If bricks could talk

Strolling across College Green at midday, it is likely that you’ve noticed “Alma Mater, Ohio” chiming in the background, as well as the origin of the sound—Cutler Hall. First know as the College Edifice (later as the Center Building and today as Cutler Hall), it has been ushering students to class for almost 200 years. A bell was added to the tower in 1820 (two years after it was built), and students could earn a few bucks to ring it, marking class changes. Not until 1940s were the alma mater chimes added.

If its solid brick walls could talk, they would have more than one interesting tale to tell. Like the time a few frat boys in the early 1900s tied a goat to the roof, a stunt meant to show off to prospective pledges and competing fraternities. Or during WWII, when it stood boarded up and abandoned, a time when OU had adopted the motto “use it up, wear it out, make it do, or do without.” Or when students took over the first floor in protest of a proposed fee increase in 1970.

Or when legendary alumnus John Brough (who went on to become an Ohio governor) first kicked a football over the building in 1830, a feat attempted by subsequent students well into the mid-twentieth century, as seen below.

Photo credits - Images scanned from “Ohio University, 1804-2004: The Spirit of a Singular Place” by Betty Hollow.

More Alden Library, through the years

This is the last post about Alden Library, I promise. I thought that this being a history blog and all, I should include some, well, history about libraries on campus. So here's what I've dug up:

• The first hundred years or so is a little hazy. Sometime in the 1830s, accounts by travelers describe a library with an estimated 2,000 volumes.
• In the late 1870s, several literary societies combined their separate libraries with the university’s. (Below are bookplates identifying volumes collected by two such literary societies.)

• The first official library building on campus was the Carnegie Library (1905-1931), which is now Scripps Hall. Andrew Carnegie, who donated $30,000 toward its construction, required that the library be open to “all Athens citizens, school teachers, and children.
  
• Once the university began to outgrow Carnegie Library, the Chubb Library was built (1931-1969). Now known as Chubb Hall, it houses administrative offices. (Students fill the main study room, below, sometime in the late 1940s.)

• When Ohio University’s fifteenth president, Vernon R. Alden, stated in his 1962 inaugural address that the university’s greatest need was for a new library, he wasn’t exaggerating. His administration saw a doubling of enrollment and faculty, and OU had literally outgrown Chubb Library. Says Dr. Alden, “We had Chubb Library, which was very nice, but even with 8,000 students in those days it wasn’t adequate. And it certainly wasn’t adequate for graduate programs and for the research activities of faculty members.”
  
• Construction on Alden Library began in 1966. (Below, a group of students talk to President Alden near the construction site.)

• Alden Library officially opens in 1969, but the east and west wings weren’t completed until 1972. (Below, students fill the current periodicals area in the early 1980s.)

• In 1979, the library acquires its one-millionth volume, a Bible that dates back to the 13^thcentury.
  
• Goodbye card catalogues. ALICE, the online catalogue, is adopted in 1983.
  
• Hwa-Wei Lee Library Annex on Columbus Road opens in 1998.
  
• Wireless Internet access is made available throughout Alden Library in 2003.
  
• In 2004, the 2^nd floor Learning Commons (pictured below) is created, which remains open to students 24 hours a day.

Photo credits - Bookplate images: Scanned from “Ohio University, 1804-2004: The Spirit of a Singular Place” by Betty Hollow. Images of Chubb Library, Alden Library under construction and Alden Library during the 1980s: Courtesy of Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections, published by Ohio University Libraries, University Archives available at http://media.library.ohiou.edu/cdm4/browse.php?CISOROOT=/archives.

Fast facts about Alden Library

Did you know?

• Alden Library averages nearly 6,400 entrances a day when a quarter is in session. That multiplies to 1,700,000 entrances just last year.
  
• In the past five years, entrances have gone up 73 percent.
  
• The 2^nd floor Learning Commons is open and staffed 24 hours a day.
  
• The library has a peak usage hour at 2 a.m.
• The Alden Library Web site has about 7.5 million global visitors annually and is recognized as one of the top research libraries in the country.
  
• The illustration on the ALICE online catalogue home page comes from the work of Sir John Tenniel who illustrated Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.
• It inaugurated the now well-known OCLC (Online Computer Library Center) system by becoming the first library in the world to perform online computerized cataloging in 1971.
• Now, with OhioLINK, students and faculty have access to more than 20 million volumes and thousands of electronic journals from more than seventy-five campus libraries across the state.

(Top: A librarian shelves books in "the stacks" of Alden Library during the seventies. Bottom: Senior marketing major Sara Heal sits among her own stack of books.)

Photo Credit - Top image: Courtesy of Robert E. & Jean R. Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections

Alden Library celebrates 40 years

(Above: An ink drawing depicts Alden Library's Park Place entrance.)

A library is truly a sanctuary for students. Its hallowed walls enclose a wealth of knowledge, quiet spaces for reflection and study, and an overall atmosphere of encouragement and support. I have spent many hours at Ohio University’s Vernon R. Alden Library (otherwise known as just “Alden”), with friends, classmates, group members or alone. It is a resource that I have tapped throughout the years, and I am grateful for it.

That being said, good ol’ Alden Library celebrates its 40^th anniversary of being a center of learning on campus. This past Friday, May 15, I attended the rededication ceremony on the library’s 4^thfloor. Speakers included Becky Watts, the chief of staff and special assistant to the president; Scott Seaman, dean of libraries; Dr. Sam Crowl, Trustee Professor of English; Dr. Kathy Krendl, executive vice president and provost; and, surprise, Dr. Vernon Alden himself, now in his mid-eighties. He served as OU's fifteenth president from 1962 to 1969.

During the original dedication of the library back in '69, Dr. Alden said, “I mentioned the need for only one building specifically in my inaugural address and that was for the need of a new library. A great library is the heart of any great university.” As honoree of Friday's ceremony, he reiterated this statement and his fulfilled promise (seen in photo below).

Alden Library is both figuratively and literally the heart of campus, added Dr. Crowl. “I can’t imagine anywhere else in the world that I could’ve been in an English department that was 20 paces away from 3 million volumes,” he said, referring to the close proximity of Ellis Hall and Alden Library. In addition to books, it holds 46,000 maps and more than 36,000 films, videos and DVDs.

An Ohio University news article couldn’t have put it better: Happy 40^th, Alden Library. Here’s to the next 40 years.

Photo Credit - Top image: Courtesy of Robert E. & Jean R. Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections

School spirit extras

Catch the OU spirit with some of these extras:

• Listen to the Ohio University Fight Song "Stand Up and Cheer" as performed by the Marching 110
• Download some OHIO desktop wallpaper
• Send a friend a Bobcat FANcard
• Check out what students have to say about OHIO sports at Bobcat Blogs
• Have something to say yourself? Chat live at Bobcat Attack

School spirit

(Top: Spirited “college coeds” during the 1890s. Bottom: My hall mates from freshman year, decked out—in O Zone t-shirts, no less—for the OU-Pitt football game. I’m wearing the baseball cap.)

It’s one thing to say you support Ohio University athletics and another thing entirely to stand on the sidelines bleeding green and white. Looking back, I can’t say I was a die-hard fan. But everyone has a different idea of school spirit and each has a unique way of expressing support. Our common thread is each other and our Ohio University.

“School spirit is an identity,” says O Zone President Tyler McManus. “It’s students who can identify with one another by supporting their school.”

The O Zone is a relatively new addition to OHIO school spirit since its inception eight years ago. The self-proclaimed “premiere student cheering section of the Mid-American Conference” certainly lives up to its claim. See for yourself as it performs the Winning Team/Losing Team chant, which allegedly originated in the sixties but was resurrected in recent years.

Clearly, school spirit is constantly evolving. McManus sees it in how the originality and creativity of students (i.e. crazy outfits) meshes with traditional cheers. “It’s definitely a welcoming of new things but maintaining a tradition,” he says. Also, as student populations have increased over the years, a growing gap has developed between student athletes and students.

“We really try to maintain that although they are athletes at our school, they are students and we are students, and we’re all on the same team,” says McManus. What a team that is. OHIO boasts more than 20,000 students these days, a far cry from the three students it opened for two centuries ago.

And the O Zone—the largest student group on campus—is in fact the largest is has ever been, says McManus. More than 350 members are encouraged to show support at all varsity athletic events, from baseball to golf.

Compared to students like Tyler McManus, I have so few memories of cheering on my school’s athletic teams. Still, I can’t help but feel the same when I hear him so assuredly say, “Yeah, I will be a loyal Bobcat until the day that I die.”

Photo credit - Top image: Courtesy of Richard H. Rudolph, ’43. Scanned from “Ohio University, 1804-2004: The Spirit of a Singular Place” by Betty Hollow.

"The best years of your life." —Anonymous

(Above: Students rest outside of Alden Library in the presence of a David Hostetler statue.)

I am a student at Ohio University, but that’s about to change rather soon. These days I feel like a baby bird teetering on the precipice, staring into a huge and looming void. This time next month I will be in the last week of the last quarter of the last year of my time at Ohio’s first (and finest) university. The idea of leaving my home of the past four years is thrilling yet daunting, a feeling surely shared by most seniors. I’m torn between the comfortable nest I’ve made and the hopeful horizon stretched out before it. As I walk about campus for the last times and transition from student to alumna, I am filled with that warm sappy goo otherwise known as nostalgia.

In this blog and over the next few weeks, I hope to learn more about the place that I learned so much from. I’ll explore its colorful history—from great feats to complete farce—and show how things have changed or stayed the same. As you read this on the screen, a worldwide web of information at your fingertips, picture me digging through dusty archives and swapping OU stories with alumni, students and local historians. As I post my findings I invite you to share your Ohio University knowledge, be it a historical fact, a local legend or a personal memory.

Let’s take a walk down a collective memory lane and consider Ohio University, then and now.