Feb. 15, 2006

Gated Treasures

First of all, it's not a cage.

The gate that divides the archives from the rest of the second floor of Beeghly Library is not there to keep students out -- or as a minister once joked, to keep the librarians in.

The archives are gated, Carol Holliger said, to ensure that materials inside are preserved forever.

But visitors are welcome.

"We want people to come in," she said.

To demonstrate their hospitality, Holliger, archivist of the Archives of Ohio United Methodism, and her colleagues, rare books librarian Hilda Wick and Kay Schlichting, curator of the OWU historical collection, invited students to tour the archives during two afternoons last week.

"We had a number of students last semester who actually came to that cage door and said '''What's in here?'" Holliger said. To satisfy that curiosity, some of the more exciting items in the archives were brought out and exhibited, as they are during alumni weekends and other special occasions.

One student, freshman Brian Riecke, presented himself at the cage door at 2 p.m. on Feb. 8. Although Riecke was the only student to turn up for that hour's program, he received a cheerful, unabridged tour of the archives, accompanied by archives student aide Ian Stringer.

Riecke, who lives in Denver, said he'd been curious about the archives since his first day on campus, when he saw "the cage, I guess" while wandering around campus.

"How many chances do you have to see something that's this old?" Riecke said, referring to the items in the rare books collection.

How old? Try 600 years. Among the archives' most treasured objects — Wick called it "the jewel" — is an antiphonal, a large medieval choir book whose 275 leaves include illustrations with vivid blues and oranges typical, Wick said, of 15^th-century Bologna.

About 200 animal skins were used to make the parchment leaves of the book, which was completed in about six months.

Also on display was a tiny book, almost small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. Wick called it a "nun's book," and noted that its pages were the "finest parchment," probably made from an unborn or a very young animal. "You can see through it," she said. Wick, whose thorough understanding of her subject was matched only by her enthusiasm for it, showed other examples in the collection:

• Cuneiform, a small, wedge-shaped piece on which a prayer had been inscribed in mud, then baked
  
  
• A King James Bible, a second printing of the first edition, which corrects a mistake. In the first printing, a line from the book of Ruth read "He went down into the city." The correct line is "She went down into the city." The second printing was correct and that Bible is known as the "She Bible."
  
  
• A pamphlet written by Martin Luther in 1522 "against Henry VIII, King of England."
  
  (Wick paused in her presentation, looked at the clock and then at her waiting colleagues.
  
  "I'll never make it!" she said.
  
  "You have five more minutes and I'm going to ring the bell," Holliger joked.)
  
  
• A book owned and inscribed by Elizabeth Barrett Browning.
  
  "She and her husband wrote in their books," Wick said. "They wrote their names; they wrote comments."
  
  
• Hundreds of photographs of Walt Whitman, as well as a first edition of Leaves of Grass. Whitman wrote at least three favorable reviews of his own book, Wick told her small audience.
  
  OWU's Whitman collection is renowned, Holliger noted. "People from all over the country contact Hilda for permission to publish," she said.
  
• Sanskrit written on palm leaves.

Holliger, as archivist of the Archives of Ohio United Methodism, handles what she called a "tremendous collection" of manuscripts, diaries, minutes, and church trustee and district meeting notes. The material exists mostly for Ohio church historians, Holliger said. The archives also serve as a repository for church baptismal and other records when churches cease to exist.

"And churches die," Holliger said.

Schlichting, whose bailiwick includes all things Ohio Wesleyan, pointed out shelves of issues of the Transcript, archived since the student newspaper began in 1867, a complete set of yearbooks and, in acid-free boxes, scrapbooks compiled by OWU students.

Among the most valuable pieces of the OWU collection, Schlichting said, are the student cards, kept from 1842 until 1967, when the system was computerized. The cards note when each student entered school, courses taken, addresses, occupation, degrees earned elsewhere and, sometimes, date of death. Cards exist even for students who didn't graduate, and for those who attended the preparatory school, which closed in 1916.

Also in the OWU collection: Course catalogs, student directories, publications by faculty, alumni and others, and folders of information under the headings "buildings," "subject" and "people." The "subject" folder includes the freshman beanie, which in another era Riecke would have been wearing.

The "people" folder comes out, Schlichting said, "when alumni get to be famous."

Or, Wick put in, when they get to be infamous. Axis Sally, for instance, attended OWU some years before she was convicted for treason for her Radio Berlin broadcasts during World War II. She was Mildred Gillars then, a theater major who graduated from high school in Conneaut, Ohio.

Stringer, a math/physics major who works about 10 hours a week in the library, said he enjoys the challenges of research.

"I look forward to work pretty much more than any other part of my day," he said. Answering inquiries is like solving a puzzle, he said; it's satisfying to find the piece that completes the picture.

"It's fun," Schlichting agreed.

Riecke said he enjoyed his personal tour, particularly the cuneiforms and "the social stuff."

"I've been wanting to take a peek in there ever since I got here," he said.

-- Margo Bartlett