Category: The Archivist’s Nook

The Archivist’s Nook: Love is “One Glorious Picnic Day” – A 1953 Letter to Dorothy Deex

On an early morning in 1935, a 24-year-old year old Robert T. Meyer begins his day by typing a letter to a Ms. Dorothy Deex. Robert, a young grad student at this time, was so tired he nearly “used [his] typewriter as a pillow”. He daydreams in courier new about his future in academia: “… why, maybe, Read More

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The Archivist’s Nook: New Year, New (Digital) Us – Welcome to JSTOR Forum

As a new year and semester dawns, you may notice a new look for the library’s digital collections. We are pleased to announce that our digital collections have moved to the JSTOR Forum platform: https://www.jstor.org/site/catholic-university/ We recently reached our institutional end of life for the Islandora platform, which has hosted our digital collections for the Read More

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The Archivist’s Nook: Robert T. Meyer – “Bespectacled Linguist” and Friend of J.R.R. Tolkien

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

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The Archivist’s Nook: I have a very old book I’d like to donate…

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

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The Archivist’s Nook: We Wish You a Very Cinematic Christmas

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

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The Archivist’s Nook: Clarence Rivers, Catholic U’s Pioneering Priest, Composer, and Liturgist

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

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The Archivist’s Nook: Images to Inspire – The Accidental Invention of Lithography

One cannot get far in any museum or archive before encountering a lithograph print. In the case of the Catholic University of America’s Special Collections, you need not look further than our office walls in Aquinas Hall to see examples of such a familiar, kitschy, art style. From the unknown artists behind recognizable Catholic images Read More

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The Archivist’s Nook – CatholicU’s Lost Observatory

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

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The Archivist’s Nook: Hidden Gallery Walls in the Basement of Aquinas Hall

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

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The Archivist’s Nook: Universitas Monumenta Administratione – Records Management at CatholicU

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

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