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!