 Hi everyone, I'm Jessica Hagman here at Alden Library and today we're going to be talking with Bill Kimick, University Archivist, about the exhibit which you can see on the 5th floor right now. It is for Ohio University's Founders' Day, which was officially February 18th, so last Sunday, but right this week and through, how long will the exhibit be up? It will be up at least through the rest of this semester. Okay, so for the rest of the semester you can come see this exhibit which celebrates 150 years of women at Ohio University. So could you tell us a little bit about how the exhibit came to be and why this year, why are we focusing on women this year? Sure. Well, for Founders' Day we always try to do an exhibit that has, for a year that falls on the zeros or the fives, the hundredth, the fiftieth, the 75th, that kind of thing. And so in past years, that's what we've done and this year I was just looking for something that seemed like since Margaret Boyd graduated, or I'm sorry, started her education at Ohio University in 1868, 150 years was the perfect time to go with and since she was the first woman at Ohio University, we're just featuring women, women all day, all the time here. That's something I can get behind. So she enrolled in 1868 and if I recall correctly she had to enroll under M. Boyd to avoid a scandal a little bit. Yeah, I'm not sure about enrolling under M. Boyd, certainly her great cards which we have included in the exhibit, her transcripts go as Maggie or Margaret, but she was listed in the catalog at least as M. Boyd. Okay. And we know a lot about Margaret Boyd because we do have her diary of her senior year which is it out in the exhibit? Yes, it is. It's over there. It's super tiny, so she kept a daily diary of her senior year which a couple years ago we actually live tweeted that whole thing, I guess it was five years, six years ago now which is kind of amazing, but so you can learn a lot about her, but there's a lot of other women here, so are there any lesser known, famous, less famous Ohio women in the exhibit? Yeah, I wouldn't characterize them as lesser known or less famous, I wouldn't want to hurt feelings, but there are, it sort of begins with, there are a lot of themes going at the large room so we've done a lot of themes. One of the themes are first women first, so we've got Maggie Boyd, we've got, we have the, who was the first female student, we have Martha who was the first African American female to graduate, we have Cynthia Weld who was the first female instructor at Ohio University and also by the way first female instructor at Ohio State the next year. We have Irma Voight who was the first dean of, dean of women and then on the other wall we've got other firsts, we have Hilda Richards who was the first dean of an academic department and we have Ann Keating who was the first female library director, we have Catherine Brown who was sort of a pioneer for Ohio University anyway and NCAA sports, we have Sharon Brem who was the first female provost, we have Francine Child who was the first African American tenured professor, not just female but the first African tenured professor period, we have Bev Jones who was once known as Bev Price who wrote the document that really changed how Ohio University complied with Title IX, just after Title IX had been legislated, then we have Gladys Balin who was the first female distinguished professor at Ohio University and we have Evelyn Lux who was the first female board of trustees member. So that's sort of the core of the exhibit and then on the wall directly facing where I am right now are first ladies and we began with the first lady for whom we had an image of course which was Elizabeth Baker and so those eight first ladies are consecutive from Elizabeth Baker to Mrs. Nellis and then we've got biographies, I forgot to mention there are biographies in all of the cases as well with the women so you can learn something about not just about their time here but about their lives in general. In these other cases that we have here there's a case over here to my right which represents women who have been philanthropic toward Ohio University, this is just a very small sampling of women who have been important to Ohio University in establishing programs and endowments and such and rather than mentioning any of them it's better to come see them because I don't want to leave anybody out. We also have an exhibit over here to my left which are sororities of today, I mean we can't forget about the women who are around here today and I thought that these images and histories of the sororities best represented what we could do about women who are on campus today. Then there are two cases again across the way, two flat top glass cases which have all manner of things that have to do with Ohio University women's lives from dance cards and photographs to mom's weekend brochures to scrapbook images and sports things and calendars and yearbooks and that sort of thing so I think they're well represented and those have turned out to be pretty popular with people who are walking through the area and then finally on the ceiling we have all sorts of images of women at Ohio University whether they're in the marching band or whether they're in an athletic event or whether they're sitting and talking to somebody or whether they're on a float in a parade or celebrating some sort of event. I just thought it was important to show women because they are in all parts of the university life and I think this sort of exhibits that pretty well. Is there anything, obviously you work with these materials a lot but was there anything that surprised you or something you found when you were putting this exhibit together? Well yes, when I was doing the biographies especially you learn a lot more about the women than just what they did when they were at Ohio University and they're all from the first that I have in these well cases to the first ladies to the women to the entrepreneurs they are really, really impressive women. They have really had impressive lives and done impressive things and so that was the thing and doing that I really came, not that I didn't appreciate them before but I appreciate them a lot more now after looking into their histories before and then after they were to Ohio University. Have you seen any people coming to the exhibit kind of being surprised by anything they learned here or any kind of interested in a new area of study for women at Ohio University? No, I haven't really seen that happen. What I do see is this is often a room that people come into when they're studying and they come in here to use their cell phones. I have seen a lot of, especially women, being interested. I saw a woman here on Thursday night when I was hanging some of the pictures who was actually on the cell phone to her mom and she was looking at one and she was like this and she stopped talking for about five minutes and then she said, oh I'm sorry mom, what were you saying? I was just looking at this really neat stuff about mom's weekend in this exhibit you should come see it sometime. So that's kind of nice to see students who generally just walk through here to get maybe to the restroom or get to a study area to see women actually taking notice and seeing what we have here. Is there anything, any anecdotes or any interesting things you other about any people represented here you want to tell us about? No, I mean what's interesting to me might not be interesting to others and what they might find interesting would be what I would hope is that people would see these things realize again just like what we do when we have an exhibit like this. This is really just the tip of the materials we have in the archives and so it's meant to educate in that way that people can see these things that we have here and then maybe look a little deeper into what else we have if it peaks their interest. Okay, so it sounds like this would be a great thing to do if people have visitors for mom's weekend. Absolutely, I would hope so, yes. Okay, definitely something to do in addition to the full lineup of events happening on campus. Look mom, I know a lot about the library. Yes, excellent. You can show off your favorite study space and show how much you know about our exhibits and of course there's lots of exhibits in the library right now so there's lots to see, there will be lots to see when you come to visit. So anything else we should know? I think we've covered it. Okay, all right, so if you want to see the exhibit it's on the fifth floor and Alden Library so just come up to the fifth floor on the elevator and turn to or was there something else? I do have one more thing to say. This isn't just my work. Certainly I know a lot about what we have in the collections but this is a collaboration, it's a collaboration. My student Hannah Reynolds did a great job of helping me put this together especially when it came to the stuff that women students might enjoy more. So I should mention her, I should mention our digital people Janet Carlton especially her students who helped me to make these pictures into something more than just 8x11's, make them come to life I think especially the ones that are in the cases. And the print shop up on the ridges. Everybody really chipped in and worked hard and did a really good job with this. So I do hope people will come to see it and it will be certainly worth our while if we get more people in here to take a look at it. Sorry to interrupt you. No, that's great. That's an important point. So much of this work is collaborative and you can't see that when you just see this finished product but I do love how you did the backgrounds this year. You can really see their faces in a way I think we haven't been able to before so I think that is really great. I know that takes a lot of work from DI and printing and all of that kind of stuff. So yeah, definitely come up and visit. It's a really great exhibit. If you want to know more you can always talk to Bill or you can look at our online exhibits. You can follow us on Instagram and Twitter. Definitely follow AldenLib Digital. They share a huge amount of university history photos throughout the year. I expect we'll probably be seeing lots of women during March for Women's History Month. So you can definitely see more there. Thanks for watching and let us know if you have any questions. Thank you.