People engaged in creative pursuits of all types will often remark on the benefits of working away from home. Whether it’s a remote cabin, a castle, a former public school or even a sailboat, the practice of moving to a new environment for a finite amount of time, often in community with others, can be hugely beneficial for […]
TPL's Special Collection in the Arts has thousands of private and fine press books for researchers — or anyone who's curious. Some of these rare, hand-made artists' books are "miniature books." Miniature books are generally classified as being four inches or smaller and are made up of a mix of materials. Here's how my fellow […]
Note: This article includes historical materials from the collections of Toronto Public Library. Who tells the story, and how the story is told creates tensions when trying to present content written by settlers about Indigenous people. These materials can reflect offensive historic attitudes, and in some cases, were created by individuals directly involved in acts […]
Earlier this year, TPL's Special Collections accepted a donation of photographs from Toronto-based documentary photographer Peter MacCallum. MacCallum specializes in documenting urban spaces. His photos capture industrial sites, street scenes and other architectural features in cities. Spectators of event on Elizabeth Street, Toronto. Peter MacCallum, approximately 1970. View on our Digital Archive. About Peter MacCallum […]
You may have heard that energy can neither be created nor destroyed, only transformed. You may also be aware that everything around us requires energy and always exchanges energy with the environment. This implies that energy can’take many forms. Some of these include thermal, motion, nuclear, sound and chemical energy. We harness these different sources […]
At first, you might not think that the Christmas season has much to do with the murders and forensic science of Sherlock Holmes and his narrator, Dr. John Watson. However, our Arthur Conan Doyle Collection — one of the world's finest research collections devoted to the creator of Sherlock Holmes — has many items that […]
Curious about physics? Since antiquity, humans have pondered the composition of the material world around us. Aristotle claimed that everything is a combination of earth, water, air and fire. Yet others claimed that everything is made up of indivisible units called atoms. These views remained speculation until very recently. The period between the Renaissance and […]
This post reproduces the introductory panel and selected captions from the Toronto Revealed exhibit, which was on display in TD Gallery at Toronto Reference Library from February 10 to April 22, 2018. The exhibit presents art that captures Toronto's quickly changing streetscape from the mid-twentieth century to the present day. Find more items from the exhibit […]
This post reproduces text from The Art of Cartography exhibit, which was on display in TD Gallery at the Toronto Reference Library from August 13 to October 16, 2016. The exhibit featured world maps, atlases, manuscript maps, sea charts, celestial maps, city plans and other cartographic curiosities from the library's Special Collections. Each one of the exhibit's […]
This post reproduces text from our Once Upon a Time exhibit, which was on display in TD Gallery at Toronto Reference Library from November 5, 2016 to January 22, 2017. The exhibit explores classic fairy tales and traditional stories from around the world through a surprising array of books, toys, games and art held at our Osborne […]