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Mary Church Terrell Main Library
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Libraries’ Winter Term Courses – Teaching and Partnering

February 20, 2023

By Heath Patten

Aimee Lee giving a papermaking demonstration as students are gathered around the table to watch.

Aimee Lee (OC '99) giving a papermaking demonstration

Stories of Indigenous Oberlin meeting, members seated around large table with papers.

“Stories of Indigenous Oberlin'' meeting

Art from Mail Art: The Eternal Network featuring faces smiling and light yellow background.

Art from “Mail Art: The Eternal Network"

Examples of masks and hats from the Theater Department, displayed on a table.

Examples of masks from the Theater Department

It may have been cold outside, but the Libraries were percolating with activities during the 2023 winter term. Continuing the libraries’ mission of collaboration, instruction, and educational programming, this year’s winter term included several courses taught or supported by Libraries staff.

Terrell Library Special Collections and Preservation Librarian Ed Vermue, collaborated with Visiting Artist Bob Kelemen once again to offer the popular letterpress printing course. Students designed and printed projects of their own, and contributed to a creative group project, a beautifully bound book titled Letterpress A-Z: A Dictionary of Sorts. Limited to a run of 209, this book was created and printed in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the letterpress winter term. This year’s participants were also the first to use the newly-obtained vintage Albion Press, typeface, and ornament donated by Dr. Edward Petko of Los Angeles and supported by the Friends of the Libraries (see Perspectives 2022, p. 9). The course fulfilled the practicum requirement for the Book Studies Minor.

The Libraries also sponsored another popular studio course, “Papermaking and Book Art,” which was taught by artist and award-winning author Aimee Lee (OC '99). Using East Asian and European techniques, students processed plant materials to make paper, decorate it, and bind it into books. This year the course included a special focus on historic and contemporary methods of sustainable papermaking and how it began in harmony with the environment in Asia as an extension of responsible agriculture. This course also fulfilled the practicum requirement for the Book Studies Minor.

Using the Theater Department’s archive and examples of its costume shop’s historic period costumes and costume accessories, Heath Calvin Patten, Visual Resources Curator and Supervisor of the Libraries’ Digital Imaging Lab (“DigiLab”) collaborated with Chris Flaharty, Associate Professor of Theater & Costume Designer, and Eric Steggall, Managing Director for Theater, Dance, and Opera, to offer a new practicum in digital archiving. Students were introduced to best practices of digital archiving and learned how to create archival object records with associated metadata. In addition, they learned about different two- and three-dimensional digitizing technologies. Students created both a digital Omeka exhibit and a 3-D virtual reality exhibit to showcase their individual and group projects. This practicum used digital equipment recently purchased with some of Dr. Adam Werner’s (OC ’92) generous gift (see Perspectives 2022, p. 23).

The 2023 winter term project “Stories of Indigenous Oberlin'' centered around a community-based public humanities project on indigeneity and the co-creation of knowledge. The aim was to gather and share Indigenous people’s stories of “survivance” (survival and resilience) in and through Oberlin, involving the campus and community. Co-directed by Muskogee Nation member and Director of Cleveland American Indian Movement Sundance (OC ’92), Professor of Ethnomusicology and Anthropology Jennifer Fraser, and the Libraries’ Academic Engagement & Digital Initiatives Coordinator Megan Mitchell, project participants collected oral histories of residents and alumni, along with current students, faculty, and staff, and drew on archival resources to help tell the story of the college’s long history of engagement with Indigenous people. Students learned oral history methodologies, conducted oral history interviews, worked closely with community members to craft meaningful stories, and learned how to assemble materials for a public audience using digital tools.

Barb Prior, Head of the Clarence Ward Art Library, was also busy at work leading and teaching her winter term group class, “Mail Art: The Eternal Network.”

She introduced students to mail art, an underground global art movement that began in the 1960s and continues today. The participants explored the history of the movement, researched artists in Oberlin’s vast mail art collection, contributed to the collection by writing brief biographies of mail art artists for future researchers, and made their own mail art with an option of joining the Oberlin mail art network or responding to a “call” from mail artists worldwide.

Winter term student research projects also received support and guidance from the Science Library’s librarians as well as the College Archives staff. How about that for heating up a cold January?!