Today’s Hours:

All Hours & Directions

Terrell Main Library

8am - 12am

Terrell Fourth Floor

8am - 5pm

Circulation Desk

8am - 12am

Research Help Desk

10am - 12pm. 1pm - 5pm

Terrell Research Help Desk-semester evening

7pm - 9pm

Libraries Administrative Office

8:30am - 5pm

Azariah's Cafe

8am - 5pm

Directions:

Location:

Mary Church Terrell Main Library
148 W College St. Oberlin, OH 44074-1545

Parking:

The main visitor lot is the east Service Building lot, and the south row of the Carnegie Building lot for visitors to offices within that building.

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Overview

The town of Oberlin, Ohio and its college were founded in 1833 and named in honor of John Frederick (Jean-Frédéric) Oberlin, a French Lutheran pastor from Strasbourg who served in a remote region called the Ban de la Roche in Alsace, France until his death in 1826.

Oberlin's founders in Ohio, having read a biography of Oberlin published in America in 1830, were inspired to create a new community and institution of higher learning, in what was then a wilderness, for scholars and students who wished to be of service to others and change the world for the better, as J.F. Oberlin had done in Alsace.

Today’s Oberlin College and community are the inheritors of J.F. Oberlin’s belief that an enlightened education is the crucible for social change, a sustainable way of life, and a truly democratic society based on equality and self-sufficiency. This presentation explores John Frederick Oberlin’s life and work through materials in the Oberlin College Archives, and the relationship between the College and its namesake.

Oberlin’s Namesake began as a physical exhibit prepared for a campus visit from a descendant of J.F. Oberlin, Anne Roser-Perru and her husband Didier, in 2009. The electronic exhibit was first designed and published in 2010 using Pachyderm (New Media Consortium). It was redesigned and published in Scalar v.2.1.7 (Alliance for Networking Visual Culture) in 2018. All surrogate images are of objects, artworks, and texts in the Oberlin College Archives unless otherwise noted. For permission to reproduce any images in this presentation, please contact the Oberlin College Archives.

Go to Exhibition