gives you the extraordinary freedom to choose which impossible deadline you are currently missing
29715
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Lyric poetry + book of hours = my whole deal, bonus corvid riding atop Death's scythe. #newacq from Quaritch!
A page from a Neo-Latin poetic take on the book of hours, featuring the Sapphic stanza and a woodcut (or possibly metalcut) of Death personified, with wings, a scythe (mowing down people before stomping on them), a mini clock, and a corvid who's saying CRAS CRAS (tomorrow, tomorrow).
020
Reposted by Henry Handley
Ika Willis @ikax.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
#BookHistory friends, this is the finest moment in our discipline’s history
411935
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 06/08/2026
At a library with museum collections/spaces and nope! There is a cash donation box and we tell folks who ask about admissions fees that donations are optional but appreciated, though.
140
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 23/07/2026
This fits the *lack* of a collection development policy for UD's non-Marian rare books, except I'm responsible for changing that 🙃 (please come visit the natural history books sometime though!)
000
Reposted by Henry Handley
Katie Birkwood @girlinthe.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
In things I wish I hadn't seen, but now I have and you will too... New research published in the Journal of the Institute of Conservation recommends PPE for handling all red rot because of the risk of heavy metal contamination (lead, arsenic, cadmium). #GLAMS 📚 www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
153725
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 19/07/2026
This reminds me of Queering the Map!
queeringthemap.com
Queering The Map
Queering the Map is a community generated counter-mapping platform for digitally archiving LGBTQ2IA+ experience in relation to physical space.
010
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 11/07/2026
My phone camera roll is a casualty of library building temperature woes so here is a #BookHistory find from last month that I want to do something with someday
Endpapers of a copy of the Oxford Book of English Verse (1925) with Robert Frost's bookplate on the pastedown, an ink inscription "from R.F. / October 1929 / South Shaftsbury" and below it attached with cellophane tape a typed note signed by Wade Van Dore: "This book was given me by Frost in 1929 from his library before he had moved to the Gulley. Four years later, after he had moved to the Gulley but had gone down to Amherst for the winter, I kept house (1933) and, at his request, pasted the Lankes bookplates into all his best books.
Having this with me I at that time graced it with a bookplate, also. (in pencil) Wade Van Dore"
050
Reposted by Henry Handley
Jay Moschella @jaymoschella.bsky.social · 08/06/2026
As is typically the case, the pages of the haggadah are stained with food and wine from centuries of use at the seder table. The gutters are actually full of matzah crumbs! Anyhow, this is not Boston Public Library f.2026.54 bpl.bibliocommons.com/v2/record/S7... 7/7
An opening profusely stained on both pagesIn the gutters (that is, the inner margins), piles of matzah.
3389
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 23/05/2026
Chatoyancy! 🧡
000
Reposted by Henry Handley
Violet Fox 🦊 @violetbfox.bsky.social · 16/05/2026
Enjoyed this sign while touring the Michigan State University Library backrooms. 🪄📚
A sign from the 1990s reading "This card catalog is not complete. Use magic and consult staff."
6806111
Reposted by Henry Handley
Katie Collins @spissatella.bsky.social · 13/05/2026
Audited one of my favourite drawers today. As far as I can tell there was an entire generation of past mollusc curators who communicated entirely by means of passive-aggressive drawer notes to each other
A drawer of fossil molluscs mounted on cards taken from a pre-1980s display. In the middle is a curatorial note in red pen that says "Don't fumble with these until we find out smarting of glue they are stuck down with" and underneath in a different smaller hand in black ink "yes I will! Fumble fumble fumble - so there!". Several additional notes in the second hand are scattered in the drawer with arrows pointing to various specimens. They all read "fumble fumble fumble".
211020
Reposted by Henry Handley
jessamyn @librarian.bsky.social · 05/05/2026
Curious about the status of early gay organizing in national library associations? I've uploaded "Gays In Library Land" written in 1990 by library LEGEND Barbara Gittings about the early days (1970s) of ALA's Gay and Lesbian Task Force. It's a good read. archive.org/details/gays...
archive.org
Gays In Library Land : Barbara Gittings : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
The Gay and Lesbian Task Force of the American Library Association: The First Sixteen Years
37740
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
I got stitches in my finger for a clumsy kitchen injury and am debating whether to become the one-gloved rare book librarian, scorned by all, or simply not touch any books for 10-12 days
030
Reposted by Henry Handley
Mary Grace @emgeekay.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
Who Digitized your Sources? Exploitative Prison Labour and the Hidden Costs of Online Archives activehistory.ca/blog/2026/04...
activehistory.ca
Who Digitized Your Sources? Exploitative Prison Labour and the Hidden Costs of Online Archives
Kristen C. Howard In today’s increasingly online world, historians, researchers, and students want and expect online access to historical documents offered by galleries, libraries, archives, and mu…
01016
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 24/04/2026
UGH hope Jim and Tom were okay :(
000
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
UD has at least 5 books signed or inscribed by Merton as Fr. Louis, as Thomas Merton, with abbot James Fox's signature and stamp. Clearly the abbey recognized the value of Merton signing books (and what different signing choices meant). I just don't want to answer my own reference question!
100
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 19/04/2026
Okay, what were the practices around Thomas Merton signing books at the Abbey of Gethsemani and how many did Fr. M. Marion send out with inscriptions like this (and who were Jim and Tom)
Half-title page for Thomas Merton's No Man is an Island, with his signature as "Fr Louis" and an inscription from Fr Marion, O.S.C.O.: "Jim / This is a poor way to say thanks for everything / I'll pray for you! / Please pray for me! / In Jesus & Mary"
Free front endpaper of the revised edition of Thomas Merton's Seeds of Contemplation with penciled notes to that effect, and describing Thomas Merton's "Blessings / Fr Louis" which is written above a very similar Fr. Marion 
inscription to a Tom: "This is a poor way to say thanks for everything. I promise you my prayers for what they may be worth — and I count on yours. / In corde Jesu, Fr. M Marion osco"
100
Reposted by Henry Handley
Zanna Van Loon @zannavanloon.bsky.social · 10/04/2026
Finder’s fee: seasonal fruit. Early modern provenance mark on the flyleaf in a 16th-century illuminated manuscript: ‘This book belongs to Catrina Leoners. Whoever finds it should return it to her for an apple or a pear…’ #rarebooks #earlymodern #bookhistory 💙📚📜
Detail of the provenance mark reading: Catrina Leoners hoort dit bouck toe, die het vindt die doet haer weer om een appel of een peer die het en doetFirst page in the manuscript with a decorated letter A in blue and red and border decoration in green and red
38734
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 15/04/2026
The fragment I was actually looking for yesterday and found today! We have two of them. Philip Duschnes, you old so and so...
A leaf from an illuminated manuscript in Arabic, pencil note declares it's from a Qur'an, Persia, 17th-18th centuryA small and (sorry) fuzzy closeup of pencil 
inscription: Philip Duschnes, $10, January 1962
000
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
This week in surprise fragments while looking for something else!
A leaf from a printed pecha in Tibetan script (?) with a typed label reading "Page from 200 year old Tibetan Prayer-Book."
042
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 13/04/2026
I'm so sorry, Sarah. 💔
000
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 01/04/2026
I need a Catholic friend to order one of these (you CAN order one of these, with the current pope on it! from the Vatican on the internet!) and tell me if it's on real parchment now, because the library's blessing from 1952 was not real parchment www.elemosineria.va/papal-blessi...
A "papal blessing parchment" with a portrait of Pius XII, signed in 1952, and addressed to "The Rev. Lawrence Monheim, S.M. the Director and Members of the Marian Library, University of Dayton" who "humbly prostrate at the feet of Your Holiness beg the Apostolic Benediction"
000
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 24/03/2026
Oh no
A wooden stick painted beige on a library shelf of similar beige coating. The stick has marker writing labeling it a (or perhaps the) "folio stick." Helpfully also written on the side below, "longer than this... its folio!"
020
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 11/03/2026
Related, I've been meaning to send you this all week, from Catholic Art Quarterly, 1943 (though I suspect Graham Carey may not have asked permission to print it there!)
Full-page etching of a unicorn, captioned "Copper etching by David Jones, English water color painter and etcher, and owned by Graham Carey. In the middle ages the unicom was the symbol of purity and the Incarnation. Honorius of Autun writes: "The unicorn is a beast so savage that it can be caught only with the help of a virgin. When he sees her the beast comes and lies down in her lap and yields to capture. The unicorn is Christ, and the horn in the middle of his head is a symbol of the invincible might of the Son of God. He took refuge with a Virgin and was taken by the hunters. That is to say, he took on human form in the womb of Mary and surrendered to those who sought him."
000
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 27/02/2026
That's what I'm trying to do, book
The green and yellow of a book with the title Search for Publication stamped in all caps, the series title (The Minds of Men) and an eagle's head design at the lower left corner
000
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 25/02/2026
There are hawks nesting outside of our top-floor stacks again this year, so I anticipate this but with squirrels!
020
Reposted by Henry Handley
ACRL/Rare Books and Manuscripts Section (RBMS) @rbmsinfo.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
The 2026 RBMS Conference Program Planning Committee is issuing a second call for proposals for virtual and short-form content, due March 6. Find more info and submit a proposal on the conference website! buff.ly/3cuaLh0
022
Reposted by Henry Handley
Ryan Cordell @ryancordell.org · 19/02/2026
Ok, here’s a proof of the 2nd layer, which adapts a broadside published in April of 1854 to warn Black residents of Boston about slave-catchers in the city, following the passage of the Fugitive Slave Act www.nps.gov/articles/000...
417256
Reposted by Henry Handley
Ennius @enniusredloeb.bsky.social · 12/02/2026
Initial 'L'(e) at the beginning of Bk 12 in which trees and their products are discussed. Bodleian Library Arch. G b.6; Historia naturale di Caio Plinio Secondo, tradocta di lingua latina per Christophoro Landino; 1476 CE; Venice; f.148v @bodleian.ox.ac.uk
23612
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 09/02/2026
I forget how bad the yellow lighting in this special collections storage area truly is until I photograph something in it 😬 cc @colleenlovesbks.bsky.social & @transbookhistory.bsky.social
Colophon for Boris Pasternak and Thomas Merton, Six Letters, printed at the King Library Press, shown in natural lightThe same colophon in my working, YELLOW light in the stacks.
140
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
Muppets tabling with people under the tables, and there's a cover of Postdoc Blues somewhere (Kermit believes in you and your powerpoint)
030
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Someone is doing trans bibliography about this right
010
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
My bible's pronouns are Great He/Great Him
100
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 29/01/2026
High on my list of tattoo inspiration!
010
Henry Handley @bookgreeble.bsky.social · 06/01/2026
I have talked about books upside down for an audience but not like this and not with volvelles 😬😬😬
010