Last Friday, in the Special Collections Library, we opened the package that we had been tracking online. It had just arrived from England the day before and contained the religious turn-up book The Beginning, Progress and End of Man. It was almost a ceremonial event -–the core group of our research project waited in anticipation—Sandy Stelts, Mark Mattson, Linda Friend and myself. (I was nervous feeling like a child at Christmas). The head of Special Collections, Tim Pyatt, came as well to watch the process, and our web technology developer, Andrew Gearhardt, also stopped by. A photographer from Digitization and Preservation documented the event as Bill Minter, the Mellon Senior Book Conservator, carefully opened the book, which was carefully packaged in layers of wrapping. We all moved forward to watch him.

Bill gently shifted the turn-up book onto a light box in order to see the paper material and the woodcut images and print text more clearly. The process of opening and handling was intriguing to observe since he barely touched the object, adeptly shifting paper supports to move it and using a miniature spatula to turn the flaps up and down.

I watched in ecstasy -–our own five-part Beginning, Progress and End of Man—similar to but different from those I have seen in the UK or Harvard! As Tim and Bill began to scrutinize the object with their trained eyes—I thought how the small, fragile turn-up book, hundreds of years old, had completed another stage in its travels. It had ended the long phase of life in England and arrived in the United States, like its predecessors. It was starting a new phase housed in Special Collections at Penn State and beginning a new life as a research object.

watching the unwrapping

beginning analysis

When my daughter was little, one pleasure on Christmas Eve was to use the (Canadian created) NORAD site to track the sled route of Santa Claus. Although she is grown, I often check the site on Christmas Eve and watch how the program has become more interactive over the years.

Our project at Penn State is in the process of acquiring an early edition of “The Beginning, Progress and End Of Man” from a rare books dealer in England. This week, after Easter, he put it in the Royal Mail “track and trace” system so we could follow its route. When I checked today I saw it was winging its way across the Atlantic on its way to the United States. When I think of how long the Puritans took to cross the Atlantic by boat carrying their copies of that same turn up book, I am wonderstruck. At the same time, when I see the curt text on the tracking site with acronyms I can only guess at, I wish for a “Santa” NORAD tracker to visualize for me the path of our exciting new addition to our collection.