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An interview with Shaker collector Stephen Miller in Antiques & the Arts Weekly included references to  Hamilton’s Director and Curator of Special Collections and Archives Christian Goodwillie and the Burke Library’s Communal Societies Special Collection. 

In the age of eReaders and online libraries, the story of books gets lost. Not the story within the book, which is arguably more permanent, but rather the story contained on its faded pages, in its stretched spine, on its battered covers. Hamilton’s Burke Library has an impressive selection of rare books and other special collections; of particular note are the Ezra Pound Archive and the abundance of Adirondack-related acquisitions. Christian Goodwillie, director and curator of Special Collections and Archives, is currently cataloguing a recently procured collection: The John Quinn and Jeanne Robert Foster Library, a generous gift from Jim and Carol McCord.

“Mummy Jum: The Shaker-Pilgrim Encounter of 1817-1818,” an article by Director and Curator of Special Collections and Archives Christian Goodwillie was published in Communal Societies. He also co-edited a three-volume set that is part of a series on communal societies.

For many people, the words “history class” conjure up images of dusty books, and it’s true that American Communal Religious Societies, co-taught by Professor of History Doug Ambrose and Director of Special Collections Christian Goodwillie, does have most of its weekly class meetings in Burke Library. Most, but not all.

Christian Goodwillie, director and curator of Special Collections and archives, co-authored a book on Shaker hymns titled Richard McNemar, Music, and the Western Shaker Communities: “Branches of One Living Tree.” The book presents a study of the Shakers’ movement west during the early 19th century.

A group of students traveled to Hancock Shaker Village in Hancock, Mass., and to Mount Lebanon, N.Y., on Sept. 29 as members of the Religious Communal Societies in America, 1620-1950, course.