Two UC Students Explored Life in Nazi Women`s Labor Camps

By Suzanne Maggard

Mary Louise Eich

Mary Louise Eich

College students are notoriously adventurous and University of Cincinnati students are not immune to the exploratory spirit.  In the Archives and Rare Books Library, we are in the unique situation to learn about and discover student adventures that may have otherwise been forgotten.  An example is the story of Mary Louise Eich and her friend and Delta Zeta sorority sister, Mary Nichols.   Last week, we received a donation of a book entitled, An Odyssey in the Life of Mary Louise Eichwritten by William Neal, the son of Mary Louise Eich.

Mary Nichols

Mary Nichols

The book tells the story of Mary Louise’s life and the trip she made with Nichols in the summer of 1936 to Nazi Germany.  Both Eich and Nichols spent a month working in Women’s Labor Service camps.  Upon their return they both wrote articles for the Cincinnati Post about their experiences.  Neal’s book provides transcriptions of the articles Eich and Nichols wrote for the Cincinnati Post and is a great addition to our library’s holdings on German-Americana and University of Cincinnati history. Continue reading

Cincinnati Then and Now: Adventures in the Subway and Street Improvements Digitization Project

By:  Angela Vanderbilt

Reviewing the images of the subway construction has provided me with a great opportunity to learn the names of the streets and the different intersections around downtown Cincinnati that were major points along the subway route. As I learn to navigate my way around the city, driving from one location to another, I’m finding this very useful as I’m constantly recalling images and the navigational captions written on the negatives. By providing the street names and directional information for each image, the photographer gave us a map of 1920s Cincinnati. I thought it would be fun to show a “then and now” perspective of some of those streets and intersections, courtesy of Google maps, providing a snapshot of how much the city has grown and changed, starting with the removal of the canal in the 1920s.

The images shown here begin at Race Street and head west along Central Parkway, then make a turn at Plum Street to head north on Central Parkway past Mohawk Place (The building on the corner of Central and Mohawk Robin Imaging, the company digitizing the collection.), and north on McMicken Ave.

Race at Canal 1921

Northbound Race at Canal, 1921

Race at Central 2012

Northbound Race Street at Central Pkwy, 2012

 

 

 

 

Elm at Central

Northbound Elm St. at Canal St., 1921

Elma at Central, 2012

Northbound Elm at Central Pkwy, 2012

 

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Fire Protection, Optics/Photonics, Welding : New Knovel E-Books

Three new subject areas are now available via UC’s subscription to the Knovel e-book and e-data resource.  (All links will prompt for your UC Central Login when off-campus)

Note: once you access a link, scroll down to view a list of included titles.

Knovel contains e-books and interactive data sets for science, engineering, and related areas: sustainable energy, pharmaceuticals, textiles, and operations management.

UCBA Library Winter Break Hours

by Tammy Manger 

The UCBA Library and Computer Concourse will be closed December 15th – January 1st. If you need to return a book (outside book drop unavailable), pick-up library materials on hold or request library services or assistance, please do so before December 15th.

The Library and the Computer Concourse will re-open with break hours beginning on Wednesday, January 2nd. Regular semester hours begin on Monday, January 7th. Please go to www.libraries.uc.edu/ucba under Hours & Directions for more details.

Thanksgiving Tradition

By:  Molly Gullett

Many of us are preparing this week for Thanksgiving, one of America’s oldest traditional holidays. Food rituals are key in most cultures, and they are certainly featured in the contents of the Southwest Ohio Folklore Collection. TurkeyProviding a common link and shared experience, Thanksgiving dinner, and the holiday itself are prime examples of traditional American culture.

There are many Thanksgiving traditions which mark the holiday as an example of folkloric tradition. We may take for granted how commonly held practices such as preparing a turkey or breaking the wishbone might be considered folklore given their ubiquity, but folklore can be just that: a ritual so regularized that it begins to be practiced without thought. Continue reading

The Albert B. Sabin Digitization Project: Essays on Sabin

We are currently in the process of redesigning the current Sabin website, which is very exciting! For this new website, I have been doing some research to create new content and update content already there. Through my search, I came across some essays about Dr. Sabin written by Dr. Allen B. Weisse, a cardiologist and medical historian.

Letter from Allen B. Weisse to Dr. Sabin dated May 18, 1987. Dr. Sabin wrote a reply at the bottom of the letter.

In 1987, Dr. Weisse contacted Dr. Sabin about one of the essays that appeared in a book called Medical Odysseys: The Different and Sometimes Unexpected Pathways to Twentieth-Century Medical Discoveries. (The Sabin Archives has a folder of correspondence between Dr. Sabin and Dr. Weisse that discusses this chapter.[1]) They met later in 1987, when Dr. Weisse conducted an interview for this chapter.

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JBI COnNECT +

The Joanna Briggs Institute evidence based nursing database, JBI COnNECT +, has recently moved to a new platform and a new name. The new name is Joanna Briggs Institute EBP Database and is now provided on an Ovid search platform.  Ovid search capabilities make the search process more user friendly. In addition to the high quality evidence based literature that has always been available through the Joanna Briggs Institute; access to Ovid electronic journals and books purchased by the library are readily available. Continue reading

The McNamara Brothers and American Terrorism

By Kevin Grace     

Cover of Terrorist Attacks on American SoilAdmittedly scatter-brained in many regards, it sometimes takes a few days for me to catch on to matters.  To wit, two weeks ago a book arrived on my desk from Rowman & Littlefield Publishers accompanied by no letter or other explanation, only the package with my name typed on the label.  I thought it was just another of the occasional books that find their way here, usually self-published religious or philosophical musings that are mailed wholesale to everyone and his brother.  The title was interesting, though: Terrorist Attacks on American Soil: From the Civil War Era to the Present, and it was from a legitimate publisher.  But even so, I set it aside with barely a glance. Continue reading

A Changing Landscape-The Subway and Street Images Digitization Project Continues

By Angela Vanderbilt

An immediate advantage gained by the digitization of the subway construction negatives is that one can now easily follow the progress being made on the project. From images of the drained canal bed and the earliest scoops of dirt removed to shots of the broad parkway ready to receive pedestrian and automobile traffic, researchers accessing the images will be able to follow each step of the process, much like the crowds of curious onlookers who gathered daily to watch the event in the early 1920s.

Once the collection is made available online, viewers may easily follow the construction process for each section of the proposed route, thanks to the photographer who carefully documented each image by writing the date, time, and location of each photograph directly on the negative itself. Such information is an invaluable historic record of the project, and of the city of Cincinnati, and will be captured in a database to make searching for specific images within the collection that much easier.

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