Located on the third floor of King Library is the Walter Havighurst Special Collections library, home to anything from historical documents, sheet music, rare books and photography, to a lock of Abraham Lincoln’s hair.
“We have the gamut, so we really help everybody across campus,” said Jacqueline Johnson, an archivist with the special collections department.
The archives are available for professors to access so that many primary source documents can be brought into the classroom for students. Thanks to the digitization efforts of people like Alia Levar Wegner, Miami’s digital collections librarian, the university is able to produce roughly 30,000 images every year for digital access, with viewers located all over the world.
“We have around 40,000 users of our digital collections a month,” Levar Wegner said. “Our digital collections have more use, more hits than even our library homepage.”
The collection’s particularly rare pieces draw an audience from those outside the Miami University community according to Levar Wegner.
While Shakespeare folios, collections of the playwright’s work, may be somewhat common, more recently printed works, such as two sets of children’s literature printed in Japan’s internment camps during World War I, have a higher value as the only editions in the United States.
While student-curated exhibitions often feature themes of sexuality and race, the librarians maintain an archive of over 14,000 physical pieces across a wide range of topics, each meticulously cleaned, repaired and preserved.
Eric Harrelson, preservation and conservation librarian, works to maintain the collection, battling the wear and tear of items in the collection.
“It is really important to maintain that primary source material as accessible for researchers,” Harrelson said. “... I try to ensure that we can maintain access, maintain the ability for researchers to use the material and to access the material that is old.”
froschse@miamioh.edu
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