During my last week of my history internship, I spent a few hours at the University Archives and Special Collections Office researching the books that I had previously searched on Pegasus. These books were either in the Rare Book room in the Archives Office, Deck E, the Library Storage Facility, or the Main Stacks. I was surprised by how many of the books I was researching were in the Main Stacks. Since all of these books were from the 1870s or earlier, it is a little bizarre to see a decent amount of them in general circulation.

I was surprised by how well organized the Jesuits were in their stamping of the books. In contrast to the location of the Cudahy Library stamp within the books, the Jesuits put all of the St. Ignatius College Library stamps on the title pages of the books. This made them very easy to find, and this seemed to be the case for all of the books that I looked at.

It was cool to see the Library Storage Facility, a place I had never been before. It is a huge storage space, and it was weird to see the contrast between the openness of the storage facility compared to the closed rooms of the library. It seemed like the storage facility actually had more books than the library itself, but I am sure that is probably not true.

Anyway, I have included a few images of the St. Ignatius College library stamps within specific books below. It was interesting to see how well preserved many of the books were, and it was also somewhat of a surprise, especially due to the age of some of these books.

That is all for this blog. I want to thank everyone who has read this blog for their interest in my work. I would also like to thank Dr. Roberts and Kathy Young for this opportunity. Zorian Sasyk has also been helpful to me throughout this semester, and it has been great partnering with him on this project. I had a great time this semester, and I found an area of interest which I did not expect to enjoy nearly as much as I did. I hope whoever chooses to continue the work that Zorian, Kathy, Dr. Roberts and I have done in the fall can build on it and get the catalogue published. 

This past week, I was able to get a lot more done at my history internship than I have in quite a while. I spent 7-8 hours total on my internship this week. I went into the University Archives Office for about 4 hours during the week, and I was able to finish my work on the library course bulletins. Dr. Roberts had asked me to review the course bulletins from the 1870s through 1930, and throughout the course of the semester, I managed to complete this task. This week, I looked through the course bulletins between 1925-1930. 

In my work last week, I learned that Phillip W. Froebes, S.J. became the Librarian in 1923. By 1926, Froebes had become the "Chairman of the Library Board." Kathy and I discussed whether this was because the title of librarian was shared by multiple people or whether the tasks of a librarian were shared between multiple people. In my research, I noticed that each college (Sociology, Downtown Campus, Law, Medicine, Dental, etc.) had its own librarian. As a result, Froebes was likely the Librarian of the College of Arts and Sciences and also the head librarian over all these other librarians. Consequently, he was the "Chairman of the Library Board." 

Also in my work on the course bulletins, I noticed an interesting development in the library. In the 1928-29 academic year course bulletin, the library suddenly dropped from 90000 volumes to 50000. The Chicago Public Library also dropped roughly 150000 volumes. While these numbers had not been updated in a few years, this seems like an extreme drop in both library systems. Kathy, Ashley, and I discussed this, and while the large drop in Loyola's library's # of volumes could be explained by the library moving from one campus to another, we were unable to come up with any explanation for the huge drop in the number of volumes that the Chicago Public Library owned. 

After working on the course bulletins, I was able to find two books in Rare Books that were in St. Ignatius' initial library catalogue. These books are Townsend's 1724 translation of Historia de la Conquista de Mexico and Winstanley's 1684 book England's Worthies: Select Lives of the Most Eminent Persons of the English Nation. 

Dr. Roberts also had Zorian and I working on the subject metadata for the digital catalogue when the library catalogue is uploaded in the Fall. We are also writing subject descriptions for the various headings of the catalogue. Zorian focused on Theology and Philosophy, and I focused on Literature and History. These are just a paragraph or two descriptions of what the library had in each collection in its first library catalogue. These are meant to give a general overview of what topics were considered important by the Jesuits as they built the early library at St. Ignatius College. I should be done with my subject descriptions early this week. 

Anyway, that is all for this week. I will be spending this coming week finding books that I have previously researched on Pegasus and checking if these books have the St. Ignatius College stamp on them. Thanks for reading!

Last week was another abbreviated week, but luckily I actually know I will have free time this coming week. During my work last week, I spent around 2 hours in the University Archives Office reviewing the course bulletins from Loyola from 1918-1925. While little information was provided during this period about the library, and much of the information provided was recycled from previous year's entries, the library did expand from 70000 to 90000 volumes during this period. The library also had a new librarian every year from 1919-1923. This likely shows why the library did not have new information each year, as new librarians might be unable to assess the library in the way that a tenured librarian might. It was also interesting to see how Loyola's librarians also served in a variety of different roles. Some librarians were only the librarian, but most of them served as a professor of a certain subject, such as French, German, History, or Physics, or the librarian served as an advisor to the students. It was interesting for me to see how librarians came from a variety of different fields. 

Also during my time looking at the course bulletins, I was able to find more information on a book, or series of volumes, from the late-sixteenth century. In previous versions of the course bulletin, St. Ignatius College was described as having a copy of the New Testament in 12 languages from 1589. In the years I reviewed, however, it included the new detail of this being in four volumes. With this new detail, Kathy and I were able to find the book in Rare Books. 

Since this was an abbreviated week, I didn't have much time to do much more than this. I decided to do a quick review of the pages of the catalogue that I had looked up to make sure that I had not missed anything. I noticed that a four volume copy of Arthur Helps' The Spanish Conquest of America, a book published in 1855, is in Cudahy's Main Stacks. There are a couple other books like this within the pages I looked up, but this seemed to be the rarest of the books in the Main Stacks. I figured I would talk to Kathy about if these books should be moved to Rare Books. 

That is all for this week. This week will be heavily dedicated to working on the internship, and consequently I should have a ton to post about next week. I will be in Archives at least a few hours this week, and I plan to go in on Monday for at least 2 hours. Thanks for reading. 

Hey! Its Brian checking in again. I had another uneventful week at my internship, but this was mostly due to unforeseen complications. When I posted last week, I did not know that I would have a quiz in one of my classes and that in another class, my professor would ask me to do a couple hours of research for a paper that is not due until finals week. Regardless, these complications kind of put a damper on my plans of doing more work last week, and combined with my moving to a new apartment, I had very little time to do much of anything. All I was able to do last week was spend a couple hours finishing my list of books for the 7 pages of the catalogue that I had previously researched.

After finishing my list last week, I had hoped to go to the library and the University Archives Office and look for each of the books that I believe may have been original St. Ignatius College copies. If they are, I would mark them on the list and this would be a valuable resource for future interns in figuring out which books to scan for the digital publication. Sadly, I did not get to do any of this last week, but hopefully I will have the opportunity to do so this week.

Anyway, since I was not able to finish much last week, I expect to get a significant amount of work done this week. Due to the shortened week, I will have to do most of my work on Thursday, but I should be able to spend 3-4 hours in the library/University Archives Office on Thursday, and I will likely spend the rest of my time this coming week looking up books in Pegasus from an additional few pages that Dr. Roberts sent me a couple weeks back. Hopefully I will have more to discuss next week. I will try to get a few pictures of the books and the St. Ignatius College stamps within them.

Thanks for reading and have a nice week!

This week was a very light week, and I do not have much to say about my work for this week. While I still worked for a few hours this week, I spent the week focusing on that Microsoft Word document (which I mentioned last week) of all the volumes, if they are listed on Pegasus, if I believe the library might own the St. Ignatius College original, and where the book is located within the library if it is on Pegasus and may be the original. This has been an arduous task because I am trying to keep everything concise and yet informative for future interns and other people interested in the catalogue. I have almost finished this, and I just have a few finishing touches which should hopefully be completed by the middle of the week this week.

Since the catalogue was being transcribed last week, and my semester has been periodically stressful and busy (as most students' semesters are), this Microsoft Word file was all I did for the week. I will probably spend more than 5 hours this week on this internship to get a little more progress done. I'm starting to realize that this semester has actually gone by very quickly, and there are only a few weeks left to finish up what I want to get done. I was not necessarily expecting to get a huge chunk of the catalogue done, but I had hoped to get more than I have done thus far, and I am going to try to make significantly greater progress for these last few weeks.

Anyway, sorry for the relatively boring blog post for this week. Hopefully I will have more interesting things to talk about next week when I am able to devote my energy to research instead of Word documents. Thanks for reading!

Last week (3/19-3/23) was another slow week. I had heard that the computers in the Archives and Library were being updated to Windows 7, and as a result, I did all my work from my apartment. When Zorian and I met with Dr. Roberts on Monday, he suggested that we consider possible ideas for a paper/article which could be published along with the catalogue online. The idea was that we write about the possible applications of the library catalogue and our research on the books/volumes which were in St. Ignatius' early library. 

I spent a lot longer contemplating this than I expected, and while I had a few fleeting ideas, one idea stuck out to me: 

The information, broken down by subject, could be used to determine how important each of the subjects were at the time to St. Ignatius and possibly Jesuit education as a whole. If the number of books on Theology, for example, is much greater than the number of books on History or English, it says that Theology was a predominant part of the Jesuit education. While this is probably an obvious assumption that many people would make, this could also be compared to our current library. How many books do we have for each subject? How have the areas of focus changed from the 1870s to today? Why have these changed? Is this more a result of the college expanding into a university and gaining a broader curriculum, or has the focus of Jesuit education/education as a whole changed? I think this topic leads to a lot of applications for the catalogue which greatly expand the usefulness of the catalogue beyond a simple list of the volumes within the library at its inception. 

Finally this week, I finished looking up the last few books of the five pages I was given a few weeks ago. After finishing this, I started trying to compile a concise, organized Microsoft Word file of the books, whether they are in Pegasus, and whether I believe these are likely the original copies of the books from St. Ignatius. My original research wasn't particularly organized, and I felt the need to make an organized list both for my own purposes and for future interns in this project so that they might easily look through my work and build upon it. I hope to use the list, once I am done with it (hopefully by next week or the following week), to track down each book I believe might have been in the St. Ignatius library and check to see if they have a St. Ignatius stamp. 

That is all for this week. Thanks for reading!

During this week (3/12-3/16), I focused on finishing the last couple pages of the five pages of the first library catalogue, which I had been working on for the past few weeks. This was a fairly light week in comparison to previous weeks, as I only looked up the various books and volumes listed in the catalogue and then attempted to find them within Pegasus.

A few of the works I found really struck my interest. One of them was a book titled, "Historia de la conquista de México, población y progresos de la América septentrional, conocida por el nombre de Nueva España," although it was only listed as "Historia de la conquista de Mexico" in the catalogue. What made this interesting to me was that it was an account of the Conquest of Mexico by the Spaniards, specifically Hernan Cortes' conquest of the Aztecs, published in 1704. The first publication of the book was in 1684, and although this was over 150 years after Cortes' conquest of the Aztecs, the age of the book and the book's status as a Spanish classic, according to my research on the book, made the book stand out to me. I was unable to find this copy of the book in Pegasus. The catalogue also listed an English translation of the book from 1724, and I was able to find this within Pegasus. It is in the Rare Books collection.


Another of the books that stood out to me was a book called, "The History of the Revolution in the Empire of Morocco upon the Death of the late Emperor Muley Ishmael." This book was written by John Braithwaite and published in 1729. This stood out to me because Braithwaite, an English writer, would likely give an interesting (albeit not necessarily accurate) account of the "revolution in the empire of Morocco." This was also interesting because I was reasonably surprised that there was enough British interest to publish a work on anything going on in Morocco in the 18th century. Morocco at the time was not under the control of the British or any European power, and as an Arab and Muslim country before/at the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, I am especially surprised that any English writer would spend his time writing a history of their country. The original publication from 1729, and possibly/likely the copy originally owned by St. Ignatius, was on Pegasus, and it is currently in Deck E. 


Anyway, there were a couple more interesting documents which I might discuss further in future posts, but that is all for now. Thanks for reading and I hope you will continue to keep up with my blog in the future!

After a week off for Spring Break, I will be returning to my normal routine this coming week. Since we had a week off for Spring Break, this post is about the week prior to Spring Break, February 27-March 2. Since I had only worked 3 hours the previous week, I spent 7 hours working for the internship during this week - 4 hours and 15 minutes in University Archives, and 2 hours and 45 minutes on researching the books from the initial library catalogue of St. Ignatius College.

During my time in the University Archives Office, I pieced through the course catalogues from 1914-1915 to 1920-1921. There wasn't a ton of information that was particularly interesting during these years, but a couple of things struck me. In 1919-20, the library is suddenly up to 70000 volumes from 50000 (which was last mentioned in 1916-17). Additionally in 1919-20, there is a list of what were considered to be the rarest books in Loyola's collection. I have mentioned many of these volumes in earlier posts, but I noticed something new which I did not recognize. The catalogue notes a "rare copy of Lactantius," but it does not provide any additional information. After a little google search of Lactantius, I learned that he was a 3rd and 4th century Christian writer who served as an aide to Constantine. Kathy and I did a little research and found a few titles that could fit this description, and two of these titles had a St. Ignatius College stamp in them, but it is impossible to tell which title the course catalogue references.

Additionally in my time at the University Archives Office, I spent a couple hours researching the history of Jesuit colleges in the U.S., specifically the 10 or so colleges listed in competitions with St. Ignatius College in the course catalogues. Much of my research focused on St. Mary's College in Kansas, which closed at some point, likely in the early-twentieth century. Due to internet difficulties in the Archives Office and very little information available on St. Mary's College, this was all I was able to find: http://skyways.lib.ks.us/genweb/archives/1912/s/st_marys_college.html. I also did some research on Sacred Heart College in Prairie du Chien, Wisconsin. It was a college for 9 years, closed, and later reopened as both a high school and a college. It was eventually renamed Campion College. Campion closed in the 1970s, but it was interesting to find out that Vicente Fox, former President of Mexico, attended Campion. Here is some information on Campion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campion_High_School.

Finally during this week, I spent a couple hours researching the volumes listed in the original library catalogue. To name a couple of the interesting titles I found, I found a biography of George Washington - Life of George Washington in Latin prose by Francis Glass. It is in Pegasus and from 1836, and it appears to be the same copy that the original catalogue lists. It is currently in the Library Storage Facility. I also found a book called Marquis de Lafayette A Complete History by an Officer in the Army from 1846. I also found this on Pegasus, and it is currently in Deck E.

Thanks for reading!

Last week was uneventful compared to previous weeks. During the last week of class (2/20-2/24), I got a little bit behind due to being able to work only 3 hours. As a result, I will be spending 7 hours this week working on searching things in Pegasus from the catalogue and working on a few scans in University Archives. I will also likely work on the various course catalogues up until 1930.

Last week, I spent about an hour and 15 minutes in the University Archives Office working on the course catalogue/bulletin and progressed from 1906-07 to 1913-14. While there was relatively little information for this period, it was interesting to see the rapid progression of volumes in the St. Ignatius College library. In the 1906-1907 academic year, the library claimed possession of 25000 volumes. By 1909-10, the library was up to 38000 volumes. By 1913-1914, the library suddenly had 50000 volumes. In only 7 years, the amount of volumes in the library doubled.

I also learned from the course catalogue about the creation of the law school, engineering school, and the merger of St. Ignatius with a medical school and pharmacy school. It was interesting to see St. Ignatius' rapid expansion from a school which only had Arts and Sciences courses to a school which suddenly had all of these programs only 5 years later.

Finally, for the rest of the week, I worked on searching books from the 1870s library catalogue. I found a French biography of Charlemagne, Charlemagne et son siecle, from the 19th century. I also found a biography of Otto von Bismarck from during his life. I actually found this pretty cool, because I would assume that despite Bismarck's extraordinary reputation worldwide, he probably did not have many biographies written of him during his life. Here is a link to information on that book, which was published in 1870, a year before Germany officially unified. http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=5989579341&searchurl=an%3Dhesekiel%2Bjohn%2Bgeorge%2Blouis

Anyway, that is all for this week. Hopefully I will have a little more to elaborate on next week since I will be working more hours this week. Thanks for reading!

This week was spent researching the books listed in the original catalogue of St. Ignatius College. I was unable to get to the Archives Office due to a pretty hectic schedule of papers and exams, and as a result, I did most of my work this weekend. I had kind of skipped around in my previous week's research, and as a result, much of my work this week was spent trying to decipher the books and authors which I had skipped previously. I was originally working on 2 pages which I had taken pictures of with my phone. I finished those two except for a couple texts which I had problems with and then proceeded to work on the 5 additional pages that Dr. Roberts had sent me earlier in the week. I got bits and pieces of these 5 pages done, but I probably have the equivalent of 1 1/2 to 2 pages done. It has been a struggle trying to get used to the writing, especially on a sometimes slightly blurry photo.

My biggest difficulty in trying to figure out what the name of the book and who the author is has been the fact that many of the titles are in different languages. Some titles are Latin, I've also run across French, and most simply aren't English titles. This causes a lot of problems because while I do know some Latin, I am not an expert in Latin and do not know many of the Latin words. French has been an absolute struggle due to the language barrier. An example of two titles I have found are: Dictionnaire de theologie by Bergier, a French title which Loyola still owns and it is currently in Pegasus, and De locis theologicis by Stattler, a Latin title which I was unable to find in Pegasus.

Hopefully when I find the hard copies of the books instead of merely searching them on Pegasus, I can post some of the images of the books. In the meantime, thanks for reading! 

This past week, my fourth at the University Archives Office, I mostly worked on the St. Ignatius College catalogues. I also did a little research on the titles included on the two pages I posted images of last week. I do not have my notes with me at the moment for those, but I will post an update on what I did for those sometime early this week (probably Tuesday night). 

While searching through the catalogues this week, I progressed from years 1892-1893 through 1906-1907. These catalogues contain information on the students in each class, the professors and instructors and their various positions, the Board of Managers of St. Ignatius College during each year, and the library and the donations to the library each year. Most of my research has focused on the library and who the librarian was during each school year, how many volumes the school had during each school year, and what books were donated to the library during each year and by whom were these books donated. It is particularly interesting to see how the library evolved from a library of 8000 volumes at its inception to over 25000 in the 1902-1903 academic year. Another part of my research was researching the prominent donors. John Naghten and William J. Onahan were by far the largest donors to the school in its opening decades. I tried to do some research into both men, but I was not able to come up with any information on John Naghten. Onahan, in contrast, seemed to have been a prominent figure in Chicago and Illinois during the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. He served as President of the Illinois Catholic Historical Society and had other prominent posts throughout Chicago and the state of Illinois. More information can be found in this article, if you are interested: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40194518?seq=1. Onahan seems to have been a wealthy man who was interested in donating to the school due to his own Catholic faith and his position within the Illinois Catholic Historical Society. 

Finally this week, Kathy found another folder full of photos from St. Ignatius. It was hard to figure out what the exact date on many of the photos was, because many seemed to be more recent than we are researching (1970s-80s), but there seemed to be at least a few photos of the library from the early-twentieth century.

Overall, it was an interesting week. As I said, I'll update when I have access to my information on the two pages from last week, probably on Tuesday night. Thanks for reading!

In the third week of my History Internship at the Archives Office in Cudahy Library, we were finally able to get the scanner to work! Hooray! Once it was working, Zorian and I got to work and managed to get about half of the catalogue scanned in the first couple hours after we got the scanner working. Around the time Zorian left for the day, the cameras on the scanner, which were set to manual focus because otherwise they frequently have problems, began to take blurry pictures of the pages of the catalogue. Sadly, I didn't notice this until about an hour after it started, and as a result, a lot of my work was wasted. When I realized the problem, I talked to Kathy and Ashley, and they fixed the problem. I was able to figure out the page the blurriness seemed to begin on, so I did not have to start over completely, but over 100 pages of scans were wasted. After the problem with the cameras was corrected, I managed to get to page 300 in the catalogue of around 500 pages.

Later in the week, I went back to the University Archives Office, and Zorian and I were able to get half of the rest of the work done before he had to leave. I finished out the rest of the work, and despite lots of problems with the cameras taking blurry pictures and having to readjust the focus repeatedly after only a few scans, I got the whole rest of the catalogue done. Now Zorian and I just have to wait for Dr. Roberts to check all of the images and see if we need to redo any of them.

While working on the scans this week, I have also been slowly pacing through the documents listed on 2 pages that we took a picture of while we were having problems with the scanner. I have included these two pictures below this paragraph. I haven't had a ton of luck just yet, but I have only just begun, and I will hopefully have these first two pages done within the next couple days and be able to make more progress on other pages within the catalogue. It has been difficult for me to get used to reading the handwriting, but it is not something I have much experience with, and I am sure I will get better at it with time. 

Thats all for this week. Thank you for reading, and I hope you'll continue to read my progress on the catalogue in the future.

Brian

In my first and second weeks at my history internship, I did a lot of different things. We attempted to get the scanner to work, but due to technical difficulties, scanning will have to wait until tomorrow, January 30. After the attempts at getting the scanner to work failed, I went to work and started paging through the photo albums from the early years of St. Ignatius College to see if I could find any pictures of students studying with books or the St. Ignatius Library. Most of the photos I was reviewing were from the beginning of the 20th century, specifically 1904 and 1905. It was interesting to see that the Department of Natural Sciences had a large collection of stuffed animals. I'd be interested to see where these stuffed animals went when St. Ignatius moved to Rogers Park and became Loyola. Additionally, the pictures were much more captivating than I expected, and I greatly enjoyed looking through the photo albums. There were pictures of the early classrooms at St. Ignatius and the students with books in their classrooms. It was cool to see the environment and appearances of various students from over 100 years ago. On my way to my political science internship at the State's Attorney's Office, I pass St. Ignatius College Prep. Until this internship, I did not realize that St. Ignatius College Prep is the former home of St. Ignatius College, and after reviewing the photo albums on Monday, it was interesting to drive by St. Ignatius College Prep and picture college students walking around 100 years ago. I hope to post some of the pictures from the photo albums later in the semester when we are able to scan them. 

A Picture of St. Ignatius College Prep, the initial home of St. Ignatius College

After finishing my review of the photo albums, I started paging through the first few catalogues of information from St. Ignatius College. These catalogues contain information on the leaders of St. Ignatius College, the professors, the students, and some years contain information about the museum and library. I was specifically reviewing information concerning the library, but I also got the chance to review other information contained in the catalogues. Particularly, I found the grading system and the selection of a "First Premium" - the best student in each class, "Second Premium" - the second best student in each class, and "Distinguished" - the other excellent students in each class, very interesting. I thought the merit based point system that St. Ignatius College used, which rates students out of 100, and the ability to get awards for great academic success in a particular class, such as Geography, was actually a superior system to our system today (at least from what I read about it and learned in the catalogue). In my review of the information on the Library contained in the catalogues, I found out that one of the oldest books in the library, which was a medieval text on vellum, was actually donated during this time. St. Ignatius initially held some misconceptions about what the text was, and it was not until recently that its real purpose was actually identified. 

Anyway, as a whole, the first week was very interesting. It particularly struck me that the records of the Library in the initial 10 years of the school were kept meticulously, but as the school expanded and its library expanded, the records seemingly dwindled until no mention was made of the library in many of the years of the catalogue. In fact, the school did not have a librarian for 3 years from 1887-88 school year through 1889-90. Overall, I think this internship will be one in which I learn a great deal and get to explore both the history of the Library and the school as a whole. Thanks for reading. 

I am working in the University Archives Office at Loyola University Chicago under the supervision of Kathy Young and Dr. Kyle Roberts during the Spring 2012 semester. Zorian Sasyk, another Loyola undergrad, and I, will be working in close conjunction to document and catalogue information from the beginning years of the library at St. Ignatius College, which later became Loyola University Chicago. In the coming days and weeks, I will provide descriptions of the work I am doing as part of the internship, and I will describe in detail specific tasks and documents that I have found particularly interesting. My first post will likely be posted within the next couple days. I look forward to any feedback on my work throughout the semester, and if any reader of this blog has any questions, I would be happy to answer them to the best of my ability. This blog is maintained for the History 398 Internship at Loyola.