Columbia's Rare Book and Manuscript Library

Getting off the 1 train on 116th street, it wasn't difficult at all to find Columbia's campus. Since it was around lunch time, I decided to eat my $3 lunch (omelet sandwich and a Snapple from a street vendor, yum!) on the steps of their main library, the Low Library. Columbia's campus truly is a beautiful place, yet a part of me realized that I get the same peaceful feeling while sitting in Washington Square Park. In a way I guess, Columbia represents the Ivy League campus life that I'm not sure if I wanted or not.

Anyway, getting into the Butler Library itself was also an easy process. To get in, I just had to get a non-Columbia patron card, which allows you to have reading access to the library for three months. With this in mind, I found the Butler Library to be a lot like the NYPL research libraries in the sense that I have reading access to them for free. The building itself also gave off a traditional air that I often associate with the NYPL system, with its large columns and marble floors. Even the elevators (when I finally did find them) were traditional in the sense that the floor indicator was a rotating arrow pointing to the floor numbers in a clock-like fashion. Whereas Columbia, as an Ivy League school, embodies tradition with its grassy closed campus and orderly library, NYU in a sense is the opposite "postmodern" embodiment with the crazy architecture of Bobst and our open, un-traditional campus.

Once I reached the Rare Book and Manuscript Room, I once again had to go through procedures similar to that of NYPL. The polite attendant at the desk had me fill out a paper with my information to register me as a researcher, and afterwards, I was told to sit at one of the desks for one of the librarians to give me the book I requested (the 1611 printing of Spencer's "Fairie Queen"). Before sitting down, I also had to check in my bag and my coat for security purposes. After a few minutes of waiting, I was greeted by the friendly smile of Jennifer Lee with "The Fairie Queen" in her hands. She laid it out on a green foam book stand for me to read it on, and then left me to enjoy it. I was surprised to see that I wasn't required to wear gloves, but as I looked around the room, I noticed that none of the other patrons had gloves on either.

Although it isn't as cool as personally looking through the first folio, leafing through "The Fairie Queen" was still a fun experience. Despite a few imperfections (a few repaired tears, some pencil marks, dents in the paper, and some stains), the book was very readable and visually pleasing. As I read through a few of the cantos, it took me a while to get used to the old English writing (using "f" for "s", "v" for "u", etc), but after a while, I noticed that my mind began to instantly fix the words into modern English.

What I found really fascinating about the edition was the engravings. In addition to the beautiful images on the title pages, at the beginning of each canto there were four different engravings that were rotated throughout the book. One was of two falcons, one with a sword and the other being burned in a fire, another showed the lion and the griffon of the royal crest holding flags, another showed the lion and the griffon writing, and the fourth showed two cupids amidst roses and thorns. These engravings were also visible in the second part of the Fairie Queen which contained books 4, 5, and 6 and was printed in 1613. The only difference between the two parts was that in the second, the first letter of each canto was enlarged and embellished, which I thought gave the work a nice touch.

The only visible printing mistake that I saw as I went through the book was in the second edition, in Canto III of the forth book. In this canto, the griffon in the title engraving had been rotated 90 degrees to the left. This small mistake shouldn't be too surprising, considering the large length of the book, as well as the printing methods used at the time. As I looked through the book, thoughts about our session with Mindy Bellof frequently came to mind. If it took us three hours to set less than ten lines of text, it must have taken these printers years of time and patience to set the type for this large edition.

Overall, my experience was a good one in the sense that it allowed me to get in touch with my inner book geek by interacting with a book that existed so many centuries before me. Now that I know that I have reading access to the library, I may take advantage of doing some studying at Columbia in the future.