The Stacks

Please note that you may be seeing a filtered view of our stacks.
Check the url to confirm, or click “The Stacks” above at any time to reload the full contents.

Digital AND Physical: Contemporary Issues in Collections Management
The Book as Performance Winston Pei The Book as Performance Winston Pei

Digital AND Physical: Contemporary Issues in Collections Management

Today I had the joy of having several of my worlds and nerddoms collide – bookbinding, the book as object, libraries, library friends, possibly some future book arts. It was also the unexpected culmination of a project that began back in the fall of 2022 as a class assignment. Introducing the latest iteration of Contemporary Issues in Collections Management…

Read More
The Eclectic Abecedarium
The Book as Performance, Book of the Week Winston Pei The Book as Performance, Book of the Week Winston Pei

The Eclectic Abecedarium

So if you’re a regular patron of the Butterflies & Aliens Library, you probably know that I have a particular fondness for alphabet books and also miniature books.

Well imagine my delight at discovering that Bruce Peel Special Collections has as part of its collection a miniature edition of The Eclectic Abecedarium by Edward Gorey…

Read More
Time Travelling with Rare Print Materials
The Book as Performance Winston Pei The Book as Performance Winston Pei

Time Travelling with Rare Print Materials

So back in January my fellow student staffer at Bruce Peel Special Collections, Michaela Morrow, and I had the privilege and delight to lead a Peel Workshop of our own design, titled Time Travelling with Rare Print Materials. Basically it was a chance for us to pull an absolute treasure trove of materials from the collection, share them with friends and patrons, and – perhaps the biggest bonus to me – spend some extra time studying them ourselves.

And what a trove it was…

Read More
Journal of a Voyage
The Book as Performance Winston Pei The Book as Performance Winston Pei

Journal of a Voyage

This week for Fridays at the Peel we take a peek at the Journal of a Voyage to North America, written by Pierre de Charlevoix and published in 1761. But if you’ve been a patron of the Butterflies & Aliens Library for any amount of time, you know I’m much more interested in the voyage taken by the book itself than the voyage it recounts within its pages…

Read More
Arranging Furniture
The Book as Performance Winston Pei The Book as Performance Winston Pei

Arranging Furniture

Okay, yes I’m posting this on a Saturday, but the important point here is that Fridays at the Peel are back!

To share today, a book called Arranging Furniture, created by Jason Dewinetz at his fine press “small publishing concern” based in the Okanagan Valley, British Columbia, Canada, Greenboathouse Press…

Read More
Social climbing
The Book as Performance Winston Pei The Book as Performance Winston Pei

Social climbing

Once upon a time I had a shoebox full of favourite comic strips that I had diligently cut out of the newspaper… Calvin & Hobbes, The Far Side, Bloom County, to name but a few. Somewhere over time and over moves, I lost that box, much to my sadness.

But if the strip got popular enough, some publisher would come along and reprint them into a little book…

Read More
Because stickers
The Book as Performance Winston Pei The Book as Performance Winston Pei

Because stickers

This post for the Comic as Object Project doesn’t even care about the comic part… this one is just about the object part. We just get to sneak it into the project because the object incidentally happens to be a graphic novel… and apparently quite a well known and well regarded one. And by a Canadian creator. And also incidentally the same creator who was involved in our previous fancy box post.

Not important.

This is why we bought the book…

Read More
But it’s a fancy box
The Book as Performance Winston Pei The Book as Performance Winston Pei

But it’s a fancy box

So as part of the Comic as Object Project, I want to share with you a series of comics called Sentient by Jeff Lemire and Gabriel Walta, published in 2019 by TKO Studios. A series of six, Sentient tells the story of the U.S.S. Montgomery, a deep space colony ship whose AI, VALARIE, must help the children left aboard survive after all the adults are killed.

But the story is not what’s important here…

Read More