Robert Theodore Meyer was born August 6, 1911, third-generation in a lineage of farmers, in the suburbs of Cleveland, Ohio. He grew up working on the farm milking animals, taking care of the garden, eating cherry tomatoes, and rising well before the sun. Some of Meyer’s earliest memories recall his “one-room red school house”, which Read More

Donations have always been the main way for our rare book collections to grow. Books, manuscripts, pamphlets, and parish histories, donated by generous benefactors over many decades (including such great friends of our Library as Msgr. Arthur Connolly, James Card. Gibbons, Bishop Thomas J. Shahan, to name a few), became the lifeblood of our holdings. These Read More

As the campus quiets down with students departing for the holiday break, our staff is readying the stacks for the season. As this archivist goes about his work, his mind wanders off to all the holiday traditions that he will soon partake in: the food, the decorations, the gift exchanges, the religious services, and more! Read More

Guest blogger, Bianca Farmer, is a CatholicU Library Science student who did a class practicum working with CUA Special Collections. In the Fall semester of 2024, I enrolled in the Archives Management course. For our final assignment there was an option of completing a 16–18-page paper or volunteer to do a 50-hour practicum, I opted Read More

This Halloween marks 100 years since the fire that burned down the Catholic University Observatory. Built at the request of Rev. George M. Searle, the initial structure was completed in 1890 and stood at the then highest point of campus with the equatorial telescope base sitting exactly on the 77th meridian from Greenwich. There were Read More

Guest blogger, Jisoo Ahn, is a Graduate Library Pre-Professional (GLP) working with CUA Special Collections. In the Aquinas basement lies a space that Special Collections affectionately refers to as the “Stacks”. Behind an unremarkable door is where we house a significant portion of our archival materials related to American Catholicism and CatholicU history. Our staff, Read More

Proactive management of records is a responsibility shared by every department and unit at Catholic University, if not every entity across the Catholic world.  Can this be true, you ask? Well, see statements of both the Vatican and the American Bishops.  We understand that record keeping can appear to be an intimidating – perhaps even Read More

The desire to form communities and act together is inherent in people. This can encompass various aspects of our lives: work, family, sport, recreation, and, of course, faith and spiritual life, which may be manifested not only through affiliation with a specific church or denomination but also through a local community of people who, sharing Read More

Catholic University in the summer is a veritable garden of verdant lawns, blossoming flowers, and the rustling leaves of the campus’ many trees. Yet CatholicU was once home to hundreds of plants which would normally have no way of surviving the hot, muggy summers that our swampy city lovingly provides for us. No, these plants Read More