It’s April 23rd, and that means a very Happy Shakespeare Day to everyone!

As part of the celebrations commemorating the 399th anniversary of his death (we thought about putting this off another year but just couldn’t wait), we are very pleased to announce a complete reboot of our digital folios collection. This new collection includes every page from all four Folios of the Bard’s work as well as miscellanea found with the collection, and can be found at http://digital.lib.MiamiOH.edu/folios.

As some of you might recall, our set of folios was first digitized in 2008 and we were among the earliest to make the Shakespeare Folios available in full online. However, given a combination of technical issues and evolving standards & technology, it was decided that all four folios be re-digitized and a new collection launched.

The digitization itself took place this January, when our Graduate Assistant Dana Bogart and I reshot each folio using an Atiz Bookdrive stand with a pair of Nikon EOS 6D cameras we had just acquired late last year. Each folio was completed in a single session of approximately 3-4 hours.

Some were easier than others, with the First Folio being particularly difficult to capture due to the tightness of the binding. Our copy of the First Folio also has had some missing pages supplied in facsimile, most notably the entirety of Twelfth Night. These replacements run much closer to the inner margin making it very difficult to get a good shot. Another interesting and unique aspect of our particular set of folios is the handwritten notes found in some of them, particularly the Second Folio which features in some plays a meticulous comparison to the First Folio.

In addition to the folios themselves, some clippings about these particular copies of the folios (as well as others for comparison) are included as part of the collection. These were a much simpler scanning prospect using a regular desktop flatbed scanner. Once the photos were taken, I cropped and organized the images into individual plays to be added to the digital collection.

In addition to images with better technology, relaunching the collection has allowed us to move it fully into our current CONTENTdm 6 instance, which includes a more easily navigable interface, allowing the user to zoom in and navigate around each page within the viewport on the page. A “Page-Flip View” is also included as part of CONTENTdm, which simulates the effect of holding the book open and turning the pages.

With the help of the clippings found with the folios, our own department records, and the 2003 census of First Folios by Anthony James West, I was able to gather some information about the provenance of these particular copies. According to West’s The Shakespeare First Folio: A New Worldwide Census of First Folios, our First Folio was first sold by the bookseller Henry George Bohn to Chandos Leigh (1791-185), who passed it down to his son William Henry Leigh (1824-1850). The so-called ‘Lord Leigh set’ of Folios was sold to Frederick S. Peck by Gabriel Wells in 1927. It was then purchased by Dr. O. O. Fisher in 1947. Fisher was a Miami University alumnus (Class of ’09) and avid book collector, who donated all four folios to Miami University. All but our Third Folio come from the Lord Leigh set and include the bookplates of Leigh and Peck. Our Third Folio holds the bookplate of John Gribbel. It is interesting to note that, according to West’s census, a First Folio with the Gribbel bookplate was also sold in 1947.

The works of William Shakespeare are among the most (if they are not the most) famous, influential, and beautiful works of the English language, and even the folios themselves represent a unique point in history. The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare writes:

The folio as a format was reserved for only the most expensive and prestigious volumes by the leading theologians, philosophers and historians of the day. A folio devoted to plays was unprecedented. The printing of the 907-page First Folio began early in 1622 and took nearly two years to complete…The first folio was so successful and demand apparently so great that a second edition was required within less than a decade. The Second Folio was a carefully corrected page-for-page reprint of the first that made hundreds of minor changes in the text, the majority of which have been accepted by modern editors.

The First Folio of Shakespeare’s works is one of only five books to have ever been recorded in a worldwide census (interestingly, we have another one of the five in our collection: Audubon’s Birds of America). But though the First Folio is the most famous and prized of the four, the Third Folio is arguably the rarest – it is said that most unsold copies were destroyed during the Great Fire of London in 1666. Regardless, all four are incredible works of art and we are truly privileged here at Miami to have them. It has been a pleasure and honor to work with them.

Happy browsing.

Marcus Ladd
Special Collections Digital Librarian

I would like to introduce a new collection to the Walter Havighurst Special Collection at Miami University: The Lee and Rosemary Fisher Papers.  The collection was donated by Lee and Rosemary on August 22, 2014.  Both Lee (’68) and Rosemary (’69) are Miami graduates and  a Miami Merger in 1970.

After graduating from Miami Lee served in the military.  He was stationed in Vietnam from 1969 to 1970 with the Army’s 101st Airborne Division.  The bulk of the collection are letters during this time written to, and from, Rosemary.  Rosemary worked as a teacher.

After serving in the Army and prior to retiring in 2002, Lee held a number of managerial positions in corporate accounting and finance for a large transportation concern.  Prior to his retirement, he also held a Series 7 NASD designation and worked as a Personal Financial Analyst for Citigroup, an international financial services provider.

Lee retired to central West Virginia (Braxton County) where he and his wife, Rosemary, a retired educator, had a small farm since the mid-seventies.  Lee and his wife served on Boards of a number of Braxton County non-profit organizations.  This included Lee’s serving as the President of the Braxton County Rotary.  As a Vietnam veteran, Lee also served in a number of veteran service organizations in West Virginia.  He and his wife, Rosemary, were also school volunteers at Little Birch Elementary School in Little Birch, WV for a number of years.

At the state level, Lee served on the West Virginia Board of Accountancy (2006-2013, President 2011-12), and the West Virginia Broadband Deployment Council (2005-2013, Grant Committee Chair 2011-13).  Lee also served as Treasurer of the Board and Executive Committee of TechConnectWV, a 501 (C3) organization that is dedicated to promoting technology based economic development in West Virginia.

In 2008, Lee was nominated and selected to receive the prestigious West Virginia Governor’s Service Award for his commitment to bringing broadband coverage to the communities throughout central West Virginia through his leadership in the Gilmer/Braxton Research Institute.

Lee and his wife relocated to their native state of Ohio in 2013.  They reside at the Knolls of Oxford, a continuing care retirement community, in Oxford, Ohio.  They are active members of the Oxford Rotary Club and of the Oxford Presbyterian Church.

This collection is mainly comprised of letters written between Lee and Rosemary Fisher (née Holoviak) between 1969 and 1970, while Lee was serving in Vietnam with the 101^st Airborne Division.  Early 1968 correspondence between Lee and Rosemary originates from a European trip Lee took to visit a former Miami friend, Frank Castle, who was in the US Army and stationed in Berlin, West Germany at the time.  Correspondence between Lee and Rosemary then shifts for the remainder of 1968 to a period when Lee was a Management Trainee on the Penn Central Railroad’s Management Training Program.  There are also a few items from after Lee’s return from Vietnam.  Included in the letters are also newspaper clippings, poetry, greeting cards and photographs.  During his time in Vietnam, there are also letters written to and from Lee’s friends and family.  The collection also includes writing by Lee as well as miscellaneous items such as magazines, programs and Vietnam related audio tapes.

Here are a few items from the collection:

Please stop in to take a closer look at this wonderful new collection, or check out our finding aid below for more information about the collection.

Lee and Rosemary Fisher Papers Finding Aid

Johnathan Cooper

Each year in Special Collections we do a minimum of three large-scale exhibits as well as numerous smaller (single case) exhibits. These exhibits are used for a variety of outreach purposes, from working with graduate students, faculty, and alumni to showcasing special collections materials and drawing in students, classes, and the wider university community.

While the Special Collections exhibits are an integral part of our mission, exhibiting materials can be quite damaging if not done properly. It is my responsibility as the Preservation Librarian to ensure the materials are exhibited safely. This includes using existing cradles and creating custom cradles and supports to protect the books and their bindings from undue stress. I have already shared some of our techniques for safely installing exhibits, both here and here. However, we in preservation are constantly striving to increase our knowledge and awareness of preservation best practices. As such, I had a chance to attend the Don’t Rock the Cradle Symposium last week in Washington DC. Held at the Folger Shakespeare Library, the three-day symposium focused on book cradles and book supports for exhibition.

The symposium was excellently organized and presented. Attendees heard presentations from the functional requirements of book supports, on-site construction of custom exhibit mounts, and the aesthetics of book cradles to creating cradles for miniature books, exhibiting bound Japanese books, and using magnets for mounting and exhibit purposes. I was introduced to a wealth of materials and techniques for creating and installing book supports including the use of museum board, acrylic, and magnets to custom make supports, as well as a comprehensive overview of commercially available cradles along with their pros and cons.

Topics such as measuring books for cradles, the best presentation angle and opening angle for both preservation and display, and how to properly support the entire book through strapping and the use of foam inserts were covered extensively.

Also helpful to me were the presentations covering exhibit planning and preparation. Techniques for working with curators on the selection of materials and exhibit case layout as well as creating workflow timelines were covered in detail.

Attendees also had the chance to view and handle an extensive collection of exhibit cradles, both commercially available and custom made by participants.

Overall, this symposium was extremely useful to me in my position as Preservation Librarian and I am excited to share what I’ve learned and apply my newfound knowledge and inspiration to our exhibits here in Special Collections.

Ashley Jones
Preservation Librarian

Tuesday March 17^th was not only a day dedicated to St. Patrick, but at the Walter Havighurst Special Collections and Archives, it was a day to celebrate scholars and their research. Special Collections and Archives held a public reception celebrating their spring exhibit and honoring two particular individuals: published historian Jack White and History graduate student Katie Wright.

Kicking off the event, Dean Jerome Conley gave a special announcement in honor of Jack White. He dedicated the Special Collections’ exhibit room to Jack and his mother, naming it the Christine S. White and John H. White, Jr. Exhibit Gallery. Jack requested his mother be included in the dedication because she insisted that he continue his education following high school. Since then, Jack has been a lifelong learner. Jack’s amazing life journey as a historian brought him back to Miami University, where it all began for him. He has published several books and articles, primarily focusing on travel and regional history. His extensive use of the collections, and the Covington Collections in particular, previously earned him the title of Special Collections’ Distinguished Scholar. Jack is a great scholar, wonderful individual, and enthusiastic proponent of the historical significances within the department’s collections.

Jack and his family.

Following the dedication of the exhibit room, Katie gave a presentation on her process of completing the Special Collections’ spring exhibit, The Ready Ones: American Children, World War II, and Propaganda. Katie, a second year graduate student from Miami University’s history department, used the Special Collections’ exhibit space and materials for her thesis project. Dedicating over a year’s worth of research, she collected personal stories and mementoes from local residents on their experiences growing up during World War II. Her compassion for others was evident in the presentation she gave at the reception. She confessed to the crowd that this project was a “labor of love.” “This exhibit,” she said, “does not belong to me.” She professed her gratitude for the individuals who told their stories to her and to Special Collections for their extensive collection of books and posters from the era.

After the dedications and presentations, the crowd walked around the exhibit, chatting with others and taking in the images on display. Overall, Tuesday was an evening for colleagues, families, and friends to gather and appreciate the work done by dedicated scholars, and the diverse research opportunities Special Collections and Archives provides the community.

Dana Bogart

Graduate Student

Update: Class of 1958 alumnus honors mother’s legacy with bequest to Miami University Libraries

One of the pleasures of working in Special Collections is having the opportunity to meet individuals who share our passion for libraries, history, literature, the book and other forms of the written record, and the sheer joy that research and discovery can bring.

Sometimes those people are faculty members, or researchers from out of town, or donors of beloved books or papers. Sometimes they’re students, encountering these joys for the first time. Looking in their eyes, you see the familiar gleam of excitement.

Once in a great while it’s someone who fits all of those categories. Such an individual is John H. (Jack) White, Jr.

Originally from Cincinnati, Jack attended Miami when the library was the Alumni Library (now Alumni Hall), and there was no Special Collections department. But his history professor, W.E. Smith, and Ned King, the Librarian, shared a special treasure with him: the Covington Collection, full of wonderful early books on the Old Northwest Territory, and off-limits to most students. Apparently they saw the future historian in Jack, and he has never forgotten the thrill of delving into those volumes, now one of the mainstay collections in the Walter Havighurst Special Collections.

Jack graduated from Miami in 1958 with a degree in European history and obtained a job at the Smithsonian Institute, where he found himself curating transportation artifacts and materials. His love of history, combined with a knowledge of machinery and a fascination with the details of transportation, led to his nationally-acknowledged expertise and the authorship of a number of books and articles about railroads, steamboats, and the human drive to travel farther, faster, cheaper and more comfortably. His many awards include an honorary doctorate awarded by Miami in 1996. Later this month he travels to St. Louis, where he will receive the Captain Donald T. Wright Award for his distinguished contributions to river-related literature from the Herman T. Pott National Inland Waterways Library.

When Jack retired from the Smithsonian in 1990 he chose to live in Oxford. Returning as an adjunct professor in the History Department at Miami, he also began a long relationship with Special Collections. That relationship has been marked by Jack’s continual generosity, including the establishment of an endowment to honor Janet Stuckey on her retirement in 2011 (the Stuckey Fund) , and most recently through the establishment of a very generous bequest to Special Collections.

But Jack’s support of Special Collections has gone far beyond his financial gifts, as appreciated and as important as those are. Jack has been a constant and vocal supporter of Special Collections at the university and in the community. He has beat bushes for us. He has drummed up interest. He has sounded our trumpets.

It seems only right that we recognize him and forever connect him with Special Collections.

On Tuesday, March 17, we will celebrate our spring exhibit, The Ready Ones, with a reception from 4 to 6 p.m. At the beginning of that program Dean Jerome Conley will name the Special Collections exhibit gallery in honor of Jack and (at his request) his mother, Christine S. White. It was she who insisted he attend Miami, he says. Without her he wouldn’t have had the remarkable life he has. And we wouldn’t have Jack in our lives.

We hope you’ll join us in recognizing Jack’s many contributions to Special Collections, as well as his mother’s gift of her son to Miami, the Smithsonian, the history of transportation, and us.

It just wouldn’t be as much fun without you, Jack.

Elizabeth Brice
Assistant Dean for Technical Services & Special Collections

This Spring I had the opportunity as a graduate student to curate the exhibit, The Ready Ones: American Children, World War II, and Propaganda for my master’s thesis project. It will be on display from January 25th until May 16th. There will be a public reception on March 17th at 4 pm.

This began as an idea for a class assignment. After viewing the materials in Special Collections and hearing stories from community members, it became my thesis. The exhibit tells the history of World War II and the lasting affect of propaganda on children through objects from the past and the memories of participants like Don Kallander. “As a twelve or thirteen-year old kid it seemed like you were really doing something, [even though] sometimes it did not feel like very much,” remembers Don. Thousands of children like Don did their patriotic duty by collecting scrap metal, saving their dimes to buy war bonds, and doing whatever was “necessary” for the war effort.

Motivated by propaganda, boys and girls also contributed thousands of hours and tons of material for ammunition, bombs, and military vehicles. “There wasn’t a question at that time about the fact that it was necessary, whatever that was,” says Ruthie Kallander. Propaganda flickered across movie screens and hummed over the radio. Schools adopted its values and taught their students that good citizens did whatever they could for the war effort. Parents read books that told their sons and daughters to buy war bonds and hate the enemy. Children absorbed it, but remained unaware of its influence. “Any child who went through that period it is a part of their personality,” says Barbra Wright Reed, “the hard work, the chores, and feeling part of a larger thing; a part of the country.” Children’s memories and their wartime actions show the power of propaganda’s messages and its affect on their lives. “We were not perfect,” says Barbra, “we were all victims of propaganda.”

Katherine Wills-Wright
Graduate Student