The Medieval Best-seller: Part II

If you are around Christian homes or churches this time of year, one image you might be seeing a lot of is the Nativity. But have you ever wondered what a Nativity might have looked like in the Middle Ages? The Books of Hours in the Marian Library’s collection can give us a glimpse into the 500-year-old iconography of Christmas Day. Ever wondered what the Nativity looked like to Medieval eyes? Why is Mary always on the left (... and frequently blond)? And what does Bridget of Sweden have to do with it? Keep reading to find out! Second blog in a series of three on Books of Hours

Mary, Queen of Style: Documenting Catholic Modest Fashion in Special Collections

In postwar America, Catholic teenage girls found themselves at the center of a debate. Everyone, it seemed, had a different opinion about what kind of clothing they should wear. Two modest fashion movements emerged that aimed to solve this problem. Supply the Demand for the Supply (SDS) was a lay initiative founded by teenage girls in the Midwest that quickly spread into a national Catholic youth movement. Meanwhile, the Marilyke Crusade, orchestrated by parish priest Father Bernard Kunkel and the Purity Crusade of Mary Immaculate, promulgated and sold modest clothing based on a particular brand of fear-mongering, Fatima-centric Marian devotion. The two movements, however, shared a similar goal of promoting modest dress for Catholic teenage girls. This article examines the history and activities of Catholic modest fashion groups and explores the extent that documentary evidence for these movements exists in archives and special collections. This presentation reports on conclusions about the underdocumentation of fringe and religious fashion movements and suggests strategies for engaging patrons with these materials

The Medieval Best-seller: Part I

In a recent New York Times article, Tina Jordan explored books and authors that appeared on the best-seller list 25, 50 and 75 years ago. In 1993, there were plenty of familiar names (at least to me) like John Grisham, Stephen King and Anne Rice. Go back in time a little further to 1968, and Charles Portis’ True Grit was topping the charts (Coen brothers’ remake, anyone?). In 1943, Ayn Rand came in at No. 9 with The Fountainhead. First of three blogs by the author about Books of Hours. But have you ever wondered what the best-seller list might have looked like 500 years ago? I’ll give you a hint. There was only one thing on it, but that one thing was the book everyone had to own. Catherine of Cleves had one. Henry the VIII had one. If you were a middle- to upper-class, moderately literate European, you probably had one too. And all the better if yours was fancier than your neighbor’s. If you owned only one book, it was most likely this. There were more of these commissioned, collected, bought, sold, and stolen than any other book including the Bible. Any guesses? It was a Book of Hours and it was the best-seller from 1250 to 1550. Now that’s a long time — approximately 15,600 straight weeks — at the top of the charts, if you ask me

Archival Exhibits as Interdisciplinary Teaching Tools: A Case Study

This case study describes a recent exhibit of archival photographs at the University of Dayton and how it was used as a teaching tool in an undergraduate course. The exhibit, Faith, Reason, and One-Hour Processing, showcased archival photographs from the Marian Library, a special library on campus devoted to the Blessed Virgin Mary. This article outlines how the project was developed in conjunction with a campus-wide theme, Faith and Reason, and used as a teaching tool in an interdisciplinary undergraduate course, Development of Western Culture in a Global Context (ASI 120). This article also suggests the interdisciplinary potential of Catholic archival collections and several ways to leverage archival exhibits, including partnerships for promotion and curricular integration

The Veins that Lighten Dearth: Documenting Hidden Collections in Rural California

This case study discusses an archival consulting project to document and preserve hidden collections in rural northern California. The paper provides an overview of the collecting institution (the Mother Lode Land Trust), the collections and their historical context, and the consulting process. The author highlights processing strategies to improve preservation and description while developing a post-custodial approach to managing collections in a rural, community-based archives setting

Toward Inclusive Description: Reparations through Community-Driven Metadata

This case study covers the process and policies involved in creating accurate and inclusive metadata for a historically marginalized community. The Japanese American Digitization Project was a consortial, collaborative digitization project with the goal of unifying and providing online access to tens of thousands of archival materials documenting the Japanese American experience. Traditionally, the Japanese American experience, particularly the internment during World War II, has been laden with euphemistic language. This article outlines community-driven metadata development, implementing an inclusive controlled vocabulary, and thinking about archival metadata as a process that can contribute to reparations

Review: Images at Work: The Material Culture of Enchantment

Citation information for the book: Morgan, David. Images at Work: The Material Culture of Enchantment. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 2018. ISBN: 978019027211

Polaroids from Heaven: Experiential Learning with Special Collections

This presentation covers an experiential learning collaboration between the Marian Library and the course Alternative Photography at the University of Dayton. Instructors developed a series of hands-on sessions in which students interacted with the Marian Apparitions photograph collection to inform the image-making process

Full of Grace: Little Books Are Big on Beauty, Advice

What was the best-selling book in Christendom from 1250 to 1550? It wasn’t the Bible, but the Book of Hours. Brief compiled by University of Dayton Magazine staff from three informational blogs by the author on the Marian Library website

Image as Evidence: A Citation Analysis of Visual Resources in American History Scholarship, 2010–2014

The author examines the use of visual resources in American history scholarship over a five-year period. The article reports on a citation analysis of 554 images published in two top American history journals from 2010 through 2014. The data collected in this study documents the extent to which images were used in history research and the types of libraries and archival repositories from which historians accessed images. Based on the study data, the article explores characteristics of frequently cited libraries and archival repositories, the capacity in which images function as historical evidence, and implications for libraries based on the findings