The Ohio Electronic Records Committee

By Janice Schulz

The Ohio Electronic Records Committee (OhioERC) is a statewide group of records managers, archivists, legal professionals, and information technology professionals devoted to providing guidance for the management of electronic records in Ohio’s state agencies. There are currently twenty members, including representatives from state, county, and local government and Ohio’s public universities. University of Cincinnati Records Manager Janice Schulz has served on the OhioERC since 2006 and was elected as Secretary in 2008. Continue reading →

University Architect Records

By Janice Schulz

The Archives & Rare Books Library has numerous collections from the Office of the University Architect with records of capital construction, renovation, and special projects dating from 1944 to 2003. The University Architect oversees all aspects of UC’s physical space, and manages the divisions of Planning+Design+Construction, Renovations, Special Projects, Real Estate, Sustainability, Environmental Graphics, and Space Management. The records in our collections document dealings with architects, construction companies, utilities, regulators, and internal planning committees. Included are copies of contracts, proposals, correspondence, meeting minutes, working designs, plans, specifications and drawings, photographs, test and inspection reports, and status reports. Continue reading →

An Alma Mater Moment

By Kevin Grace

Over the years, I’ve gathered a fair amount of UC ephemera from garage sales, flea markets, estate sales, and Ebay, and eventually I’ll end up giving it to the University Archives. In the meantime, it’s always a nice little surprise when I dig around in my basement boxes and find these odds and ends. The postcard shown here is of the original University Building, constructed on Charles McMicken’s property in 1875. That property had been bequeathed to the City of Cincinnati in McMicken’s will when he died in 1858, and after litigation and the Civil War, the city was ready to create a university. UC initially held classes in the old Woodward High School building in Over-the-Rhine. With the erection of a permanent building, the university moved to the hillside below present day Clifton Avenue as it winds its way downtown. Continue reading →

Summer 2011 Records Quarterly Now Available

By Janice Schulz

The Summer 2011 edition of Records Quarterly, the newsletter of University of Cincinnati Records Management, is now available on the records management website at http://www.libraries.uc.edu/libraries/arb/records_management/recordsquarterly.html. This issue features articles about managing databases as records, making electronic documents searchable and protected information. Also included is information about the recent Ohio budget bill’s impact on public records laws.

Records Quarterly is distributed electronically via the Records Management website. Subscribers to the Records Management Listserv will receive notification of new issues automatically. You can sign up for the listserv by going to the subscription page, or by sending an email to Janice.Schulz@uc.edu. Please include your name and email address and use “listserv sign-up” in the subject line.

A Matter of Time

Robert S. Marx

By Lauren Fink

The Archives and Rare Books Library was recently delivered a copper box that looked like it had been through a fire. The box, actually a time capsule from 1963, was found on the top shelf of a safe in the College of Law. Curious faculty members then inquired about opening it and were granted permission. The contents were revealed and, regardless of what the time capsule has gone through, all are in excellent condition.

Many of the contents of the 1963 College of Law time capsule commemorate the contributions and achievements of Robert S. Marx (1889-1960). Marx graduated from the University Of Cincinnati College Of Law, where he later became a member of the faculty. While attending the university, Marx was a football captain in 1908 and a member of the wrestling and debate teams. Later, as a professor and a well-respected judge, he created courses and established a lecture and seminar series that helped advance justice education and the College of Law as a whole. Continue reading →

Zen in the Archives and Rare Books Library: John Cage and the Van Meter Ames Papers

By Lauren Fink

Van Meter Ames (left) with John Cage.

A new collection, documenting the friendship between composer John Cage and UC professor Van Meter Ames, has just been added to the Van Meter Ames Papers in the University of Cincinnati Archives and Rare Books 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. Ames was a Rockefeller grantee, a fellow of the UC graduate school, and a Fulbright research professor in philosophy, University of Komozawa, Tokyo, 1958-59. Throughout his career, Ames wrote and published on a vast range of topics including aesthetics, the self, ethics, religion, science, freedom, existentialism, and Eastern philosophy. His interest in Zen paralleled Cage’s and solidified their mutual respect for one another, which is evidenced in this collection of documents.

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Oral History Project documents Cincinnati's African American Community

By Suzanne Maggard

In the Archives and Rare Books Library, we help students, faculty, and even outside researchers with their projects, so it is always exciting when we are able to reap the benefits of great student projects of the past. One such project is a collection of oral histories organized by Eleanor Smith, a professor in the Afro-American Studies Department (now the Department of Africana Studies) at UC. Smith was inspired to direct this project after encountering a lack of information on black Cincinnatians in the area’s libraries and archives. She designed an oral history class to change that and in 1975 and 1976, Smith’s students conducted interviews with 23 African-Americans in Cincinnati from a variety of backgrounds. The oral histories that resulted from this project provide a unique view of African American life in Cincinnati in the early and mid-20^th century and shed light on the experiences of African Americans in a city where segregation may not have always been in writing, but was certainly the norm. Those who were interviewed saw the importance of passing on their stories to the next generation. Although equal rights were still being sought in the mid-1970s and are still a struggle today, leaps and bounds were made in the lifetimes of many of these men and women and their stories taught the student interviewers important lessons.

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Updated Finding Aids Lists on ARB's website

By Suzanne Maggard

Did you know that the Archives and Rare Books Library holds thousands of linear feet of archival material? ARB has material relating to Urban Studies, German-Americana, University Archives and local government records including things like UC Board of Trustees minutes, wills for Hamilton County, Ohio, photographs of Cincinnati’s never completed subway, theater programs, labor newspapers, sheet music and much, much more. We are constantly in the process of organizing these materials and creating finding aids to help you locate them. We’ve recently updated the finding aids lists on our website to show you even more of what we have. We’ve also added links to our finding aids available through the OhioLINK Finding Aid Repository. Take a look and see if there is anything that interests you. For more information, call the Archives and Rare Books Library at 513-556-1959 or send an email to archives@ucmail.uc.edu.

Raymond Walters Redux

By Kevin Grace

Former University of Cincinnati president Raymond Walters (1932-1955) has been on our minds recently because of UC naming changes. In June, the Board of Trustees voted to change the name of its branch campus, Raymond Walters College, to UC-Blue Ash in order to bring consistency to university branding and degree programs (UC-Clermont is the other branch campus). However, as the university moves into a new era of semesters, admissions requirements, and academic challenges, its history isn’t forgotten as the Blue Ash campus will rename one of its major buildings to maintain its recognition of Walters.

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An Early Visit from President Williams

By Janice Schulz

While processing a new collection last week, I stumbled upon a flyer announcing that someone now very familiar to us was a guest speaker during African American History month in 1995 – our own President Gregory Williams. Then the dean of Ohio State University’s law school, President Williams came to UC on February 28 to talk about his autobiography, Life on the Color Line: The True Story of a White Boy who Discovered he was Black, and to do a book signing. The book was newly published at the time and it even landed President Williams on Oprah the week before his UC visit. Langsam, UC-Clermont and UC-Blue Ash Libraries all have copies of the book cataloged as KF373.W474 A3.