June Lunch & Learn Series

lunchANDlearn The Donald C. Harrison Health Sciences Library invites you to join us for our June Lunch & Learn instruction series, Thursdays, June 13 – 27, 12:10-12:50pm, in the Health Sciences Library Classroom (MSB G005G).

Bring your lunch and learn during these quick information sessions. Come to one session, a few, or them all! Seating is limited, so registration is recommended.

Schedule:

Thursday, June 13 iPad 101

Thursday, June 20 Excel Tips

Thursday, June 27 Free Screencasting Tools

View the complete Lunch & Learn schedule below. See descriptions and register online at http://webcentral.uc.edu/hslclass/

False Facades Offer Aesthetic Disguise = Adventures in the Subway and Street Improvements Digitization Project

By Angela Vanderbilt

The story of abandoned subway stations and tracks hidden beneath busy city streets is not unique to Cincinnati. Other large cities, such as New York, London, and Paris have similarly mysterious and intriguing stories to tell. An article I recently read in The New York Times introduced me to this underground world of hidden subway ventilation shafts disguised by false building facades, with doors from which people occasionally exit, but never seem to enter. Some of these subterranean secrets are in use, while others have been abandoned like Cincinnati’s own subway stations beneath Central Parkway.

What’s fascinating is the effort made to disguise these facilities, to blend them in with the neighboring buildings. While it seems a logically aesthetic means of making the utilitarian more appealing, some have argued that the cities in which these structures are located are trying to hide a deep secret. For comparison, consider the Cincinnati subway – when the subway and Central Parkway were first being constructed, the ventilation chimneys and the entrances to the below-ground stations were nicely appointed with decorative stonework.

Ventilation shaft, looking north along Parkway from Liberty St., July 2, 1928

Close up of decorative stonework for ventilator railing, Central Parkway,
Nov. 19, 1928

Continue reading →

Quarters to Semester Conversion Records now in ARB

By: Janice Schulz

The Archives and Rare Books Library has made available a collection of records from University Communications covering the University’s conversion to semesters in 2012. The collection concentrates on the comprehensive communication plan developed to educate students and other stakeholders about the conversion and includes communication plans, planning documents, research, publications, and clippings. Also included are some promotional items such as t-shirts, protective hats, and sandwich boards declaring that the world will END – not really, just convert to semesters – in 2012.

A complete finding aid for the collection can be found on the OhioLink Finding Aid Repository at http://rave.ohiolink.edu/archives/ead/OhCiUAR0367. For further information on the Archives & Rare Books Library and its holdings, please call 513.556.1959, email archives@ucmail.uc.edu, or visit our website at http://www.libraries.uc.edu/libraries/arb/index.html.

Semester Conversion Poster with Bearcat

Snow Globes in the DAAP Library

snowglobe2 Jenell Walton of Channel 9′s “The List” recently visited the Robert A. Deshon and Karl J. Schlachter Library for Design, Architecture, Art, and Planning (DAAP) and met with librarian Jennifer Krivickas to talk about the library’s snow globe collection. The snow globes will appear on “The List” sometime in July. For those who want to know more about the snow globes before the show airs, below is more information about the fun collection.

Continue reading →

Digitized Correspondence and Photographs of Albert B. Sabin Available on the Web

sabin1 The University of Cincinnati Libraries have completed a three-year project to digitize the correspondence and photographs of Albert B. Sabin, developer of the oral polio vaccine and distinguished service professor at the University of Cincinnati’s College of Medicine and Children’s Hospital Research Foundation from 1939-1969.

The collection is freely and publicly available via the Albert B. Sabin website at http://sabin.uc.edu/ and includes approximately 35,000 letters and accompanying documents totaling 50,000 pages of correspondence between Sabin and political, cultural, social, and scientific leaders around the world. Also included are nearly 1,000 photographs documenting the events and activities worldwide that were part of Sabin’s crusade to eradicate polio. Continue reading →

What Style is That? = Adventures in the Subway and Street Improvements Digitization Project

By Angela Vanderbilt

3926 Feemster Street, June 17, 1932

The photographs contained in the Subway and Street Improvements collection are a valuable source of information for anyone who might be researching the urban development and built environment of Cincinnati in the period surrounding the turn of the 20^th century. Many of the images in the collection capture buildings and homes in Cincinnati’s downtown district and the surrounding neighborhoods as the city grew and expanded up the hills and along the Ohio River. And because the photographer wrote location and date information on the negatives, anyone interested in finding a picture of the house in which their grandparents or great-grandparents lived in 1923 may very well find it within this collection. Continue reading →

The Albert B. Sabin Digitization Project: Remembering Hilary Koprowski

By Jeff O’Flynn, Sabin Student Assistant

Telegram from Hilary Koprowski to Albert Sabin, indicating he would be unable to attend a polio conference.

Hilary Koprowski is considered by many to be equally important as Salk and Sabin in the quest to eradicate poliomyelitis. When Koprowski passed away last month, his illustrious career was recounted in his obituary and included such notable achievements as the development of a live-virus polio vaccine, improvement of the rabies vaccine, and directorship of the world-renowned Wistar Institute in Pennsylvania. His interest in the live-virus polio vaccine caused his career to overlap with Albert Sabin’s work regularly. The obituary details the competition between Sabin and Koprowski for the eventual triumph of their various polio vaccines.[1] Letters in the Albert B. Sabin archives indicate that the two great scientists often shared material and data though, unfortunately, they did not have an entirely conflict-free relationship. Continue reading →

Philosophical "Ames" of the Archives and Rare Books Library

By Lauren Fink

Thanks to a generous donation from Anthony Graybosch, The Archives and Rare Books Library now has in its holdings a collection of philosophy books from Van Meter Ames’ private library. Van Meter Ames was a faculty member in the UC philosophy department, beginning in 1925, and served as its head from 1959 until 1966 when he retired. Many of the books in this collection have Ames’ annotations, notes, and article clippings in them, as well as correspondence between Ames and fellow philosophers or friends. Continue reading →

Records Update Highlights Ohio Public Records Cases

By: Janice Schulz

A new Records Update is now available on the Records Management Program website. Records Update is released periodically to convey timely information between publications of Records Quarterly. This issue offers “Records in the News” stories found in the media and legislative action taken in March and April.

As reported in the Spring 2013 Records Quarterly article, “Public Records: Your Rights and Responsibilities,” Ohio’s public records laws are dynamic and are continually being tested in Ohio’s courtrooms. Ohio courts decided seven public records cases in March and April and there are currently six open cases in front of the Supreme Court of Ohio. In a case close to home, on April 24 the Supreme Court of Ohio ruled that lease terms and rents between Findlay Market private management company The Corporation for Findlay Market and its tenants are trade secrets and are not open to disclosure under the public records act. In 2010, Kevin P. Luken requested copies of lease agreements from The Corporation for Findlay Market and ultimately from the City of Cincinnati. While he received the agreements, terms and rents were redacted from the released documents and cited as trade secrets. Luken initated a mandamus action against the parties, which resulted in the recent decision.

The Findlay Market decision and more are available through this issue of Records Update.

Records Management, University of Cincinnati

All Skate! = Adventures in the Subway and Street Improvements Digitization Project

By: Angela Vanderbilt

One of the favorite pastimes of children in the 1920s and 1930s was roller skating, which is evident from the many pictures in this collection of kids with the four-wheeled contraptions strapped to their shoes. Invented in 1760 by Belgian Joseph Merlin, roller skates continued to evolve in style, functionality and popularity for the next 170 years, with the version found in our images among the most popular and affordable of the period.

Continue reading →