The tea room reopens Tuesday, Sept. 6

Princeton University Library (PUL) is pleased to announce that the Tiger Tea Room, a favorite stop for Princetonians looking for a place to study or refuel with breakfast, lunch, or an afternoon snack, is also now a gallery for selections from the Digital Princeton University Library.

The recently formed PUL Art Working group has been developing plans to visually highlight collections, services, and resources throughout Library spaces. The group's first completed project brings imagery from the Digital PUL exhibition “Capturing Feathers” to the walls of the Tea Room. 

“The idea was to provide a physical space in the Library where the Princeton University community could engage with PUL digital collections while creating an inclusive environment,” said Jennifer Cabral-Pierce, Digital Imaging Technician, who proposed the gallery concept. “The popularity of the Tiger Tea Room made it an ideal spot.”

“Capturing Feathers” is a celebration of the digitization of over 10,000 pages of the personal journals of ornithologist Charles H. Rogers (1888-1977), entries which span a period of 70 years. The project was a collaboration between the Department of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology and PUL’s Digital Imaging Studio.

“The exhibition not only highlights Princeton’s robust digitization program which transforms access to our amazing collections worldwide, but it also demonstrates the importance of campus partnerships,” said Will Noel, John T. Maltsberger III ’55 Associate University Librarian for Special Collections, and co-chair of the PUL Art Working Group. “As the intro text says, access to these digitized journals will support research on climate change and other vital research.”

The new gallery space was also a natural outgrowth of PUL’s curated collections, which invites members of the Princeton community to use digitized special collections material to create small-scale digital exhibits of 10 to 15 items arranged around a theme.

“Princeton faculty, students, and staff are not only invited to create small-scale online exhibitions using digitized special collections materials but now this program will become an ongoing resource of artwork to be displayed in this informal gallery space,” said Cabral-Pierce.

The new artwork accompanies the reopening of the Tiger Tea Room on Sept. 6. The tea room will be open from 10:00 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Monday through Friday, with afternoon tea available from 1-2 p.m. and 2-3 p.m. on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Related reading: Now online: Capturing Feathers, a virtual bird imagery exhibition

The Tiger Tea Room Gallery exhibition of “Capturing Feathers" was designed and produced by Barbara Valenza, Jennifer Cabral-Pierce, Ken Kraus, Stephanie Wiener, and Erin Kelley.

Special thanks to Professor Mary Caswell Stoddard and members of the Stoddard Lab—including Ph.D. student Audrey Miller and undergraduate Annika Kruse (Class of 2020)— as well as longtime Ecology and Evolutionary Biology staff member Betty Horn and a team at the Princeton University Library that grew to include staff from Library Information Technology, the Digital Imaging Studio, and the Preservation and Conservation department, and the staff at the Cotsen Children’s Library.

Published on September 2, 2022

Written by Brandon Johnson, Communications Specialist

Media Contact: Barbara Valenza, Director of Library Communications