Caitlin Goodman

@caitlinest.bsky.social

1223 Followers 261 Following

Library worker

Garbled up back cover of an issue of Manara Al-Sharq with a couple Republique Libanaise stamps and our mailing address.
Detail from a nonsense sales message: Dear Ms. Goodman, Your RBMS Outreach Subcommittee panel description asked what librarians can do with a box of engraved steel plates when they aren't a puppeteer — and I have to admit, that line was written almost for the book I'm about to describe. My name is Alexey Yurenev. My practice moves between documentary photography, film, and generative Al, and centers on how to vicudlin what affiniol and fomily arohivac
Airport sign: “Recombobulation Area”
Spiritually AI slop, albeit a real life ceiling mural depicting Gutenberg, Da Vinci, Edison, and Curie (plus wheel of angels) in the Grohmann Museum
Chalk drawing on a building column of a bare tree (and reading woodland friends) captioned “help our tree grow: each leaf is 500 pages”
1894 privately printed edition of Whittier’s poem “The Demon Lady” with the title printed in a lightly demon-coded serif
Large format poster with a detail of a patchwork quilt and the title “American Communities 1776-2026”
Typecasting / typesetting station with a mix of books, type, and hand moulds
Photo of an archives box with the following label: “HEAVY Record Group 5 / 117 EDITH VERLANDEN PASCHALL PAPERS Series 8: Bricks Box 4 HEAVY”
“It's like the domino theory, but in reverse.” “Yeah, yeah. Exactly.”
Screenshot of a submitted “Moby-Dick Reader signup” Google form
A photo of an extremely spooky 19th c doll in a bonnet, dress rotting around her. All we know about this doll is that it is “doll”
The bright blue upholstered armchair where I am currently sitting, with a nice little MCM side table and lamp to boot
May 28 1970 issue of the Plain Dealer (a Philadelphia underground newspaper) having a huge cover illustration of Nazi tribunal Rizzo. “JOIN RIZZO’S TEAM // THE COURTS ALREADY HAVE”
Detail from Alain Locke’s “The New Negro” essay in the 1925 volume of the same name. The whole bottom of the page is highlighted in orange, with a very pink lipstick kiss.
June 2, 1926 The Nation At the South Pole FIRST SOUTH POLANDER: I hear they dropped three diferent flags at the North Pole a couple of weeks ago. SECOND SOUTH POLANDER: Gee! There must be a lot of oil up there.
A photo of a classroom zoom presentation featuring a slide on the destruction of Pennsylvania Hall
Handmade marker on craft paper sign for “Love Makes A Family” advertising a negotiable donation gift of a VHS tape
Fat bound boys of New Yorker, Scribner’s, and Partisan Review
Pulling a print made from a 5” floppy in our collection (laser engraved on linoleum)
Fake 1982 US tax return with a military tank going Kool Aid Man, labeled YOUR TAX DOLLARS HELP PAY FOR WAR. From the Juanita and Wally Nelson Papers.
Sojourner Truth’s portrait in the 1853 edition of her narrative. “Sojourner Truth” on the cover of the 1971 Avon Books popularization.
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Red toned pigment swatches
Book cover, in white cloth with gilt stamping with a colored paper illustration of a contemporary lady entirely unrelated to the poem.
Magazine subscription mailer for “New Moon” from 1992, an (apparently still extant!) “magazine for girls and their dreams” full of lite druid clip art
Chester Monthly Meeting’s handwritten meeting minutes of 3mo 1699, which narrate the complaint of Thomas Minshall against Elizabeth Vernon. Vernon apparently accused Minshall’s wife of a) infanticide and b) general thotness
Detail of a Qur’an (ca 1700s) in what I imagine is a Persian lacquer binding, from the Beinecke exhibition
Ruderal Plants in Manhattan (1995), on view in Adrienne Pruitt’s exhibit at the Yale Art Library
Bookplate for the Anti-slavery Book Depository in Philadelphia, on one of our (many) copies of “History of Pennsylvania Hall, which was destroyed by a mob” (1838)
White fabric with a silkscreen picnic blanket in blue and block printed XL ants in black
Hot pink miniature roses - a lot of them
Black and white photograph of people carrying a banner that says QUAKER, labeled on back “Friends with banner in gay pride parade, up 5th avenue, early 1980s”
Table display, with in foreground a microfilm reel in box with a table tent labeled “Smell me!”
Wrapper for the Hicksite Baltimore Yearly Meeting’s 1856 proceedings with some un-Quakerly typographic flash.
“…hoarding canned foods and fearing each other? In a bunker, you cannot hear the human community in the earth, the deep cistern of voices, the lake of our creation.” It’s been highlighted 1047 times.
Bolex-Paillard 18 5 projector, for all you Super8 heads I guess.
Cover of the American Free Soul Alamanac for 1849, with the notes frontispiece, and quotes from the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution, and Jesus Christ
Tan book cloth wrapping six volumes, hand labeled as if “real” book spines. Also it’s Whittier’s copy, and it says that really big.
Pictorial map of Swarthmore campus, 1927
Banner (looks like it was hung somewhere but TBD) spray painted with YOUR TAX $ AT WORK. From Philadelphia Yearly Meeting peace committees records, ca 1980
A 1820 hand colored plate diagramming “elements of gesture.” In (later) pencil: an angry man trying to escape the gesture box, yelling “Let me out” and the boy responding “Be quiet my dear wait till I’m done spakin”
Inside of 1915 extracts, with a startling quantity of hair