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.
Libraries Closing at 12:30
Elliston Poetry Reading, January 31, 2014, C.K. Williams
The next reading in the Elliston Poetry Room will be by the 2013-2014 Elliston Poet-in-Residence, C.K. Williams.
January 31, 2014, 4:00 PM, Elliston Poetry Room, 646 Langsam Library
C. K. Williams is the author of eleven books of poetry, including Writers Writing Dying (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012); Wait (2010); and Collected Poems (FSG, 2007). The Singing won the National Book Award in 2003; and his previous book, Repair, was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. His collection Flesh and Blood received the National Book Critics Circle Award. Williams has also published a memoir, Misgivings: My Mother, My Father, Myself, in 2000, and has published translations of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, Euripides’ Bacchae, and poems of Francis Ponge, among others. A prose book entitled Williams, On Whitman, was released in 2010 from Princeton University Press. He is also the author of two books of essays: Poetry and Consciousness (1998) and In Time (University of Chicago Press, 2012). Williams was awarded the Twentieth Annual Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, an honor given to an American poet in recognition of extraordinary accomplishment. Among his honors are awards in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Voelcker Career Achievement Award, and fellowships from the Lila Wallace Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment of the Arts. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2003, and teaches in the Writing Program at Princeton University.
The author will also teach a master class entitled “First Drafts and Last Drafts” on January 28, 2014 at 2:00 PM in the Elliston Poetry Room, 646 Langsam Library.
Look for recordings of this presentation soon in the digital collection, The Elliston Project: Poetry Readings and Lectures at the University of Cincinnati.
Learn more about Events sponsored by the Elliston Poetry Fund.
Elliston Master Class, January 28, 2014, C.K.Williams
The 2013-2014 Elliston Poet-in-Residence, C.K. Williams, will teach a master class on January 28, 2014 at 2:00 PM in the Elliston Poetry Room, 646 Langsam Library.
The class is called “First Drafts and Last Drafts.” In it, Williams plans to read the first drafts of some of his poems, then the final versions, which are often radically different. He’ll speak about the poems and take questions. This event is free and open to the public.
C. K. Williams is the author of eleven books of poetry, including Writers Writing Dying (Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 2012); Wait (2010); and Collected Poems (FSG, 2007). The Singing won the National Book Award in 2003; and his previous book, Repair, was awarded the 2000 Pulitzer Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. His collection Flesh and Blood received the National Book Critics Circle Award. Williams has also published a memoir, Misgivings: My Mother, My Father, Myself, in 2000, and has published translations of Sophocles’ Women of Trachis, Euripides’ Bacchae, and poems of Francis Ponge, among others. A prose book entitled Williams, On Whitman, was released in 2010 from Princeton University Press. He is also the author of two books of essays: Poetry and Consciousness (1998) and In Time (University of Chicago Press, 2012). Williams was awarded the Twentieth Annual Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, an honor given to an American poet in recognition of extraordinary accomplishment. Among his honors are awards in literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the PEN/Voelcker Career Achievement Award, and fellowships from the Lila Wallace Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, and the National Endowment of the Arts. He was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 2003, and teaches in the Writing Program at Princeton University.
The author will also give a poetry reading on January 31, 2014 at 4:00 PM in the Elliston Poetry Room, 646 Langsam Library.
Look for recordings of this presentation soon in the digital collection, The Elliston Project: Poetry Readings and Lectures at the University of Cincinnati.
Learn more about Events sponsored by the Elliston Poetry Fund.
Empowering People and Changing Lives: Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Hosts the 8th National Conference of African-American Librarians
by Michelle McKinney
About the Conference
Hundreds of African-American librarians, library staffers, vendors and advocates from around the country gathered August 7-11, 2013 at the Northern Kentucky Convention Center to attend the 8th National Conference of African-American Librarians (NCAAL). The conference, sponsored by the Black Caucus of the American Library Association, provided attendees the opportunity to network, as well as to gain knowledge and skills needed to meet the challenges faced by African-American librarians and the communities of color they serve.
Libraries Closed January 20
UC Libraries will be closed Monday, January 20 in observance of Martin Luther King Day. The Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library is the exception and will be open 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM (Monday).
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
The Leclanche Cell: Notes from the Oesper Collections, No. 24, January/February 2014
The Leclanché cell as depicted in Benjamin’s 1893 treatise on the voltaic cell.
The 24th issue of Museum Notes highlights the Leclanché voltaic cell in both its original wet-cell form and modern dry-cell form. This cell is the basis of most of our current everyday batteries from the D-cells used in traditional flashlights to the smaller AAA-cells used in many of our everyday electronic devices.
Click here for all other issues of Notes from The Oesper Collections and to explore the Jensen-Thomas Apparatus Collection.
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.
