By Kevin Grace
Please join us on Wednesday, February 26, at noon in 814 Blegen Library for the next monthly lunchtime conversation. The featured book is the Bryce Qur’an, published in Glasgow in the early 1900s.
Category Archives: ARB Library
ARB Jawbone Makes the Pages of Cincinnati Magazine
By: Kevin Grace
They are the fruit of our archival world, those strange objects, quirky provenance discoveries, and odd functions that lend surprise to the workday. For example, while attending a conference just last week, I was working one afternoon in a research library to delve into a few early documents related to our UC holdings. Taking a break and wandering down a dark hallway, I saw a partially-opened door, poked my head in, and saw two shrunken heads in bell jars. Not what I was looking for, but certainly more interesting than what I had been reading!
Raymond Walters
So it wasn’t unexpected at all when I returned home and saw that the Archives & Rare Books Library’s own anatomical oddity is in the public eye, something we’ve anticipated for the past several weeks. In its January issue, Cincinnati Magazine has a feature called “Artifact,” for which they used the jawbone of a mule from our Stephen Foster Collection. Having the mandible in the collection isn’t as bizarre as it might seem. The Foster materials were compiled by former UC president Raymond Walters during his tenure from 1932 to 1955. Walters was a Foster scholar of sorts and acquired the collection as part of his research, eventually donating it to the Libraries. There are the typical items in the Foster material that you would expect, such as sheet music, songbooks, images, and recordings. And the jawbone fits right in with these items because it is actually a musical instrument, used for percussion in the antebellum minstrel shows that traveled up and down the Ohio River, stopping in towns like Cincinnati to perform their songs and dances. A stick would be used to rasp up and down the teeth to provide the rhythm. But how and when Walters acquired the bone is a mystery. Continue reading
50 Minutes-1 Book: Arabian Nights and the Middle East
On January 16 , the Archives and Rare Books Library will host its first 50 Minutes-One Book lunchtime talk of 2014. Elizabeth Frierson, Associate Professor in UC’s Department of History will present, “A Thousand Nights and a Night: The Arabian Nights and the Middle East.” Bring your lunch and join us at Noon in the Schott Seminar Room, 814 Blegen Library.
Complete list of Fellows of the Graduate School Now Available Online
In the Archives and Rare Books Library, we receive all sorts of questions related to the university’s history. Some are simple to answer, but others can take hours of research and can require digging through many old files and records. In the Fall of 2013, Steven R. Howe, a professor in UC’s Psychology Department, contacted us regarding his research on the history of the Fellows of the Graduate School. His goal was to enhance the website for the Fellows of the Graduate School by creating a list of former fellows. Since no comprehensive list existed, ARB staff helped Howe locate Board of Trustees minutes, course catalogs, faculty directories, and biographical files on individual faculty members. His research resulted in a spreadsheet that lists all the Fellows of the Graduate School along with some biographical information on each of the fellows. This list, along with some other information resulting from his research, is now available on the Archives and Rare Books Library website: http://www.libraries.uc.edu/libraries/arb/archives/collections/fellows_graduate_school.html Continue reading
Upcoming 50 Minutes-1 Book Lunchtime Talk and Welcome Reception for Eira Tansey
The December presentation for 50 Minutes-1 Book features CCM Librarian Mark Palkovic talking about the new “World’s Smallest Book!” It is a 22-page micro-book measuring just 0.75 millimeters (or for the metric-impaired, 0.03 inches). Entitled Shiki no Kusabana, this book of flowers was published by Toppan Printing in Japan. Toppan printed the volume using its ultrafine printing technology, the same method used to avoid forgery of paper currency.
50 Minutes-1 Book: Frankenstein on Halloween
By: Kevin Grace
Well, ‘tis the season for that old Scottish prayer: “From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties, and things that go bump in the night, Good Lord deliver us!” Yes, we are in our Halloween days in this month of spectres and the quickness of the night, of harvests and the dying away of nature, and, of things resurrected. So it is appropriate to turn our attention to a subject such as Victor Frankenstein’s monster.
This month’s “50 Minutes-I Book” lunchtime series in the Archives & Rare Books Library will be about Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. We’ll take a look at some special illustrated versions of her tale and consider what the book tells us about science and literature in the early 19th century. Please bring your lunch and conversation, along with a nightmare or two if you wish, and join us on the 31st.
ARB Makes the "History" Pages of Cincinnati Magazine!
By: Kevin Grace
In the October issue that just hit the newsstands, Cincinnati Magazine has an illustrated article called “The City’s History in 50 Objects.” The magazine’s editors, writers, and fact-checkers began this endeavor several months ago, calling upon libraries and archives, museums and individuals, to submit ideas for items that help tell the story of the city’s heritage.
Of the dozens of suggestions they received, the editors decided upon one of the items in the holdings of the Archives & Rare Books Library: our freshman beanie from the turn of the 20th century. The provenance of our beanie is unknown; it’s just one of those things that eventually end up in the University Archives, but brings an interesting bit of history (rather like our life-size cutout of former UC president Nancy Zimpher that now stands guard in our Rare Books Room!). Continue reading
Central Parkway and The Making of a "Grand Boulevard" = Adventures in the Subway and Street Improvements Digitization Project
By Angela Vanderbilt
The primary task of the Rapid Transit Commission and the 1917 Bauer Bill (Senate Bill 264, which authorized the formation of a commission for the design and construction of a rapid transit system) was not the construction of the subway alone, but the construction of Central Parkway, the “grand boulevard” that was to replace the Miami & Erie Canal. The Commission was also tasked with the secondary subway project to ensure that the Parkway was built, since the one could not commence before the other was underway, a means of ensuring the success of both.
When it was first proposed in a 1907 report, written by landscape architect George Kessler regarding the development of a city park system for Cincinnati, Central Parkway was meant to rival Boston’s Commonwealth Avenue and the grand boulevards of Europe, to be landscaped and lined by stately brownstones and mansions. Accented by decorative lampposts, fountains, trees and shrubbery, the new boulevard was to provide a park-like atmosphere for Cincinnatians, with sidewalks to stroll and benches on which to relax and enjoy the scenery of the Parkway as it wound its way north from Walnut Street in the downtown business district to Lundlow Avenue in the residential neighborhood of Clifton.
Ludlow Avenue Dam, May 4, 1920
Travel the World with UC Libraries! Destination for Today: Belgium
Featured country: Belgium
Did you know the term “duffel bag” derives from the Belgian town of Duffel, where the thickly woven bags were first manufactured? Or that Belgian beer and chocolate are world-renowned? Approximately the size of the state of Maryland, the Kingdom of Belgium is located in western Europe, surrounded on three sides by The Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, and France to the south. Because of its strategic location, Belgium is one of the cultural centers of Europe, and the capital of Brussels is the seat of many European Union offices. Flemish, French, and German are the official languages of Belgium, however many people speak English, as well as Spanish, Arabic, and Dutch because historically the country has been a crossroads for immigrants. Belgium was devastated by the World Wars of the 20tch century, but most of its centuries-old castles and public buildings have survived, and today its vibrant culture make Belgium a nation of fashion, international commerce, and tourism in such beautiful cities as Bruges and Antwerp.
Source: CultureGrams.
Featured library resource: Foreign Information by Country.
On one of Antwerp’s city squares.
By Kevin Grace
No, this street sculpture in Antwerp isn’t a tribute to UC’s Greg Hand.
Woodie Garber Blueprints Now Available
By: Tyler Morrison, ARB Student Assistant
Woodward (“Woodie”) Garber’s designs for Christ Church Episcopal Church in Glendale, Ohio are now available for viewing at Archives and Rare Books Library of the University of Cincinnati. There is a specification notebook of the addition to the church, as well as numerous blueprints that cover every aspect of the building from the temperature control wiring to chapel windows and even the layout of trees on the grounds.
Garber (1913-1994) assisted in the design of Christ Church Epsicopal Chapel in 1959. He added the All Saints Chapel which produced space for 100 people along with classrooms and offices. This new addition connected the main church and the parish house by a glass corridor with an entrance colloquially known as the “Whale’s Mouth.” Continue reading