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Making 20th Century Patterns with 21st Century Materials: A Semester of Following Patterns Designed by Maud Churchill Nicoll
By Jessica Licker, Digital Literacy Librarian, Athens County Public Libraries, Master’s in Literary History, ’24, Rare Books Graduate Assistant, 2023-2024 At the end of the fall 2023 semester I began searching the Mahn Center rare book collection for anything related to fiber crafting. I was interested in experimenting with historic knitting or sewing patterns through…
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Welcome to Fall 2024!
By Miriam Intrator, Special Collections Librarian As a new semester and new academic year are once again upon us, there are many new events and opportunities for students, faculty, staff, and the broader OHIO and Athens communities. Below is an overview of some of what’s available this coming fall. We encourage you to reach out…
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Objects of Interest and Reflections on the Frank Buhla Collection
By Aurora Charlow, recent MS graduate of Simmons University, Metadata Assistant at Ohio University Libraries during the 2023-2024 academic year. In its heyday, from about 1880 to 1920, mines in the Hocking Valley Coal Field produced hundreds of thousands of tons of coal every year. It was pried from the ground, processed through mining tipples,…
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The Athens Mental Health Center records – The Patients
By Julian Earley, BA ’26 Classical Civilizations, Digital Initiatives Assistant Everyone loves a good haunting. I too have been interested in ghost-hunting and wanted to know what lies in the Asylum here in Athens. But I think it’s important when we talk about the history of institutions like The Athens Mental Health Center to humanize…
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Updating Descriptions for Coal Mining Collections
Text and images by Samuel Coletta-Bates, Film ’25, Spring 2024 Manuscript Archives Assistant This semester, my job as Archives Assistant within the Mahn Center has been to research and update finding aid descriptions for mining related collections. This has included delving into the collections themselves, as well as other supplemental resources to revise their content…
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From Satire to Advertisement: A Literary Record of the 1893 World’s Fair
By Jessica Licker, Master’s in Literary History, ’24, Rare Books Graduate Assistant When I first started conceptualizing this exhibit, I was spoiled for choice of topics. I was quickly taken with the Juvenile Literature Collection, and the whimsy of some of the 19th and 20th century children’s book bindings…
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Creating a Virginia Woolf Author Collection in Rare Books
By Cali Weber, ’24, English Major, Classical Civilizations Minor, Written as part of English 4940: Research Apprenticeship, Fall 2023 In the fall of my junior year, I took one of my favorite classes in the Ohio University English department; ENG 3490 History of Books and Printing. In this class, I was lucky enough to do…
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The Women of Ink, Pen, and Paper: Interviews from the Don Swaim Collection
By Alexis Reynolds, ’27 English, Digital Initiatives Assistant “What’s that? Say again!” We’ve all been there. A lot of us probably say these four words on a constant basis. I know I do, which is why I was a bit hesitant about beginning to work on the Don Swaim Collection audio transcription project. Swaim is…
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Digitizing “Specimens of Eastern Manuscripts and Printing”
By Maggie Bennink, ’24 BA in History & Classic Civilizations, Digital Initiatives Assistant I was introduced to Pages From the Past over the 2023 spring semester, through an independent study led by Dr. Cory Crawford in the Classics Department. The items we looked at – a cylinder seal and a cuneiform tablet – are a…
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Persian and Arabic Manuscripts in the Digital Archives
By Mina Sadeghzadeh, ’24 Master of Art History, Rare Books Graduate Assistant, Mahn Center for Archives & Special Collections This semester, I had the great opportunity to be a graduate assistant at the Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections under the guidance of Dr. Miriam Intrator. I specifically worked with the Special Collection in…