By: Kevin Grace
This presentation has been rescheduled for TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 25. The series of monthly talks in the Archives & Rare Books Library will return this fall for its fifth year. Each month at noon, ARB holds a casual presentation in 814 Blegen Library with a focus on its collections, local heritage, or book history. In the past, we’ve hosted talks ranging from the Depression-era Cincinnati WPA guide to the smallest book in the world, from Frankenstein to a book bound in human skin, from William Blake to John Milton; and from Don Quixote to the Arabian Nights. Our presentation originally scheduled for Wednesday, August 27 has been rescheduled for Tuesday November 25. This presentation will be about rare books and coffee, looking at how coffee production, trade, heritage, and lore have been portrayed by ethnographers, historians, and explorers.
Please join us for this 50 Minutes-One Book talk. Bring your lunch and your conversation, and of course, coffee will be served! Other upcoming presentations include the first female graduate of UC back in 1878; Irish poetry during the Great War, the Easter Rising, and the Irish Civil War; UC during World War II; the Hellfire clubs of the 18th century; and fairy tale and fantasy illustrators. We are also open to any ideas or presenters for these talks.
The current UC Records Management newsletter shares information on reducing that hoard of administrative records in your office, tips for how you can organize records through shared drives, information on upcoming workshops, and program news.
For the 2014-15 academic year, the days on which we hold the presentations will vary but will always be at noon. Other slated talks are: Winona Hawthorne, class of 1878, the first female graduate of the University of Cincinnati; The British Enlightenment; Saint Paul and the Bible; Irish Poets and the Great War (this topic is a presentation marking the centennial of the war. ARB exhibits of “UC during World War I” and “The City of Cincinnati and the Great War” will be mounted as well); The McNamara Brothers: Cincinnati Labor Radicals and the 1910 Bombing of the Los Angeles Times; Global Efforts in Developing Reading and Libraries; And more! Please join us in August and the following months throughout fall and spring semesters. 
Milton (1608-1674) is one of the greatest poets and essayists in the English language. The quote, which is part of his work condemning censorship and pleading for free speech, is part of the architectural design in the library, which opened as the University of Cincinnati’s Main Library in 1930. Intended to inspire students and scholars, they are words meant both to establish the primacy of books and the written word in human culture and to draw the reader within the building to explore, to learn, to consider, and to share knowledge.
Because April is celebrated as National Poetry Month, over the next few weeks the Archives & Rare Books Library will blog about some of its significant holdings in the Rare Books Collection. Perhaps the best subject with which to begin is ARB’s outstanding collection of 18th century poetical pamphlets. Eighteenth-century literature is one of the hallmarks of the rare books holdings, encompassing drama, poetry, fiction, philosophy, theology, travel, history, and geography. And the core of this area is what we have traditionally called the Anonymous Poetical Pamphlet Collection.