good things often come in small packages.

But in the case of a collection of books at the University of Iowa, great things here come in small, very small packages.

miniature books, small intricately detailed works of art that come in different shapes, designs, styles and of course sizes.

A miniature book is a book that is typically classified as under three inches at the longest side.

We have over 4000 miniature books, I believe, at this point, which is quite a few, And that's a book.

That's a book.

This one's cool because it's housed in a shoe.

some of them do actually have complete texts within them.

And they were intended to be read.

the initial part of this collection was donated by Charlotte Smith in 1996, So this book here, Book Interlude, is the first book that Charlotte and her husband, Thomas, made So Charlotte started collecting miniature books when she ran out of room in her library because they took up so much less space.

And that's not necessarily the reason that somebody might make a miniature book.

But I think it's one of the reasons why somebody might collect them.

and it's a collection of small, miniature portraits we have things from the 17th century all the way up to the present, A lot of the things that I'm finding on cataloging are works by famous authors that are just produced in a miniature book form.

They rescued this tiny little set of Shakespeare books, which was in this bookcase But this one is really one of my favorites.

so I think it's a great way to get people interested in reading and to get people interested in special collections.

And what we have here at the University of Iowa Libraries,