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James Landy and Shakespeare’s “Seven Ages of Man”
By Kevin Grace, University Archivist and Head of the Archives and Rare Books Library It is one of the most famous lines in literature: “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” Shakespeare’s words from As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII, are spoken by his character, Jacques, a morose and melancholy man. The line, as part of Jacque’s speech, is so often invoked about life in the theater, about everyday life and about everyone’s cosmic role in an earthly existence that one almost expects to see it carved on public buildings and graffitied on alley walls. Beyond that opening line, however, is a…
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So What is an “Extra-Illustrated Edition?”
By Kevin Grace, University Archivist and Head of the Archives and Rare Books Library When Cincinnati businessman Enoch Carson began collecting the works of William Shakespeare in the years before the Civil War, he was part of a bibliophile craze that stretched across the Atlantic Ocean. During the 1800s in Europe and America, book lovers scavenged publishers’ catalogues, auctions and bookshops to amass their private libraries built on their specific interests. They corresponded with each other at length, trading prints and imprints and finagling to acquire their most desired items. For Carson, the quests were for Masonic books and for Shakespeare. His collection of books on Masons numbered in the…
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Managing University Archives in a Digital World
By Eira Tansey, Digital Archivist/Records Manager, Archives and Rare Books Library “What College-Conservatory of Music musicals were staged in 1986?” “When did the university begin offering a dental insurance plan?” “What dorms have served as polling places?” These are just a handful of the university-history related questions I’ve encountered since starting work at the Archives and Rare Books (ARB) Library nearly five years ago. The questions we receive concern events at all times in campus history – from the earliest days of UC’s predecessor colleges to events that took place just a couple years ago. ARB is the official home for University Archives, making us the obvious place to go…
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Streamlined Searching and Management of Archival Collections Implemented at UC Libraries
By Suzanne Reller, Reference/Collections Librarian in the Archives and Rare Books Library. What do the polio vaccine, animated film music, folklore, the Heimlich maneuver and labor unions have in common? They are all subjects of archival collections in the Archives and Rare Books Library and at the Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions. Archival collections are papers or records of a person, family or organization and includes things like correspondence, photographs, meeting minutes and reports. Archives can be digital or hard copy, and they can encompass just few folders to hundreds of boxes or a few megabytes to terabytes of data. Since these collections are…
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Staff News
Appointments Eira Tansey, digital archivist/records manager in the Archives and Rare Books Library, was appointed to the Society of American Archivists (SAA) Committee on Public Policy, a national committee that does the legwork behind virtually all SAA public policy statements and press releases regarding “record keeping issues in the news” – including recent statements on law enforcement body-camera footage, violations of FOIA and other matters of public record keeping interest. Awards On April 13th two UC Libraries employees were honored at the UC Celebration of Black Excellence 2018 awards ceremony. Don Jason, health informationist in the Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library, was awarded a Maendeleo Award, Promotion Award for…
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Preserving Taft
The mission of the Preservation Lab is to preserve and conserve the collections of the Public Library of Cincinnati and Hamilton County and the University of Cincinnati Libraries – a collaboration begun in January 2012 to provide conservation and preservation treatments in an equally managed, staffed and equipped preservation lab on the University of Cincinnati’s campus. A recent collaboration with the Archives and Rare Books Library on a collection of letters and artifacts pertaining to William Howard Taft demonstrates the valuable role the Lab takes in both preserving a collection for posterity while also making it available for study today. The work of the Preservation Lab varies depending on the…
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The E.B. White Collection
By Kevin Grace, University Archivist and Head of the Archives and Rare Books Library So you want to be a writer? Whatever for?? Has someone unduly directed you toward that endeavor? Author Flannery O’Connor once offered her own opinion on budding writers: “Everywhere I go, I’m asked if the universities stifle writers. My opinion is that they don’t stifle enough of them.” A bit harsh, that, but there was encouragement of a sort from Dorothy Parker, known more for her witticisms today than her short stories and poetry: “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present…
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UC Libraries Launches New Adopt-A-Book Program
Do you love libraries? Do you love books? We need your help! UC Libraries has launched an exciting new Adopt-A-Book program, providing alumni and library friends the opportunity to help support the preservation of some of our most precious books. These are true treasures for our collection, deeply valued by our faculty and students for their content and scholarly value. The program has started with items from UC Libraries’ Archives & Rare Books Library and the Henry R. Winkler Center for the History of the Health Professions. Please consider adopting one of these rare items for preservation for future generations. Adopted items will receive an electronic bookplate honoring the adopter…
