A family has handed over a 13th century book to the National Library of Norway. Conservator Chiara Palandri says its pages were made of calfskin parchment and that the cover appears to be hairy sealskin. The strap to hold the book together is thought to have been made from reindeer hide.

Season Six of NiCHE Conversations with @jessicamdewitt.bsky.social kicked off with a conversation with @rmbryant.bsky.social and Gina Brooks! The conversation is now available on YouTube! www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ake4... #envhist #envhum #indigenous #treaty

Student made soaps from the Caribou Club course last week 🧼🫧

Call for Contributions – The Oar: New Brunswick’s Popular History Magazine - @theoarnb.bsky.social The Editorial Committee invites proposals for contributions that document aspects of New Brunswick’s past, broadly defined. niche-canada.org/2025/08/28/c... #cdnhist #newbrunswick

Beautiful days on the land at the Caribou Club this week for Kikkuwosson/Wksitqamu, 3 days of land based art and teachings

Our first Call for Papers is live! If you are interested in writing the history of New Brunswick, engaging with popular audiences, and supporting small museums, then we would love to hear from you! Proposals for submissions are due 30 September 2025. See below for details:

my first flax flower 💠

Hello Bluesky! We're an interdisciplinary project on the teaching of palaeography and codicology, and we're now branching out to include early printed books. Check out our website for lots of learning resources: teachingthecodex.com

I love this essay about the historical ecology of a land haunted by caribou, and the restoration of a Wolastoqey birch bark basket by Elder Gina Brooks and @rmbryant.bsky.social "although Wolastokuk no longer holds caribou, it continues to hold caribou food" #envhist #envhum #cdnhist

Today Gina Brooks and @rmbryant.bsky.social share "'the stories come alive in it': Renewing lakotowakən in the Waponahki homelands" niche-canada.org/2025/06/30/t... #envhum #indigenous #art

Full story on the CBC NB website this morning. "We want to make sure that the people are aware that we're collaborating together to make sure that this land is truly assessed for its value to the people, not value to industry." -Gina Brooks

!!!! "The advancing scholarship of Indigenous book history, then, might reposition the paratext as a dynamic literary space that extends well beyond the life and agency of the author..."

Talking treaty in the old growth forest in Lorneville tomorrow as NB continues to mull over the EIA for this industrial park expansion

At Point Pleasant Park this summer 🌞

Spring reading about what trees are doing even while we don't know how to see them--and the things that are happening to trees (in our name) while we aren't seeing 💙📚

When other cities have a charter and you want one too

I am so pleased to announce that the Elizabeth Mancke Fond is now available at the UNB archive. This collection does not yet contain her digital files, as we are still waiting for UNB School of Arts to provide those records, but all textual records are here: 7067.sydneyplus.com/archive/fina...

Brilliant new work on basswood by Elder Gina Brooks at the UNB Art Centre until late July -- part of a wonderful exhibition curated by Amy Ash ✨

A book that lives up to the hype -- wow. 💙📚

Fiddleheads price per pound in Texas this week and "Trade in the 21st Century" by Mihku Paul

Bought this little stack of books to look at how they are bound -- they are someone's dance cards from the 1930s

Permission to treat April 1 deadlines as pranks?

corn husks, a little leftover rag, and some old wet leaves my kids gathered from under the snow

cleaning up after our annual tamale party by making corn husk paper 🌽

Book made by Wolastoqewi artist Destiny Dunphy for Mihqitahamin (Remember Me), an exhibit on now at the George Fry Gallery in Fredericton

I'm stoked out this year's Rosenbach Lectures in Bibliography @ Penn: Kelly Wisecup presents a series of three lectures, "Indigenous Ecologies of the Page: Bibliography, Birchbark, and Remediation," March 24-7, 2025, on campus and via Zoom

typical book project timeline

In 1626, a Cambridge fishwife sliced open a cod, only to find a gelatinous, half-dissolved manuscript inside. It was published the next year under the name "Vox Piscis or, the Bookfish." At this point, why not get your news from inside a dead fish? #earlymodern #bookfish archive.org/details/bim_...

A 1930 ad for the Admiral Beatty in Saint John. Absolutely fireproof 🤔

Admiring the work of local papermakers

Year of the penpal -- sending Passamaquoddy papers found in a New Brunswick shop off to Donald Soctomah

Watched the first episode of Dickinson with my students last week and everyone's fav part was when Emily Dickinson's dad accuses her of not helping out enough around the house, and she goes, "I'm the one who found all these birds nests."

Ok--reading this in your early 20s is a totally different experience from reading it in your 40s. I am destroyed ⏳📚

Making newsprint yarn from the latest Bargain Hunter thrown into our driveway

#IndigenousStorytellingMonth "What does it mean to be hungry? Is it only a physical condition? I have long hungered for what has been lost to my family because of colonialism. I have hungered to make sense of the past, to be well & strong." - Tabitha Robin niche-canada.org/2021/08/31/h...

“Quicker than rain…” —Hone Tuwhare (Ngāpuhi) #MāoriPoetry #PoetryAotearoa

2025 is the year of the penpal

“'The Land is No Longer as it Was': Land Use, Resource Extraction, and Land Claims in the Yukon Territory" by @glenniceton.bsky.social is our latest Paper in Canadian History and Environment. niche-canada.org/2025/01/29/t... #envhist #cdnhist #indigenous #yukon

This poem by Mary Robinson, published in The Morning Post in 1800, addressed to that newspaper's "Type," really must be the only poem about a typeface (as well as in a typeface) written in the #19thc. (But, gosh, I would be happy to hear of others.) Here are the first 2 stanzas. #BookHistory

supposed to be re-writing a grant but instead find myself typing ee cummings poems onto rag paper made from my kids' baby clothes

spent my start up research funding on a hollander beater for papermaking adventures 📜

Some 18th-century handwriting in Mohawk, pretty cool.

My very first article has been published in the American Historical Review! ✨ In it I've transcribed a handful of petitions that help us to understand how people began to piece their lives back together following an outbreak of plague 👇 academic.oup.com/ahr/article-...

Saint John used bookstore question. How do I cite this blue duotang of unsupported claims?

"When these colonies challenged Americans who fished illegally in their waters, often by impounding vessels, Americans, in turn, challenged the jurisdictional authority of the colonies to police their own inshore waters." - @richrray.bsky.social niche-canada.org/2020/09/24/f... #envhist #cdnhist

I love finding whatever people used as bookmarks in old local books, a thread. First up -- a poem clipped from newsprint titled "Fort Howe Hill" by Helen Middleton. Photo of a girl from the same book

15 years ago when I said I was writing a dissertation abt paper/papermaking & its relation to community, narrative, & gender many people looked at me sideways. Im so glad there are so many others on this wavelength now! Check out the special issue below. I ILL'd it a few weeks ago & it's excellent!

Intrigued by the People’s Bookshelf at the National Library of Latvia. Each book in the collection has been donated by a member of the public and is inscribed by its former owner, telling a personal story relating to the book.