On June 21st, the Archives & Rare Books Library lost a friend. Edgar Slotkin, professor emeritus of English, died at the age of 72. Edgar was a remarkable folklorist and Celtic scholar, but most of all he was a man generous of his time and knowledge. At his retirement in 2011, he donated his local folklore collection to us and it became the Southwest Ohio Folklore Archive. Additionally, several years ago Edgar worked with Jerry Newman, our Associate Dean for Collections at the time, to acquire and catalog two wonderful rare book collections of Irish and Welsh literature. Of the former, much of it is from the early 20th c. Celtic Revival period in Ireland and represents a physically fragile gathering of books that might otherwise have been lost. Edgar Slotkin was a kind and learned man, and someone who is greatly missed.
Category Archives: ARB Library
Looking East Book Signing Scheduled for June 24
Join UC Libraries for a public book signing for Looking East: William Howard Taft and the 1905 U.S. Diplomatic Mission to Asia. The Photographs of Harry Fowler Woods.
The event, scheduled for June 24, 7pm, at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Rookwood Pavilion, will include readings by authors Margo Taft Stever and Hong Shen.
Archives and Rare Books Library Will Be Closed Friday May 15
The Archives and Rare Books Library will be closed on Friday May 15. We apologize for any inconvenience. Please plan your visit accordingly. If you have any questions please call the Archives and Rare Books Library at 513-556-1959 or email us at archives@ucmail.uc.edu.
48 Years in the Making
This post was originally published on the UC Magazine website.
UC Graduate Samuel Ochiel Obura is greeted on campus by Richard Harknett, head of UC’s political science department, 48 years after Mr. Obura finished his degree requirements. photo/Joseph Fuqua II.
UC graduate waited nearly a half century to walk in his commencement and finally receive his lost thesis.
By: John Bach
Samuel Obura Stands during the ceremony when recognized by UC President Santa Ono. photo/Joseph Fuqua II
Samuel Ochiel Obura’s journey to today’s commencement ceremony at the University of Cincinnati took him nearly 8,000 miles and 48 years.
A native of Kenya, Obura finished his master’s degree requirements in political science at UC in 1967. But due to an upheaval at the African Students Association, which helped sponsor his education, he had to cut short his pursuit of a doctorate degree to leave campus and return to Africa or risk losing his return ticket to his wife and children in east Africa.
Obura, then 34, had already spent several years away from his young family back home to pursue his bachelor’s degree in Canada followed by his master’s at UC.
Though he would go on to a long and successful career as a government official in Kenya, Obura left Cincinnati in such a rush that he never even took his trunk full of books, or —even more disheartening — the dissertation he had written on the “Constitutional Development in Kenya.” His thesis had been sent away for binding when he departed, so he was forced to leave it behind and would spend the next half century longing for the important document.
The Very Personal Side of a World Famous UC Archaeologist
By: Dawn Fuller
Photos Courtesy of UC Classics
Reposted from UC Magazine
Carl Blegen with UC Archaeologist Marion Rawson in the Land Rover at Pylos, July 1961
Researchers mine through a ‘treasure trove’ of resources in Cincinnati and Greece to reveal the character, patriotism and unconventional lifestyle of famed American archaeologist Carl William Blegen.
From the 1930s to the 1960s, the discoveries of archaeologist Carl William Blegen made headlines around the world as well as here in the Queen City, where he was on the faculty at the University of Cincinnati. But the personal side of Blegen, publicly revealed for the first time, is the stuff that could be splashed across the celebrity tabloids.
Continue reading
William and Me
By: Sydney Vollmer, ARB student assistant
William Shakespeare
We all know who Shakespeare is. He lived in London, wrote some plays and poetry, died and became really famous.
In the ninth grade, my English teacher at Cincinnati’s Seton High School introduced my class to Shakespeare. We all knew who he was. He wrote plays and poetry sometime around 1600. Not really understanding anything about literature, plays, or poetry at the time, all I knew was that Shakespeare was brilliant and well respected, which meant that if I wanted to be smart and scholarly, I would like and respect him the way proper people do. Then I read Shakespeare. Continue reading
UC Librarian Suzanne Reller Receives Digital Archives Specialist Certificate
Suzanne Reller, reference/collections librarian in the Archives and Rare Books Library, was among 32 archivists who earned the Digital Archives Specialist (DAS) certificate from the Society of American Archivists (SAA) after completing required coursework and passing a comprehensive examination in February.
SAA’s DAS certificate program was developed by experts in the field of digital archives and provides archivists with the information and tools needed to manage the demands of born-digital records. Continue reading
Spring 2015 Issue of Records Quarterly Now Available
By: Eira Tansey
The current UC Records Management newsletter shares information on upcoming spring workshops, an announcement about Box@UC, program updates, and records in the news.
Click on the link to get the latest: http://www.libraries.uc.edu/
content/dam/libraries/arb/docs/records-management/rq-spring2015.pdf and if you have any questions about UC records, just contact me in the Archives & Rare Books Library at 556-1958 or at eira.tansey@uc.edu.
For more information on the Archives & Rare Books Library and its holdings, please contact us by phone at 513-556-1959, by email at archives@ucmail.uc.edu, or on the web at http://www.libraries.uc.edu/arb.html.
Final ARB "50 Minute" Talk of the Academic Year is Set
By: Kevin Grace
Our 2014-2015 “50 Minutes” series wraps up this month with a fascinating look at Cincinnati’s “Frail Sisterhood”: Nineteenth-Century Prostitutes of the Queen City
Throughout Cincinnati’s first 100 years, prostitution was common and leading prostitutes and madams were well known. Although labeled the “Frail Sisterhood,” these “Women of the Town” were anything but frail, carving out a transgressive community run by women, providing resources and services unavailable in the male-dominated society of the time.
At noon on Thursday, April 16, Greg Hand will provide an overview of Cincinnati’s Victorian demimonde, highlighting some of the city’s most notorious brothels and introducing some of the colorful and infamous characters. Hand retired in 2014 as associate vice president for public relations at the University of Cincinnati. He was a reporter and editor for several weekly newspapers in Cincinnati and has co-authored three books on UC history. He currently operates the “Cincinnati Curiosities” blog at handeaux.tumblr.com
Please join us for what promises to be a wonderfully unusual Cincinnati experience. Bring your lunch, bring your friends!
Adventures in Tutus
By: Sydney Vollmer, ARB Student Worker
I have never been to a ballet in my life. Why? Simply put: everyone in my family (excluding one aunt) has told me it’s boring and weird. Indeed, I have let the opinions of others shape my own experiences (or lack thereof). I was perfectly happy never thinking to attend a ballet…until I started working at the Archives and Rare Books Library.
As the student worker here, part of my role includes sorting, inventorying, and processing collections so they can be properly stored in the archives for future research. The project I am currently working on is sorting everything that was recently given to us by Cincinnati Ballet Company (CBC).
We hold the collections of CBC that were acquired before I was hired, so the material I’m working on is a recent addition to the archive. From what I hear, the last round was much more manageable. Below, you can see some pictures of the room where I am working. This is the collection AFTER a preliminary sorting. I’ve probably spent about 12 hours in there over the past few weeks and I’ve even had help and supervision. Even if it doesn’t look like it, this is progress!
