CHRC Collections at ARB Recall Cincinnati’s Own Civil Unrest

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By:  Nate McGee, CHRC Intern and UC PhD candidate

CHRC Thank You Letter

A thank you card from a student at Aiken High School following a CHRC outreach visit to the school.

Amid a renewed discussion regarding the relationship between minority urban residents and local police, it’s important to think about how our own community dealt with similar issues in the not too distant past.  The Cincinnati Human Relations Commission (CHRC) Collection currently being processed in the Archives and Rare Books Library shows the myriad ways the city and various organizations affiliated with city hall attempted to deal with issues not unlike those currently experienced in Ferguson, Missouri, Staten Island, New York, and in the national news discussion.

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Welcome, Julie Robinson!

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by Kellie Tilton

Julie Robinson is the newest member of the UC Blue Ash Library team and will be joining us as the Library Operations Manager. She comes to us from the Health Science Library at Marshall University. Julie has a Master’s in Library and Information Science and in Public Administration. She will be responsible for managing the daily operations of the library to ensure high quality provision of library services.

Julie enjoying time on a boat in the Cumberland Sound, Florida.

Julie enjoying time on the Cumberland Sound in Florida.

Here are a few fun questions Julie answered:

Bad Book Habit: Staying up until I’m bleary-eyed to finish a book even when I know I have to go to work the next morning. I’ve been guilty, more than I care to admit, of staying up until 3a or 4a just to finish a really good story because I just don’t know when to quit! But the books were always worth it….

Do you take books with you when you are out and about: I always have at least one book on me at any given time, not to mention the e-books on my Kindle app via my phone. I continually fight the urge to pull my book out of my purse in social situations!

Favorite book I’ve read this year: As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales from the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes. Hands down one of the funniest reads in a long time for me! As a fan of the movie, I was afraid the book would spoil the memory, but I was dead wrong. It made me enjoy remembering my favorite parts all over again.

Best reading-related memory: The year I received the complete set of the Nancy Drew mysteries. I think I was 10 or so. As my birthday is in early April, spring was just on the horizon. That spring and summer, my mother let me hide out in the trees and barn on my grandparents’ farm and read as much as I wanted.

Do you prefer to keep books or give them away once you’ve read them: I am a total book hoarder. If I buy a book, I can pretty much guarantee it’s mine forever. I love the public library and definitely return them, however, I’ve been guilty of going out and buying it after I’ve read a great one so I have a copy “just in case!”

 

 

 

ARB's "50 Minute Talk" in January

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Fresh back from the holidays, the 50 Minute Talk series in the Archives & Rare Books Library will kick off 2015 with a presentation by Eira Tansey on Lois Lowry’s classic dystopian novel, The Giver on Thursday January 8. Later in the month, UC professor Bob Miller will talk about the World War II years at the University of Cincinnati.  Please join us for these informal noon get-togethers.  Bring your lunch, invite a friend, and enjoy some good conversation and opinions.

50 Minutes Talk - January 2015

 

Emma Lucy Braun: Pioneer Plant Ecologist

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By:  Iman Said, ARB Intern, 2014-2015

The University of Cincinnati has had many incredible individuals pass through its doors. There have been outstanding athletes, such as Oscar Robertson and Ron Bonham, and incredible researchers such as Albert Sabin. One such researcher was E. Lucy Braun, who created a research program in vascular plant floristics focusing on deciduous forests.

Lucy BraunE. Lucy Braun was born in Cincinnati in 1889. She graduated from the University of Cincinnati in 1914 with a Ph.D in botany and went on to found the Wildflower Preservation Society of North America in 1917. The Society is still well and thriving today and hosts several different events including an annual Hardy Souls’ Hike at Mt. Airy Forest and lectures on various fungal infections and wild orchids. That same year, she began teaching botany at her alma mater, growing through the University to become a professor of plant ecology in 1946. In addition, she became the first female president of the Ohio Academy of Science. Continue reading →

Oesper News: Museum Booklets on the History of Chemical Apparatus

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Dr. William B. Jensen introduces his new series:

Like most museums, only about 25% of the holdings of the Oesper Collections
in the History of Chemistry are on public display at a given time. In order to make the remaining 75% available in some form, it was decided to initiate a series of short museum booklets, each dedicated to a particular instrument or laboratory technique of historical importance to the science of chemistry.

Each booklet would include not only photographs of both displayed and stored museum artifacts related to the subject at hand, but also a short discussion of the history of the instrument or technique and of its impact on the development of chemistry as a whole. Several of these booklets are expansions of short articles which have previously appeared in either the bimonthly series Museum Notes, which is posted on the Oesper website, or the series Ask the Historian, which appeared in the Journal of Chemical Education between 2003 and 2012.

You can access the booklets by clicking here.

 

Check Out the Latest Issue of Source, UC Libraries Newsletter

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sourceRead the online newsletter to learn more about the development of UC’s digital repository, why UC’s colors are red and black, and more news from UC Libraries.

This latest issue of Source includes updates on the Libraries’ Strategic Plan, with an overview of digital humanities and news on the development of UC’s digital repository, which makes accessible, enables re-use, stores, organizes and preserves the full range of the institution’s intellectual output, including scholarly, historical and research materials. Also featured are stories about providing access to the Libraries special collections, a new exhibit highlighting the top illustrated children’s books, and the librarians, staff and students of UC Libraries giving thanks.

Source online is available on the web at http://libapps.libraries.uc.edu/source/ and via e-mail. To receive Source online via e-mail, contact melissa.norris@uc.edu to be added to the mailing list.