The Libraries Celebrate 50 Years of Alden with OHIO Exhibit

An exhibit titled “Only at OHIO” is now open across from the fourth-floor entrance of Alden Library to commemorate its 50th anniversary. The exhibit showcases a variety of items from the Libraries, including illuminated manuscript leaves from the Mahn Center for Archives and Special Collections, rare Thai-language books and an ostrich egg donated by the Embassy of Botswana.

“A lot of these items might seem ordinary because they are from our circulating collections, but we are deliberately highlighting those materials to show the role that they have played in the history of Alden Library, and to make the point that they are as much worth celebrating as the rare materials that they are being exhibited alongside,” said Michele Jennings, art librarian and one of the exhibit curators.

It also features graphic design history books by an ART 3510 course as well as local historical newspapers and a plaque commemorating the Libraries’ contributions to the global library cooperative OCLC, a nonprofit organization that works to make information more accessible and useful to people around the world. 

The exhibit was a collaborative effort in which the Libraries’ staff was asked to select three to four items from their collections they believed were important or showed the variety of items the Libraries collect for University research.

“For the 50th anniversary of Alden, we wanted to show the breadth of the collections housed in this building,” said Miriam Nelson, interim coordinating director of the Mahn Center collections, head of preservation & digital initiatives and one of the exhibit curators. “Everything exhibited was acquired by the Libraries over its 200-year history.”

For more information visit: https://www.ohio.edu/library/about/news-events/libraries-celebrates-50-years .