It’s hard to believe it has been a year since our “Great Reading Room Renovation of 2013” (try saying that 5 times fast!), but it has! We were pretty busy last summer with moving things around, and this summer we’re still busy, just in a different way!
On July 18, we celebrated our 5th Annual Living Legends of the Dayton Daily News Archive event. A huge crowd came out to listen to Dale Huffman, and we had a great evening listening to his stories up here on the fourth floor of Dunbar Library.
Dale Huffman telling stories during his presentation “From the Heart,” July 18, 2014
This year’s Living Legends lecture also celebrated the grand opening of the Dayton Daily News Archive to researchers, as well as the donation of Dale Huffman’s papers to Special Collections & Archives. In fact, Mr. Huffman visited us here in the Archives on July 9th to get the “lay of the land” prior to his presentation and also to see where his personal papers will be housed.
Dale Huffman, seated right, with Special Collections & Archives staff, July 9, 2014.
On July 21, we hosted a group of Dayton Public Schools freshmen from the Summer Bridge Dayton program. Dr. Herbert Martin was kind enough to come and give his interpretive performance of Paul Laurence Dunbar’s poetry for the students. (He was just as great as we remember! Dr. Martin gave another presentation here in February 2012.)
Dr. Herbert Martin performs for Summer Bridge Dayton students, July 21, 2014
Following Dr. Martin’s presentation, students also toured Special Collections & Archives, including original materials from our aviation, local history, and Wright Brothers Collections.
On July 28, we hosted one of Ohio History Connection’s “History to Go” vans. Several dozen children from the WSU STEMM camps attended and participated in various hands-on history activities. One of the classes even came back on July 31 and had a picture taken with the Orville & Wilbur life-size cut-outs in our reading room!
Dawne Dewey leads children in a History to Go activity, July 28, 2014
Also this month, we gave tours for a local chapter of the League of World War I Aviation Historians, as well as the Altrusa Club of Dayton (whose records we have: view MS-391 PDF finding aid).
League of WWI Aviation Historians tour, July 2014
Altrusa Club of Dayton tour, July 2014
In addition to many outreach activities, we’ve got collections news as well: You can see our latest list of new and updated collections from July here on the blog.
In digital projects news:
- Additions to the Ladley Civil War letters (1862 and part of 1863) are now online in CORE Scholar.
- The online early issues of The Guardian student newspaper now go up to October 1982!
- Digitization of selections from the Fred Marshall Papers (MS-53), including his World War I photographs, is now underway. (As you know, the WWI centennial is upon us, and we’ll be sharing lots of WWI-related materials over the next several years!)
Just a few more weeks of summer now. We shall see what they hold!