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Meet the Fall 2026 Rare Books Students!
By Miriam Intrator, Head of Archives & Special Collections and Rare Book Librarian Every fall and spring semester we welcome a new cohort of undergraduate interns to the Mahn Center. The internship is for-credit and open to any undergraduate student, from any department, who has completed their first year at Ohio University while maintaining at…
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Dissecting Anatomical Structures: Curating an Exhibit on Books & Bodies
By Alex Rienerth, ’25, MA in Literary History, 2024-2025 Graduate Assistant in Rare Books At the beginning of my graduate assistantship in the rare books department, part of my training included watching “The Anatomy of a Book,” a wonderful instructional video captured from an early 1990s VHS tape. Though the video is a bit peculiar,…
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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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Americana in Manuscript and Type: Piecing Together the Edward C. Fales Collection
By Alex Rienerth, ’25, MA in Literary History, 2024-2025 Graduate Assistant in Rare Books The Edward C. Fales collection was a bit of a mystery to me when I started working with it last semester. Many of the collections in rare books are extensively documented, including records from collectors that express their motivations and intentions…
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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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Reflecting on my Graduate Assistant Experience in Rare Books
By Alexis Voisard, MA Student in English, 2022-23 Rare Book Graduate Assistant Athens has been spoiled by beautiful weather, and I’ve taken advantage by going around campus getting photos in some of my favorite spots wearing my graduation robe! It’s starting to feel bittersweet going to classes and working at the library knowing I only…