Hello and happy season, wherever this finds you. It’s spring here in Rhode Island, and the brilliant rhododendrons outside my office windows are blooming so furiously you can almost hear them.

Last Friday we hosted our Open Doors events, inaugurating the beautifully renovated west entrance, launching the JCB’s new digital platform Americana, and opening a new exhibit “1846: Inventing Americana at the John Carter Brown Library” co-curated by Bertie Mandelblatt and José Montelongo. We also celebrated the JCB medal awarded to Dr. María Isabel Grañén Porrúa for exceptional service and scholarship. Just as she noted that the JCB inspired her, Dr. Grañen’s words and work inspire us. We will be sharing more about Dr. Grañen and the medal award very soon, including her moving speech to the assembled JCB community.

It was wonderful to see so many friends, new and old, and fantastic to appreciate all of these achievements, but also to thank so many of you who have helped bring these projects—and the full Welcome and Access Plan—to life. As folks here Friday heard me reiterate, we’ve been reflecting on the JCB’s important history in order to think hard about the relationship between its legacy and future.  In a world in ever greater need of better, fuller understanding of the foundational histories of the early Americas, the JCB is committed to serving local, regional, and global communities of knowledge by making our institution welcoming and our collections and programs accessible.

Americana will play a key role in making and keeping our collections accessible. By bringing together our digital assets—catalog and images—in one place, with robust search and strong, synthesized metadata, we are able to see the collections in their fresh and full totality. But the new platform has another synthesizing role to play. By design it underscores that the JCB is at once a physical site and a digital space. Whether you enter our doors from the main campus green or at the Americana url, you are very welcome here.

This week it’s been lovely to welcome groups of Brown graduating seniors, former board and staff, and to see more visitors touring the library and exhibits now that the doors are open. Heading into the summer and a busy research season, we also look forward to welcoming a new group of fellows. It’s a bittersweet time, as we say goodbye to so many of this year’s fellows, an uncommon community forged in the midst of our renovations! But we have hopes that many of the wonderful 2022-23 fellows will return. And again, special thanks to our inaugural Brown Faculty Sabbatical Support fellow, Professor Lin Fisher of the History Department, for helping forge an energized intellectual community.

For 2023-24 we’re thrilled that, as Distinguished Scholar in Residence, Dr. Marisa J. Fuentes of Rutgers University will join an outstanding cohort of 50 short and long-term fellows. We anticipate expanding our Friday seminar offerings, and will remain committed to hybrid formats for all of our programs.

One more thing! After an exciting year of new folks joining our staff, we continue to build the team. Please continue to check out opportunities here. We’ll be searching for a communications manager (to design and deliver this newsletter and so much more) and an administrative coordinator (because admin is essential infrastructure!) to help with all the energizing work we’re committed to doing.

With thanks for your support for the JCB, I’m looking forward to welcoming you through our new doors, the glass and wood and the digital, and to sharing more developments—including more programs for the Fall!—in the coming months.

Karin.

Karin Wulf

Director and Librarian

John Carter Brown Library

Learn more about the library’s new spaces at

jcblibrary.org/opendoors.