 Hey guys, it's Shay here again with Alden series. We have Stacey and she's going to explain about the Benjamin Corp diary So can you remind our viewers what you do here? Yeah, so I'm the digital projects librarian for arts and archives So basically I just Put together digital projects to find identify archival materials that could be digitized and put online for everyone So that's like the main thrust of my job So what do you have here for us today? Yeah, so this is the Benjamin Corp Autobiography I can hold it up. I don't know how well that shows up But this was written in the 1830s by a guy named Benjamin Corp He was born in England, but eventually moved to Ohio and actually oversaw construction on some of the buildings here at OU when it was just getting started and this is a diary he wrote to his daughter Margaret She was born when he was about 70 years old So he didn't know if he would live long enough to tell her about his life and to give her you know fatherly wisdom and all that So that's what this is. It's for her. It's all the things he wants her to know basically. That's pretty cool. Yeah 70 years old That's pretty yeah It's pretty old. Yeah, I think she was like five when he started writing it Did he mention why he came from London to? Yeah, it's interesting. It doesn't go into it too much He starts wanting to move to the United States in about 1875 I think And he comes to the United States first and is in Boston for a little while And at one point he says I had heard so much about the state of Ohio that I had to go see it So he comes to Ohio and then he spends 13 days wandering around Marietta and decides I have to live here and Builds a house and stays forever Yeah, and like what fun facts did he For his daughter Well, so I mean he told her a bunch about all the different places that he visited it visited You know what all the people were like what they ate but languages they spoke that sort of thing He also left her a ton of I don't know if this was fun facts But a ton of advice he was very very religious so a lot of religious teachings in the book Some housekeeping tips like to how to make how to make old bread tastes like fresh bread Yeah, and he was really big into the temperance movement, so he really was against drinking alcohol So he talks about that a lot in the in the book So it's it's a lot of like how to live your life advice for his daughter. Yeah, so how do you preserve something like this? It looks pretty yeah, it's actually for its age. It's in pretty decent shape I don't know if you can and I don't want to handle it too terribly much But like you can see the papers in pretty good shape even though it's really old paper can last for a really long time if you keep it dry and cool, so we have it back in our Archival stacks with climate control back there, so it stays in even temperature stays a little humidity But right now it's just in a folder in a file cabinet actually So you probably could buy an archival acid-free box and keep it something like that and store it flat as opposed to In a folder in a violent cabinet, but it's been okay so far and the nice thing about this is that since it's digitized And it's totally available online. We don't have to let people handle it too much So that helps, you know ease the damage on it from from handling So do you have to like come back and you know like with plants and water and stuff like that? No, I think it's like the opposite of that It's the less you mess with it the better like if we put it in a box and kept it somewhere cool And dry and never looked at it again. That would probably be the best all that wouldn't do anything good. Yeah So how do you get a hold of this information? Like how do you access it? Just drop it off or you go searching So ideally the process for when we accept archival materials is the dinner comes to us We have a donor agreement that we sign and we keep track of you know Who donated it when they donated it where it came from why it's important? So we can track, you know, it's origins in this particular case All I have the finding in for this collection and all it says is that this item was donated on an unknown date So in a perfect world, we would know all that but for this particular item, we don't So, you know, that's just those imperfections and the information happens sometimes That's cool. I'm can so can students and locals come and see it or they have to or they can't really be hands-on with it I mean, we do still let people look at it Although I mean it would probably be honestly if you wanted to be able to actually read it when it where it is online It's in the Ohio memory website It has full transcripts and the handwriting is kind of hard. His spelling is really irregular And it's cursive and it's really old-fashioned cursive. So it's difficult to read. So it's actually easier I think if you look at it online and have the transcripts right next to it But you can come if you want to see the physical object you can come look here too All right. All right, well, thank you Stacey Like she said you can come and see the book in person if you would like But it's probably better if you can access online and if you have any other questions just drop it in the comments or come in top Stacey Thanks