It was an amazing experience to explore the Mertz library and to go into the special collection they have with rare and ancient books. It was like going back in time looking at these books and the amazing condition they were in especially the color. One of the books we saw that I think we found pretty amusing was the little pamphlet for women, called Burnett’s floral handbook and Ladies calendar from the year 1869 that tells them the meaning of whatever flowers they received. Unfortunately I didn’t get a picture of the inside of the book but it’s amazing to see how many things were made especially for women but not in the sense for educational purposes. ladiescalenderfloral

We saw this other book called Le fleurs animées which shows mostly females, as flowers and their names resembled flowers as well. They were all made very beautifully and so fragile as well.

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It was a great experience over all and I’m so happy I went because it isn’t something I would’ve normally figured out how to do on my own time.