“It really is going to be more of a walking tour,” Elizabeth Frengel tells a group of scholars and archive enthusiasts gathered around tables in a Special Collections seminar room. Frengel, curator of rare books, didn’t have to tell them twice. As attendees had trickled in, they’d already begun slowly circulating around the room, hands carefully clasped behind backs, bowing to get a closer look at the books and manuscripts propped up on foam wedges.

The Manuscript Meet and Greet in January was the first event of its kind organized by the Kim-Park Program for the Study of the Book, an initiative launched in April 2025 that brings together scholars, students, and others interested in the history of the book and the materiality of information. The Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center acquires 500 to 2,000 volumes each year, says Frengel, director of the Kim-Park Program. She had pulled eight objects for the group to study more carefully. By offering a closer look at a selection of holdings, Frengel hoped to help researchers find their latest scholarly obsession.

The group eagerly shuffles a few feet to the first stop on the tour, ready to get to know the eligible documents. Read on to meet a few of them yourself.

1 | Homely Homer

“This shabby little Homer,” Frengel says, is the first Russian translation of the Iliad. Dating to 1776, it was produced as part of Catherine the Great’s efforts to have classic texts translated. Though the book has sustained some damage over its long life (“greatly compromised” is how one bookbinder politely put it), the volume, waterlogged and rodent gnawed as it may be, was an important addition to the library’s extensive Homer collection.

2 | Cheater’s catalogs

Fresh off the acquisition cart are three 1950s catalogs from K. C. Card Company, a Chicago-based gambling company that sold everything you needed to play or cheat at cards and dice (K. C. Card Company was raided by the FBI in the 1960s). “Now I feel like I have a bit of what to look for when I’m playing Five Crowns with my friends,” says Frengel.

3 | Mysterious memorial

With this confounding object, “a lot of what we can tell is from what we can see right in front of us,” says Frengel. A board with what looks like an 18th-century binding has a French memorial poem from 1545 pasted onto it, with illustrations of shrouded figures and a few handwritten notes. A V-shaped stain darkens the bottom of the page. Signed by a 16th-century French apothecary, the poem describes members of his family who died in a 1540s plague outbreak. After translating part of the poem aloud for the group, one participant concludes, “I’ll come back and have a look at this.” “It’s working!” exclaims another. A match has been made.

4 | Our hours

“These are three for one,” says Frengel, ushering the group toward three books of hours from 1508, 1522, and 1549, all bearing the mark of the famed printer Thielman Kerver. Printed with metal type and illuminated—decorated with elaborate designs and color—by hand, the books are evidence of the trend in early printing to make books look hand copied. The 1522 book (above) is likely the last Kerver printed himself before his death. The 1549 book of hours bears the signature of his widow, Yolande Bonhomme. She took over the business after he died, publishing 200 titles of her own.

5 | Bespoke binding

Frengel and her colleagues make an effort to collect books bound by women, whose work is often overlooked or obscured in the historical record. Hannah Brown made this one-of-a-kind binding for Bruce Chatwin’s poetry collection The Songlines, illustrated by Simon Pemberton and published by the Folio Society in 2010. The binding depicts honey ants, mentioned in Chatwin’s work. This kind of ant feeds until it is full, then returns to its colony, where it shares the nutrients with other ants.

Credits: (1) Homer, Iliad. Trans. Peter Ekimov. Saint Petersburg: Pri Imperatorskoĭ Akademīi Nauk, 1776. (2) Blue Book. K. C. Card Co.: Chicago, c. 1940s. (3) [Dedicatory prayer]. Manuscript on parchment. Amiens, France [1545?]. All photos courtesy the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, UChicago Library. (4) [Book of hours printed on parchment, with forty-eight full-page illuminations] Paris: Thielman Kerver, April 29, 1522. All photos courtesy the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center, UChicago Library. (5) Bruce Chatwin, The Songlines. Artist’s binding and slipcase by Hannah Brown. London: Folio Society, 2010.