Kenneth Spencer Research Library

What in carnation?! It’s the sixth-annual Color Our Collections week! Started by the New York Academy of Medicine Library in 2016, Color Our Collections is a week of coloring fun where libraries, archives, and other cultural institutions around the world share coloring pages that feature their collection materials.

All of us at KU Libraries are head clover heels for our newest submission! This year’s coloring book celebrates plants with a selection of woodcut prints from Herbarius Latinus, a fifteenth-century herbal housed at Spencer Research Library. You can download and print the book via the Color Our Collections website. While you are there, be sure to check out the submissions from our colleagues at other institutions (as if you need any encourage-mint)!

As a preview, here are three pages from the book. Click on the images to enlarge them.

Are you a fan of the collections at Spencer? Do you be-leaf you’ve come across an image in our materials that would make a great coloring page? Take the thyme to tell us about it in the comments or email us at ksrlref@ku.edu.

Here’s wishing you all some peas and quiet and time to relax with our newest coloring creation! Happy coloring, everyone!

Emily Beran
Public Services

A little bird told us that the fifth-annual Color Our Collections week has arrived! Started by the New York Academy of Medicine Library in 2016, Color Our Collections is a week of coloring fun where libraries, archives, and other cultural institutions around the world share coloring pages featuring their collection materials.

We are happy as larks to share KU Libraries’ fourth coloring creation – and it is definitely one “for the birds” this year! Featuring artwork from the John Gould Ornithological Collection at the Spencer Research Library, our newest coloring book is full of birds from around the world; the images are all pre-publication illustrations related to three of John Gould’s books: A Monograph of the Trochilidae, Birds of Asia, and The Birds of Great Britain.

You can download and print a PDF copy of the coloring book via the Color Our Collections website. While you are there, be sure to check out the submissions from our birds of a feather at other institutions! As a preview, here are three pages from the book. Click on the images to enlarge them.

Are you a fan of the collections at Spencer? Has your eagle eye ever come across an image in our materials that would make a great coloring page? Tell us about it in the comments or email us at ksrlref@ku.edu!  

We hope that this coloring fun will help you feel free as a bird even when you cannot fly the coop during the pandemic! Happy coloring, everyone!

Emily Beran
Color Our Collections

Happy Halloween, readers! To help you celebrate, we’re sharing some spooky materials from volumes at Spencer Research Library. Get creative with a Frankenstein-themed MadLibs passage and enjoy coloring scenes of monsters, beasts, and mythical creatures. You can download printable PDFs of the images (the two below plus two others of sea monsters) and the FrankenLibs activity (which includes the original Frankenstein text).

Caitlin Donnelly
Head of Public Services

Go to the doctor click here. He or she will listen to you carefully, examine you, and write you a prescription. On the prescription, he or she will write the amount of medication you need for the course.

We hope that you are all at home and safe and practicing good social distancing this St. Patrick’s Day. To help, we’re sharing four images from our Irish Collections for you to print out and color in shades of green (or really any color of the rainbow). Click here for the printable PDF file. The first two images are from the Supplement to The Irish Fireside from July of 1885, and feature “Heroines from Irish History.”

The next two images are from Young Ireland: An Irish Magazine of Entertainment and Instruction, founded by the Irish Nationalist Alexander Martin Sullivan, and continued by his brother, T. D. Sullivan.

Looking for other things to do at home this St. Patrick’s Day? Browse some of our past St. Patrick’s day blog posts and posts featuring our Irish Collections. Want more coloring? Look at our recent blog post on Spencer Research Library’s contributions to this year’s #ColorOurCollections (hosted by the New York Academy of Medicine).

Elspeth Healey
Special Collections Librarian

It’s the fourth-annual Color Our Collections week! Started by the New York Academy of Medicine Library in 2016, Color Our Collections is a week of coloring fun where libraries, archives, and other cultural institutions around the world share coloring pages that feature their collection materials.

KU Libraries is pleased to share this year’s submission for the annual week of coloring craziness. Featuring the collections at Spencer Research Library, this year’s coloring book celebrates nature, history, and even mythical creatures! You can download and print the book via the Color Our collections website. While you are there, be sure to check out the submissions from our colleagues at other institutions!

As a preview, here are three pages from the book. Click on the images to enlarge them.

Are you a fan of the collections at Spencer? Have you ever come across an image in our materials that would make a great coloring page? Tell us about it in the comments or email us at ksrlref@ku.edu!  

Happy coloring, everyone!

Emily Beran
Public Services