Category Archives: ARB Library

Posts related to the archives and rare books category

Love Your Data Week Day 4 – Finding the Right Data

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Today’s LYD post is by Don P. Jason III, MLIS, MS, Clinical Informationist based at the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library.

Welcome to Day 4 of “Love Your Data Week!” Whether you’re a student analyzing a data set for a school project or a researcher combining data sets to create new insights, finding the right data is essential! This blog post will list a few places you can look to find free, authoritative and unique data sets. The data sets have be broken down into three categories:  US Government Data Sets, International Data Sets and Google Data Sets.

US Government Data Sets

Data.gov http://data.gov – This web site has an eclectic mix of datasets from criminal justice to climate data.  This government site encourages people to use the data to create web and mobile applications and design data visualizations.

US Census Bureau http://www.census.gov/data.html – This web site provides data on the US population and economy.  Utilizing this site’s data has never been easier thanks to new: API’s, data visualizations, mobile apps and interactive web apps.

Healthdata.gov https://www.healthdata.gov/ – This web site includes US healthcare data.  The site is dedicated to making high value health data more accessible to entrepreneurs, researchers and policy makers.

National Climatic Data Center http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/quick-links#loc-clim – This is the world’s largest archive of weather data. It has a robust collection of environmental, meteorological and climate data sets from the US National Climatic Data Center.

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BAE: Bureau of American Ethnology (not the Danish word for “poop” or an abbreviation of “babe”)

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By: Colleen O’Brien, ARB Student Assistant

The acronym BAE does not refer to a common slang term amongst young folks or even to the Danish word for “poop.” Rather, in this instance it is a term which means Bureau of American Ethnology.

How did the Bureau of American Ethnology come to be and why is it important?

In 1879, as the discipline of anthropology was taking hold in universities across America, Congress established an agency called the Bureau of Ethnology.  There is some controversy over the exact purpose for which this department was founded, but one explanation is that the Department of the Interior needed to transfer archives and other materials to the Smithsonian Institution because the two entities were set to merge shortly thereafter.  Thus Congress decided to create a department to ease this change. The second reason, on the other hand, states the Bureau of Ethnology was established as a purely research division of the Smithsonian. Regardless, John Wesley Powell, the Bureau’s key founder, believed it should be used to promote anthropological research in the Americas.   In fact, in 1897, the Bureau of Ethnology changed its name to Bureau of American Ethnology in order to limit geographic interests. Continue reading →

New Digital Content: UC’s First Thesis, Thomas Jefferson Letter, Hamilton County Morgue Records, News Record, UC Commencement Programs, and Preservation Lab Treatment Reports

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After working through some storage limitations on the Digital Resource Commons, the UCL Digital Lab is pleased to publish several recently digitized items.

John Hough James Thesis and Thomas Jefferson Letter

The first thesis written at the University of CincinnatiIn July 2016 the Eaton family donated two jewels from their family archive: the first thesis ever written at the University of Cincinnati in 1820 by John Hough James and a letter from President Thomas Jefferson, to whom James had written for additional source material on Poland.

Hamilton County Morgue Records

Ossie Bowman's death entryAbout three years ago, UC Libraries published a digitized collection of historical ledgers from the Hamilton County Morgue, documenting the circumstances of death for thousands of Cincinnatians. Somehow during this process, one of the volumes was missed. We have just published volume 11 of the Morgue Records, 1910-1911.

News Record

The News RecordWhile most issues of News Record from the 1960’s and 70’s have been digitized over the past five years, we were missing seven volumes from the 1970’s. The UCL Digital Lab is pleased to publish the complete run from the 1970’s, each issue has been OCR’ed and full-text indexed.

Commencement Programs

Invitation to first UC commencementWe have recently published a digitized collection of 116 UC commencement programs, from 1878 to 1973. While most years only include the official program, some contain invitations to commencement-related events and even the text from commencement addresses. These programs have been OCR’ed and full-text indexed to make it easier to search for UC alumni.

The Preservation Lab Treatment Reports

Preservation Lab Treatment ReportThe Preservation Lab has been publishing treatment reports and photographic documentation that are a record of conservation treatments conducted in the lab on special collections items held either by the University of Cincinnati Libraries or the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County. The reports offer detailed bibliographic information and technical information on the construction of the materials. Several new reports have been added to both the UC Libraries and Public Library collections.

Costuming a King

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By: Sydney Vollmer, ARB Intern

Since the beginning of theater, costumes have played a crucial role to the understanding and enjoyment of the stories.  Over time, they have developed both in design and technique.  It was the Greeks who first invented costumes, using them to differentiate between characters of different class.  They were often ornate, with patterns and masks.   Romans continued the tradition of costuming, but no major changes were made for hundreds of years.  By the time Shakespeare came about, costuming had evolved so that actors would don whatever their character would wear in real life. Continue reading →

What Is the Ohio Electronic Records Committee?

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By Eira Tansey, Digital Archivist/Records Manager

Public-sector archivists, records managers, and other information professionals across the country share similar challenges: electronic records are getting more complex, public institution budgets are leaner (and sometimes cut to the bone), and citizen’s interest in access to public records grows. In Ohio, we are addressing some of these challenges through the Ohio Electronic Records Committee (OhioERC). Continue reading →

Out of Sight, Out of Mind

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By Eira Tansey, Digital Archivist/Records Manager

The transition from paper-based workflows to electronic records-based workflows has been one of the most profound ways in which work has changed over the last several decades. The “paperless revolution” has created many unanticipated challenges, but perhaps one of the more underrated ones is how it has affected institutional archives. Continue reading →

New Digital Content: Ambrose Bierce Letters, UC History Books and Reports, Indian Botany

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The UCL Digital Lab has been busy over the past several months digitizing new content and collections. While we are still curating some of that content, we wanted to share a few things in the meantime.

Ambrose Bierce letters to Myles Walsh, 1895-1911

Formal black and white portrait of a man, Ambrose Bierce, in tuxedo.

Ambrose Bierce

The collection of the letters of Ambrose Bierce to Myles Walsh consists of the correspondence to Elizabeth (Lily) Walsh and Myles Walsh from 1895-1911. Myles Walsh’s sister, Lily, was a protege of Bierce and during her illness–and after her death in 1895–in young adulthood, the two men began writing to each other.

The Archives and Rare Books Library created an online exhibition last year. The letters have now been added to the DRC as searchable PDFs.

University of Cincinnati Historical Books and Reports

We digitized several books and reports relating to UC. All are now available in the Digital Resource Commons. A complete list is presented below, in chronological order.

Indian Botany

I know what you’re thinking: Indian botany, where did that come from? UC Libraries has a fantastic collection, some of our items are rare and unique. Occasionally these rare and unique items are requested through Interlibrary Loan. Unfortunately, frequently, due to their rarity and condition, we are not always able to fulfill the requests. We’ve embarked upon an effort to, when possible, digitized this content and make it available to the work in digital form.

The first example of this is Some Wild Flowers of Kasmir by Emilia F. Noel. UC’s copy of this 1903 botanical exploration of Kashmir includes many penciled in annotations, believed to be in Noel’s own hand.

As we are able to publish more collections, we’ll make announcements here!

Kay Nielsen: Life Undrawn

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By: Sydney Vollmer, ARB Intern

 

A colorful drawing of two people dancing.As mentioned in a previous blog post on the fairy tales in the Archives & Rare Books Library, this blog is about the illustrator of In Powder and Crinoline and many other tales, Kay (pronounced “Kigh”) Nielsen.

Born on March 12, 1886 in Copenhagen, Denmark, Kay was the son of two actors.  His father, Martinus Nielsen, directed the Dagmarteater and his mother, Oda, was highly praised for her work both in the Dagmarteater and the Royal Danish Theater.  Despite his parents’ high standing in the theatre community, Nielsen found his passion in a different art form.  He studied in Paris from 1904-1911 at Académie Julian and Académie Colarossi and after he received his education, he moved to England for five years.  It was during that time he received his first commissioned work as an illustrator. Continue reading →

Donald and Marian Spencer: Lives of Love and Social Justice

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By:  Sam Whittaker, History Department Intern

Donald and Marian SpencerThe Archives and Rare Books Library recently received a new collection of papers from Marian and Donald Spencer.  For over fifty years, the Spencers fought for educational equity and equal rights with organizations such as the NAACP, the U.S. Commission on Human Rights Ohio Board, and the Cincinnati Board of Education. While processing the papers of Marian and Donald Spencer, I learned a vast amount about their groundbreaking electoral campaigns, keynote speeches, court cases, and community boards. However, I also came to know them as people. Donald and Marian Spencer met while they were both students at the University of Cincinnati, married in 1940, and raised two boys. They spent a great deal of their nearly 70 years of marriage in Cincinnati fighting for social justice and equality in the community. Continue reading →

Enchanting Fairy Tales Dressed in Powder and Crinoline

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By:  Sydney Vollmer

12 Princesses in the WoodsOver the next few months, the Archives & Rare Books Library will open another of our exhibit websites that introduces our extensive collection of fairy tales and folklore for research and teaching.  There are many volumes to sift through, but one I recently pulled caught my eye.  In Powder and Crinoline doesn’t contain any stories with which I was familiar, but when I paged through it, I was more than a little pleasantly surprised.

This collection of stories retold by Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch (1863-1944) was first published in 1912 by Hodder and Stoughton.  “Q” was a Cornish writer who was well known for his fiction and anthologies, particularly for his Oxford collection of English poetry in 1900.  In the preface to Powder and Crinoline, he speaks of his first impression of the work: Continue reading →