Taft the Party Animal

By Kevin Grace

Statue of William Howard TaftIs there a Taft fashion cult lurking about campus?  This morning saw the William Howard Taft statue outside the College of Law decked out like he was going to a Jimmy Buffet concert.  Replete with hula skirt, tee shirt, shades, and beanie, Big Bill definitely looked like he was ready for an end-of-summer blowout.

The Taft statue was erected on the east side of the law school in 1992.  Sculpted by William T. Moore III, the statue shows Taft in his judicial robes and clasping a law book in his hand.  A graduate of Woodward High School, Yale, and the Cincinnati Law School, William Howard Taft served as dean of his law alma mater from 1896 to 1900.  The Cincinnati Law School was the last remnant of the original Cincinnati College founded in 1819.  As dean, Taft assisted with the 1897 merger of his school with the Law Department of the University of Cincinnati and served as dean of the combined programs, called the College of Law.  Continue reading

The Albert B. Sabin Digitization Project: Trip to Brazil, 1980

Dr. Sabin's Statement to the press regarding his trip to Brazil, April 1980

Recently, I have been reading Polio, which is a collection of essays edited by Thomas M. Daniel and Frederick C. Robbins. Among the many interesting essays in the book is one by João Baptista Risi, Jr. He describes the different mass vaccination campaigns in Brazil, and in doing so, he discusses Dr. Sabin’s trip to the country in 1980 and its result.

The essay stated that Dr. Sabin offered his assistance to the Brazilian Minister of Health to implement the national vaccination days plan, using the oral polio vaccine. Dr. Sabin was a well-known figure in Brazil and had helped other countries implement vaccination campaigns. According to Risi, “[Sabin] was welcomed with great enthusiasm, as we looked forward to receiving technical advice on particular issues, and his support was necessary to insure public acceptance. Very surprisingly, however, he paid less attention to the proposed vaccination plan and focused special interest on defining more precisely the magnitude of the problem of poliomyelitis in Brazil” (p. 172). Apparently, Dr. Sabin “did not accept objections to his proposal” and left Brazil on an unpleasant note (p. 172). Continue reading

Please Note: Electrical Shutdown Scheduled

An emergency electrical shutdown has been scheduled fo Langsam Library and Woodside/Library Garage for Saturday, Sept. 10th beginning at 6:30am and lasting 12 hours or longer. The work is necessary to replace a failed transformer and failed high voltage connections.

Library Services, including the Library Catalog, interlibrary loan, and the website, will be unavailable while Library IT and UCit bring the networking closet that provides access to our services onto the emergency power generator during the initial part of the shutdown. If all is working properly Library Services should be available by 10:00 am.

Important Internet Service Notice

UCit is performing additional maintenance on the university’s Internet environment this Saturday, Sept 10. The maintenance window will be between the hours of 12:01 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. During this time, Internet access is expected to be intermittent and the university’s private network that links to Veteran’s, Children’s and UC Health will be unavailable.

The Albert B. Sabin Digitization Project: John R. Paul and North Africa

When I was reading David M. Oshinsky’s Polio: An American Story awhile back, I noted a book that he briefly mentioned called A History of Poliomyelitis by John R. Paul, MD. I finally got around to looking at this book a little closer, and I thought that I would give you a glimpse into the relationship between Dr. Paul and Dr. Sabin.

Memorandum from Dr. Francis Blake, President for the Board for the Investigation and Control of Influenza and other Epidemic Diseases in the Army, 1943

According to the Yale University Archives and Manuscripts website, Dr. Paul was at the Yale School of Medicine for over 30 years, where he studied many diseases, including polio. Through his research on this disease, as well as his involvement as director of the Neurotropic Virus Disease Commission of the Armed Forces Epidemiological Board and the Virus Commission during the 1940’s, he and Dr. Sabin corresponded a lot! Our collection has several different folders dedicated to correspondence between Dr. Paul and Dr. Sabin, as well as other letters scattered throughout our Military Service, Oral Poliomyelitis Vaccine, and Poliomyelitis series. Continue reading

T. M. Berry Project: Progress Report

By Laura Laugle

A total of 223 boxes of the Theodore M. Berry Manuscript Collection have now been processed, leaving just six remaining.  In the final collection there will be approximately 180 linear feet with around 475,000 total documents and about 1,000 photographs dating from the 1910s though 2000. The inventory in progress includes a detailed list of the titles and contents of folders, along with series and sub-series for the boxes in which each of the folders is stored. This list will be used for a final Encoded Archival Description finding aid that will be available on OhioLINK and the Internet for researchers using the collection.  The completion date for the project is set for February 2012. Continue reading

Service Note: Internet Service Interruptions Sept. 2-4

To meet the university’s needs for increased Internet bandwidth, UCIT will perform an upgrade to the Cincinnati Education Research Fiber-loop (CERF) ring during Labor Day weekend. The CERF ring is the backbone providing Internet and Internet2 connectivity for UC, Xavier, and Cincinnati State Technical and Community College. The upgrade will begin at 6:00 p.m., Friday, September 2 and is expected to be complete by 1:00 a.m. Sunday, September 4. Users should expect intermittent service interruption to the Internet during this window, however there is a possibility for intermittent Internet outages during the entire maintenance period.

Continue reading