Category Archives: Digital Collections

The Albert B. Sabin Digitization Project: American Archives Month

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The clue for #49 down was "Vaccine name."

October is American Archives Month! To celebrate, project staff wanted to showcase some interesting newspaper clippings in the Sabin collection. We hope you enjoy what we have found.

The first seen here is a crossword puzzle that Sabin student assistant Mary Kroeger Vuyk recently found while processing a box in the collection. Ida Sherman sent Dr. Sabin this 1985 newspaper clipping from the Atlanta Constitution after filling out the answers to all of the clues, including #49 down. See whose name is listed as the answer for “Vaccine name”? At the bottom of the crossword, she wrote, “Now your fame is secure!”

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Moving Along. . . in the Subway

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By:  Angela Vanderbilt

Subway ConstructionDigitization of the Cincinnati subway and street improvement project prints and negatives began this week with three boxes containing 681 silver nitrate-based negatives delivered to Robin Imaging Services for scanning. Each negative will be carefully scanned by a photo technician experienced in handling silver nitrate negatives, using scanners that operate at low temperature levels to ensure the sensitive nitrate is not exposed to heat. Each negative will be analyzed during scanning to ensure the proper exposure settings are applied to capture the best detail possible when it is saved as a positive image.

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Subway Project: When Good Negatives Go Bad

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By Angela Vanderbilt

The project is off to a great start after the first week, with progress made on identifying the percentage of nitrate negatives in the collection, meeting with Robin Imaging Services – the contracted vendor that will be digitizing the negatives and prints – and deciding on what metadata will be captured during scanning to build the online collections.

With help from Lauren Fink, ARB’s student worker, I gathered from archival storage the 32 boxes containing the City Engineer’s negatives and prints and began surveying the collection to determine the percentage of cellulose nitrate vs. cellulose acetate negatives present. Continue reading →

Cincinnati Subway and Street Images Digitization Project

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By:  Kevin Grace

Today’s image from the project is certainly an intriguing one: when the Rapid Transit Commission in Cincinnati went ahead with their intent to turn the Miami-Erie Canal route into a subway system, they hired a photographer to document every step of the project.  His images detailing the particular day, time, and street location of the subway construction in the 1920s form the bulk of our digitization endeavor.  He captured extraordinary exterior views of the canal bed being widened and deepened as tunnels were built, showing the streets and buildings along the route that is now Central Parkway in Cincinnati.  However, the construction also led to these buildings being damaged – cracks in ceilings, walls, and foundations in private homes and businesses, for which the owners were submitting claims for repairs and restitution.

Photographer for City Engineer

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Cincinnati Subway and Street Project Grant Underway

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By Angela Vanderbilt

Digital Archivist, Cincinnati City Engineer Digitization Project

Angela VanderbiltAs the month of October begins, so too begins a new project for the Archives and Rare Books Library – digitizing and making available on the web the collection of negatives and prints documenting Cincinnati’s early 20th century subway development and street improvement program. New projects often require new hands to help facilitate, and it is my pleasure to join this project as Digital Archivist, marking my own beginning as I strike out on a new project in a new city. Continue reading →

UC Libraries Receive Grant to Digitize Historic Cincinnati Subway and Street Project Photographs

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The University of Cincinnati Libraries were awarded a $60,669 Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant from the State Library of Ohio to digitize and make freely available on the Web the photographic collection of Cincinnati’s subway and street changes archive. Continue reading →

The Albert B. Sabin Digitization Project: The Microbe Hunter

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By Jeff O’Flynn, Sabin Project Student Assistant

[Sabin Archivist’s Note: This week features the first blog post on the Sabin project from Jeff O’Flynn, one of our new student assistants. Jeff is pursuing a doctoral degree from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music. He will be blogging on different Sabin-related topics as we work on the project. Please give Jeff a warm welcome by reading his posts! -SB]

The first assignment I handled when I started at the Sabin Archive nearly a month ago was to inventory a recent acquisition. Mrs. Sabin and her son sent us another large shipment of documents, photographs, awards, videos, and almost everything else imaginable. Sifting through these items served as my introduction to Albert B. Sabin’s life and legacy. This donation offered insight mainly into his later years and his posthumous honors with nearly all the items dating from 1970 forward. I learned many interesting things as I sorted through hundreds of fascinating items and I will share some of the most memorable items on this blog. First, I want to highlight an essay Dr. Sabin wrote in 1992 as an introduction to Paul de Kruif’s “Microbe Hunters” which influenced his life greatly. Continue reading →

The Albert B. Sabin Digitization Project: The Personal Side of Dr. Sabin

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By Richard Jason Sookoor, Sabin Project Student Assistant

Dr. and Mrs. Sabin feeding deer at a temple in Japan.

I’ve been working with the Sabin Archives for a little over three months now and am still somewhat overwhelmed by the amount of material Dr. Sabin accumulated during his long career. So when we recently received a shipment of even more materials from Mrs. Sabin and her son, I was rather surprised. Not simply because there were items we didn’t have – because judging by where we store our archival collections, it seems we have everything Dr. Sabin ever touched – but because of the amount we received. Looking over the boxes, it’s hard to imagine how one person could amass this amount of materials. Dr. Sabin kept himself quite busy, it seems. Continue reading →

Cincinnati Birth and Death Records, 1865-1912: records added

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Over 4000 records from two surname ranges missed in the original scanning project, Schoner-Schroeder and Tucker-Underheuser, have been added to the collection of birth and death records for the City of Cincinnati from 1865-1912.  This completed collection now contains over 528,000 individual records and is an important resource for genealogists, as well as researchers in public health and epidemiology.     Continue reading →

The Albert B. Sabin Digitization Project: The Evolution of Facial Hair

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By Mary Kroeger Vuyk, Sabin Project Student Assistant

[Sabin Archivist’s Note: This week features the first blog post on the Sabin project from Mary Kroeger Vuyk, one of our new student assistants. Mary is pursuing a Master of Library Science degree from Clarion University. Previously she has worked in the Winkler Center as an intern, processing the UC Public Relations Collection. She will be blogging on different Sabin-related topics as we work on the project. Please give Mary a warm welcome by reading her posts! -SB]

While rearranging several photos albums as part of the Albert B. Sabin digitization project, I ran across the Certificate of Citizenship for a very young Albert Sabin. This certificate reveals that the 23 year old Albert Sabin gained United States Citizenship on April 15, 1930.[1] While the certificate shows other important information about Dr. Sabin, such his height, weight, address, and marital status at the time of naturalization, a photo on the certificate also reveals another interesting detail – Albert Sabin was into facial hair. But, as I continued to look through the photos, I realized that as Dr. Sabin changed, so did his whiskers. Continue reading →