The High Point Public Library announced this week that it has begun hosting the “Renaissance Science, Magic, and Medicine in Harry Potter’s World” traveling exhibit. The exhibit will be on display in the library’s first-floor lobby through Friday, April 21.
The exhibit was produced by the National Library of Medicine and is guest curated by Elizabeth Bland and public historian and educator Mark Waddell. There’s also an accompanying website.
According to library officials, the traveling exhibition and the companion website “explore the plants, animals and magic featured in the Harry Potter book series, which were influenced by Renaissance thinkers and traditions that played an important role in the development of Western science.”
The exhibit also explores the connection of what’s in the books with what’s in the National Library of Medicine’s “History of Medicine” collection.
High Point Public Library Children’s Services Manager Jim Zola calls it “wonderful for all ages and a great way to connect literature and science.”
The exhibit includes educational activities and a digital gallery that features a curated selection of fully digitized items from the historical collections.
For more information about the exhibit, you can contact Zola at jim.zola@highpointnc.gov.
The High Point Public Library will also be a “zine” scene until the end of the month. It’s featuring “a unique collection of zines” loaned from Library Cataloging Specialist Stephanie Conover.
Those will be on display in the first-floor lobby through March 31.
“There is no formal definition of a zine, but zines share several characteristics; they are self-published, non-commercial publications that provide alternatives to mainstream media,” Conover stated in a press release.
Conover, who’s been a collector of zines for years, now has over 2,000 in her personal collection. She says she collects them because of their unique qualities and their potential to connect individuals with others who share common interests in specific pop culture themes. Conover has also spent time reviewing zines but hasn’t created any of her own yet.
The press release notes that adding zines to library collections isn’t a common practice yet, but that that’s starting to change. Duke University, for instance, has a zine collection in its special collections department that can be viewed at https://guides.library.duke.edu/zines.
For more information about the exhibit, you can contact Conover at stephanie.conover@highpointnc.gov.
