Miami Treasure

By Don't forget your rubber gloves | March 26, 2009

Lauren MischelMs. Manners would tell you reading someone else's diary is a faux pas. Miami University special collections librarian Betsy Butler and staff would tell Ms. Manners to get a life. Found on the third floor of Miami's weekday social scene, King Library holds some of the greatest treasures on campus in the Walter Havighurst Special Collections."These are the most interesting documents that the university has," Butler said. "I guess treasures is a good word for it. The rare books and manuscripts we have here are one of a kind ... we have a really great collection here."Miami's collection includes more than 65,000 volumes from all over the globe. The collection includes one-of-a-kind items, rare books, diaries, limited edition printings and books with unique physical aspects. Butler said the special collections' section has books with unique bindings and illustrations.Some of the more rare items include first editions by Willa Cather, Charles Dickens, William Faulkner, William Shakespeare and Mark Twain.The special collections department is also home to the King collection, which contains more than 10,000 children's books printed from the 17th century through the early 1900s, and the Andre de Saint-Rat Collection of volumes on 18th and 19th century Russian history, literature and art. These collections attract visitors from English courses to Russian courses to architecture courses- discovering printmaking and bookbinding. Don't forget your rubber glovesThe entire collection is a closed-stack collection- ensuring safety from late night library rendezvous- as well as allowing for proper care of the collection. However, the collection is searchable on the library Web site. After finding a book, manuscript or diary, searchers simply need to bring the call number to the special collections reading room. A staff member will then retrieve the book and let the student use the book for as long as the collection daily hours allow. For extremely precious or fragile books, students are asked to handle the book carefully- while wearing rubber gloves. Students aren't allowed to remove the book from the collection."It really is a hands-on museum," Butler said. "It is so interesting to handle a primary resource and learn what it was like at that time from someone who was there." Butler has been with Miami since May 2006. Before coming to Miami, Butler worked at the Ohio Historical Society processing manuscripts, similar to what she does at Miami. It was something she had always been interested in doing."My goal in becoming a librarian was too work at a college," Butler said, "and with my background in history I had always been interested in old books ... when I went to librarian school, I discovered the archive track." As a history major, Butler was told time and time again to find primary sources. Since Butler works with primary sources everyday, she said she now understands what her professors were saying."You learn a lot more with a primary source than you would reading a book," Butler said. "It is neat to think that you are handling an item that very few people have. Whether it's the diary of a Civil War soldier who was a Miami alumnus or that of a 21-year-old woman fro mTipp City in 1892, it's all one big story waiting to unfold."Mystery's only three floors upFrom first-years to seniors, the third floor of King remains uncharted territory. When asked if they knew what was on the third floor of King, both first-years Alexa Batterman and Brianna Bolt said sheepishly "quiet study?"Senior Andrew Neff used his greater time and experience at Miami to speculate. "Well, my guess would be books, being that we are in a library," Neff said.Most students don't venture beyond King Café or the social circles in the lobby, but if you find yourself climbing the three flights of stairs you could end up in 1840. Last semester Miami University first-year Erin Stigers visited the third floor with her Education 190 class. "Not until we went up and he (my professor) showed me all the things that they had up there did I really know what it was about," Stigers said. Soon after, Stigers said she found herself transcribing letters from 1840 to a man named Vesalius Hor and became so interested that she has since begun to map his family tree. Hor was a Miami University graduate. He became an attorney and served in the Civil War. "I don't usually have an overwhelming urge to go look something up," Stigers said. "It's more than just historical books ... you aren't just picking up a book on the lower floor. You are learning something that hasn't been looked at since the first time it was read." Stiger and 25 other Miami education students got involved in a Special Collections program called "Whispers in the Words," which was developed by Butler and Thomas Kopp, a professor in teacher education."In Dr. Kopp's words, the program's goal is to develop learned appreciation for working with historic documents," Butler said. The program is a step-by-step process that allows students to work on transcribing materials for the collection that no one else possesses as well as recreating 19th century letters by relying on 1880s penmanship manuals for guidance. The students transcribed materials such as the diary of a Civil War soldier to letters written between teenage cousins during the 1860s. In February, first-year Lydia Smith worked on transcribing a letter from 1863 and discovered Abraham Lincoln's fingerprint. "I am very thankful to have been introduced to such a unique and exciting project here at Miami," Stigers said. "Even though I've only been transcribing a series of letters written to one person, I've been quite intrigued and entertained. It's incredible to be able to work with these documents, and even make contributions to Special Collections with my own transcriptions." The beautiful etchings on the glass window of Specials Collections ever so surreptitiously beckon for people to come and explore the past. Special Collections is reminiscent of a quote by its namesake, Walter Havighurst. A quote from Havighurst is etched on a window into Special Collections, "We usually think of a library as a silent place ... But in the silence it is possible to hear a murmur of voices, like the roar of a city from a lofty window ... echoed with the life of many times and places"