The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and the UT Libraries will hold a by-invitation-only event to celebrate the acquisition of the libraries’ three millionth volume, “TSVLVKI SQCLVCLV, A Cherokee Spelling Book,” at 5 p.m. Friday, March 26, in the first floor galleria and Lindsay Young Auditorium in Hodges Library, 1015 Volunteer Blvd.
The book was published in Knoxville in 1819, and was written by missionary Daniel Butrick and David Brown, Butrick’s Cherokee student at the Brainerd Mission in Chattanooga, Tenn. It predates the well-known Cherokee syllabary created by Sequoyah.
The UT Libraries had the rare opportunity to obtain this special item, one of only three copies known to exist. The acquisition also marks the three-millionth volume in the libraries’ collections.
The spelling book will be displayed in a glass case in the UT Libraries Special Collections office, close to the galleria.
The UT Libraries passed the one millionth volume milestone in 1970, and the two millionth volume was added in 1994, exactly two hundred years after the inception of the library as part of UT’s forerunner, Blount College. That volume also was a rare Tennessee imprint, an 1841 “Crockett Almanac.”
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C O N T A C T :
Jennifer Beals, UT Libraries Special Collections (865-974-0014, jbeals@utk.edu)
Martha Rudolph, UT Libraries (865-974-4273, mrudolp2@utk.edu)
Charles Primm, UT Media Relations (865-974-5180, charles.primm@tennessee.edu)