Case Western Reserve University News

The Kelvin Smith Library was awarded one of seven Metadata Mini-Grants from the State Library of Ohio to prepare the Cleveland Play House (CPH) Production Photographs Collection (http://hdl.handle.net/2186/ksl:2006052983) for the Ohio Digital Network (ODN) and Digital Public Library of America (DPLA).

In 2011, the Kelvin Smith Library acquired the Archives of the Cleveland Play House. Founded in 1915, the Cleveland Play House is America’s first professional regional theatre. The archives include correspondence, photographs, posters, legal and financial records, design drawings, and audio and videotapes from the founding of the Play House through 2011. Spanning nearly 100 years, the CPH Production Photographs collection, numbering over 6,000 still images, has been digitized and is accessible online. The collection offers an expansive look at the development of regional theater productions from the view of the audience, backstage, and during rehearsals. The grant will be used to ensure the collection meets the ODN and DPLA metadata application profile guidelines.

Depositing the production photographs, and later, other materials from the CPH collection, into DPLA, will give researchers unfettered access to a comprehensive catalog of theatre history, showcasing it alongside similar collections from the New York Public Library, University of Utah, and Tarrant County College. A significant part of Cleveland’s cultural heritage, CPH has long participated in partnerships and collaborations with community organizations. CPH was an early adopter of children’s theater and community-based educational programming and continues to promote and elevate the works of emerging actors and playwrights.  The project is being led by Anne Kumer (Electronic Resources Metadata Librarian, Acquisitions & Metadata Services), Stephanie Becker (Digital Collections Manager, Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship), and Nora Blackman (Archivist, Scholarly Resources & Special Collections).

–Brian Gray, Case Western Reserve University

Oberlin College News

Oberlin College bid farewell to Alexia Hudson-Ward, former Director of Libraries, at the end of September 2020.  Hudson-Ward now holds an Associate Director position with MIT Libraries.  Ken Grossi, Oberlin College Archivist, and Tracy Sutherland, Associate Director and Head of Public Services, currently serve as Co-Interim Directors of the Libraries.  A search for a new Director is getting underway.

–Alison Ricker, Oberlin College

Ohio Library Support Staff Institute News

OLSSI (the Ohio Library Support Staff Institute) will be holding its conference online in 2021.  It will be held Monday July 26 – Friday July 30.  We are planning on having 2 classes each day, Monday through Thursday, and a final class on Friday.

More information as it becomes available.

–Michael Bradshaw, OLSSI Chair Emeritus, Supreme Court of Ohio Law Library

University of Dayton News

Katy Kelly Honored

Katy Kelly, Coordinator of Marketing and Engagement/Associate Professor at the University of Dayton Libraries was selected as one of this year’s honorees of Women of UD. The 2021 theme, “Leading with Character and Resilience,” captures what it means to do our work in the midst of a pandemic, social and political unrest, and economic uncertainty. Katy will be honored in a university-wide virtual ceremony on March 19th.

UD Librarians to Present Poster at ACRL 2021

Kayla Harris, Christina Beis, and Stephanie Shreffler from the University of Dayton will present a poster at ACRL 2021 titled, “Citizen Web Archiving: Empowering Undergraduates to Preserve the Internet.” Through a co-curricular learning experience, a team of librarians and archivists created a self-guided, asynchronous program in order to teach students what web archiving is, why it’s important, the ethics of collecting information on the Internet, and how students can contribute to the historical record by archiving websites they deem important via the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine. 

–Kayla Harris, Procedures Manual Coordinator, University of Dayton