Join the Preservation Lab, Thursday, May 2 from 2pm-4pm as they celebrate Preservation Week with their annual Open House. Located in the 300 Level of the Walter C. Langsam Library, the Preservation Lab’s Open House theme is “Back to Basics” and will feature samples of their work, opportunities to meet and greet preservation colleagues and cookies!
The Preservation Lab is a collaboration between the Cincinnati and Hamilton County Public Library and the University of Cincinnati. The Lab is located on UC’s Main campus on the 300 level of the Walter C. Langsam Library, 2911 Woodside Drive. Information about parking on campus, both metered and garage parking, is available on UC’s website. Woodside Garage and Campus Green Garage are the garages closest to Langsam Library. There will be signs directing visitors to the Lab’s floor from the main level of Langsam Library (400 level), but assistance is available at The Desk @ Langsam.
The next event, scheduled for Wednesday, April 10 at 4pm, will be an expanded program in celebration of National Poetry Month. The poetry reading will feature four University of Cincinnati student poets (pictured above clockwise from top):
Holli Carrell is a writer originally from Utah, now living in Cincinnati, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in creative writing at the University of Cincinnati with a certificate in women’s, gender, and sexuality studies. Her poems have recently appeared in 32 Poems, The Journal, Salt Hill, Bennington Review, Quarterly West, Blackbird, Poetry Northwest, and other places. She currently serves as an assistant editor at The Cincinnati Review.
Tyler McDonald is a 3rd year undergraduate student at the University of Cincinnati studying Creative Writing and Professional Writing. He is a poet whose work deals with survivorship, relationships, and exploring personal identity. His poetry has appeared in Short Vine, Outrageous Fortune, and Mind Swimmer. In 2022, he was the recipient of the Robinson Essay Prize. Outside of writing, he can be found serving coffee, wandering nature, and copyediting the work of other writers.
Andy Sia is a poet and scholar from Brunei currently residing in Cincinnati. His recent manuscript, Sleuth, engages with whodunnit tropes and is an exploration of modes of reading and habitation. He is currently researching theories of reading and books as objects.
Grace Guy is a poet and writer, who currently splits her time between Cincinnati and Toledo. She is an undergraduate student studying English at the University of Cincinnati. Their poetry can be found in Short Vine Literary Journal. She is the recipient of an honorable mention for the 2023 Academy of American Poets Prize (Undergraduate Prize). When in Toledo, they work at a local coffee shop which they absolutely love.
Read these articles, as well as past issues, on the website. To receive Source via e-mail, contact melissa.norris@uc.edu to be added to the mailing list
Announcing the 2022-2023 University of Cincinnati Libraries Annual Report. My tenure as dean and university librarian began in mid-August 2023, a time of great growth at the University of Cincinnati. I’ve spent these past six months learning as much as I can about the Libraries – how our mission to “empower discovery, stimulate learning and inspire the creation of knowledge by connecting students, faculty, researchers and scholars to dynamic data, information and resources” supports the university’s NEXT Lives Here Strategic Directions. Documents such as the Annual Report have been key to my education.
In this Annual Report, we look back at the top News & Events, applaud Staff Accomplishments & Milestones and look at the Libraries By the Numbers and Financially. Under the leadership of interim dean and university librarian Lori Harris, we welcomed a significant number of new librarians and staff members who will provide essential library services and research support and help move the Libraries forward. We acquired, processed, preserved and made available collections used for research. We held events to bring people into the Libraries to interact with our facilities and collections. We created welcoming places – both virtual and in-person – for people to study, research and collaborate. And, we provided our expertise to the students, faculty and researchers who rely on UC Libraries for their academic pursuits.
Looking Forward
While we celebrate the accomplishments of the past academic year, we also continue to move forward and plan for the future. This past fall we began the process of developing an updated strategic plan with goals and initiatives that will continue to advance the mission of the University of Cincinnati. This plan will build upon the successes of UC Libraries and respond to the rapidly changing landscape of higher education, as well as the increasingly diverse needs of our students, faculty and researchers. The strategic plan will be completed this summer and will guide our work for the next three years. Stay tuned.
An exhibit on display at the entrance to the Robert A. Deshon and Karl J. Schlachter Library for Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP) features 20 items of woodcuts, engravings, etchings and illuminated manuscript leaves and scrolls from the UC Art Collection and DAAP Library Special Collections. Featuring intricately designed prints and lavishly illuminated manuscripts, the exhibit explores late medieval and early modern European art in a global perspective. It focuses on the visual and material traces of social and political connections between Europe and Africa, Asia and the Americas from the 15th to 17th centuries.
The installation was curated by Aaron Cowan, director of the UC Art Collections, Galleries and Museum Studies Program, Elizabeth Meyer, head of the DAAP Library, and Christopher Platts, assistant professor of art history in the School of Art at DAAP.
For the past six months, the Preservation Lab’s Jessica Ebert and Catarina Figueirinhas have been working with the Robert A. Deshon and Karl J. Schlachter Library for Design, Architecture, Art and Planning (DAAP) on housing their Teaching art collection, including prior acquisition and newly acquired items. This collection consists of different art prints on paper, print plates and manuscript parchment leaves in need of long-term housing. In addition to housing, this collection is used for teaching in a classroom setting and for exhibition.
Most of the collection only requires simple matting systems, but some require more intricate matting systems such as the copper plate along with its print, a project mentioned in a previous blog post entitled How many magnets is too many magnets!?.
As some of the items of this collection were being prepared to go on exhibit, we had the opportunity to create mounts for other items, such as two parchment scrolls that were included in the exhibit. This was a fun project to work on, as it required us to create a support that would secure both scrolls, while providing an elegant solution for display.
