As Black History Month comes to a close, we’re reflecting on the historic juke joint to better understand blues music not only as a revolutionary genre of music, but as a pillar of our cultural zeitgeist that continues to transcend place, time, and culture. Throughout...

Dear Rare reader, We hope this February finds you well. What follows is a love story. Not a love story about people, but about the written word, the movement of paper, and the creative act. We hope you find it as inspiring as we did. All our love, The...

In 1776, ideas traveled not by screen or signal, but by ink and paper. Pamphlets, newspapers, and broadsides carried revolutionary thought from print shops into the public sphere, sparking debate, dissent, and, ultimately, the fight for independence. Nearly 250 years later, Utah is inviting residents...

Dear Rare Reader, Another year is officially in the books! 2025 was full of collaboration, growth, and impact, all of which was possible because of you — our wonderful, bookish community. Take a look at what we’ve accomplished this year, together. Cheers for now, The University of Utah’s...

“The literary and private press worlds are small and intertwined wherever they are, and the Rocky Mountain West is no exception.” — Richard L. Hardesty Dear Rare Reader, We hope the year has begun kindly for you. Here in the Salt Lake Valley, we’re still waiting for an...

We've added over 1300 new items to the Digital Library over the past three months, below are some highlights. Photos Jacqueline Nokes - (finding aid) 459 photos added. The Jacqueline Nokes photograph collection contains materials related to her career at KSL-TV in the 1960s-1980s. Also included are...

“All fiction is metaphor. Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart from older forms of fiction seems to be its use of new metaphors drawn from certain great domains of our contemporary life—science, all the sciences, and technology, and the relativistic and the historical...

“But well or poorly designed and printed, in a collector’s album or on billions of Christmas greetings each year, each stamp has a message of its own, best expressed in the words of the original good tidings of great joy!” - Belmont Faries Dear Rare Reader, We hope...

“One of the supreme pleasures available to man is knowledge, discipline, intelligence guiding the hand to create beautiful and intellectually desirable objects.” - Lewis Allen Dear Rare Reader, This blog post is the second in a three-part series. To read the preceding post, click here. — As we learned last week,...