By September, the fall semester is in full swing. Most of our staff members teach Public History courses as well as attending to their duties in Special Collections & Archives. Here’s what SC&A staff members are teaching this semester:
- Dawne Dewey is teaching Introduction to Public History (HST 7500) and Local History (HST 7700);
- John Armstrong and Chris Wydman are team-teaching Introduction to Archives (HST 7600);
- Gino Pasi is teaching Historic Site Interpretation (HST 7820); and
- Chris Wydman supervised a weekend field study trip to Columbus.
On September 5, a welcome party for new and returning Public History students and instructors was held at Rockafield House.
On September 6, Dawne and several Public History students represented Special Collections & Archives at the Great Wright Brothers Aero Carnival.

Public History students staffing our table at the Great Wright Brothers Aero Carnival while visitors check out our exhibit, Sept. 6, 2014
(You can see additional photos from the Aero Carnival in our Facebook album.)
And speaking of Facebook…September 6 was also our one-year Facebook anniversary! We first published our Special Collections & Archives Facebook page on September 6, 2013. As of September 30, 2014, we’ve had 205 fans “like” our page, and we have reached over 50,000 people with Facebook.
If you are one of our Facebook fans, THANK YOU for following us! (If you are not, please take a moment to check out our Facebook page and consider liking it.) You might also be interested in our Twitter feed @WrightStArchive.
On September 25, historian David McCullough visited Special Collections & Archives to conduct research on the Wright Brothers for his upcoming book, Sky High.

SCA staff members with David McCullough, L-R: Toni Vanden Bos, John Armstrong, David McCullough, Dawne Dewey, Lisa Rickey, Gino Pasi, 25 Sept. 2014.
Also in September:
- We announced recently digitized materials in the Aircraft Photo Gallery and Alumni Newsletters collection on CORE Scholar.
- We continued seeking Wright Factory Families.
- Gino Pasi gave a tour of our collections & services to an upper level history class, and John Armstrong gave a similar tour to a UH 1010 class.
- Dawne Dewey gave presentations to members of Graceworks and to the Otterbein University Women’s Club of Dayton.
And in our August news post, with all the other goings-on, we missed one bit of that month’s news: Archivist John Armstrong received one of the University Libraries’ Staff Achievement & Recognition (StAR) awards. Congratulations & great job, John! (Read more about the StAR awards & see a photo of John with his award on the University Libraries’ Dunbar Wire blog.)