By Mark Chalmers, Science & Engineering Librarian and Curator of the Oesper Collections The Oesper Collections in the History of Chemistry, housed at the University of Cincinnati, are local in their physical setting but global in their reach. While the work of curating these materials involves preservation, description, stewardship and access, their broader significance often emerges through collaboration, particularly when scholars and organizations beyond the United States engage with them in new and exciting ways. Two recently completed international partnerships highlight how historical materials from the Oesper Collections continue to circulate, finding new audiences and new contexts across languages and borders. Reconnecting Greco-Egyptian texts through translation One such collaboration centers…

By Mark Chalmers, Science and Engineering Librarian and Curator of the Oesper Collections The scavenger hunt clue was discovered by accident, tucked inside the sliding glass doors to one of the Old Chemistry building’s new display cases. The typed note read: “They don’t speak, but they’ve seen it all — Minds that sparked the rise and fall. Pasteur, Franklin, Cannizzaro too — Their faces cast in quiet view. Find the wall where legends stare, and history lingers in the air.” Someone had incorporated the busts of famous scientists —Pasteur, Franklin, Cannizzaro—into their puzzle, working the display’s content into the clue itself. The clue was confirmation that the year-long installation project…