Gathering medieval French prayerbook, Kabuki in America, Sylvia Plath's thoughts - Harvard Gazette

""We acquire a huge amount of material in a given year," said Matthew Wittmann, curator of the Harvard Theatre Collection at Houghton, who helped put the display together. "And so I think what's really useful about these periodic exhibitions we do is that it gives visitors and students and faculty a concise way of understanding the broad range of materials we collect.""

"This is probably the rarest piece on display as part of the new acquisitions exhibit, according to curators. The book was created as part of a program begun by Prince Bakar Batonishvili in the late 18th and early 19th centuries to promote the use of the language. It is one of the few complete copies that survived Russia's 19th-century annexation of part of the country and subsequent crackdown by Russian Orthodox religious authorities."

Houghton Library holds more than half a million books, manuscripts, letters, photos and other ephemera spanning centuries. Curatorial staff assembled a lobby exhibit of 10 recent acquisitions to illustrate the breadth of the collection. The exhibit includes a novel from Sylvia Plath's bookshelf, religious texts, letters from Japanese internment camps, and other unique items. Curators note the library acquires a substantial amount of material each year and that periodic displays provide a concise way for visitors, students and faculty to understand the broad range of materials collected. The Georgian translation of the Bible and Apocrypha is one of the rarest pieces and survived 19th-century Russian annexation and religious crackdowns.

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