Kentucky born Karl Michael Schmitt (1922- ), a recent centenarian and alumnus of Catholic University, is a distinguished scholar and teacher on Latin American studies. Special Collections, which includes University Archives, is fortunate to have a small but important collection of Dr. Schmitt’s materials, mostly photographs, documenting his World War II era time on campus, Read More

Our guest blogger is Elyse Ridder, a graduate student in the joint program for Musicology (MA) and Library & Information Science (MLIS) at the Catholic University of America, and a student employee in the Catholic University Special Collections. One of the biggest projects I have been privileged to work on as a student employee at Read More

In Special Collections, we’ve dressed in our grandest greens to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. In that spirit, we wanted to take a moment to highlight some books in our collection which are a lot more prepared than us to celebrate the Irish saint’s day, such as these books from our Nineteenth-Century Irish Poetry collection, housed Read More

It is difficult for the twenty-first century mind to grasp the endless drudgery of the daily lives of nineteenth century workers, especially the masses of the poor, and particularly women. While the status of mother or wife was better than that of domestic servant, there was little else separating them from the constant toil of Read More

This week is Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week (Feb. 20-24), a celebration of the concepts of fair use and fair dealing. The Association of Research Libraries explains that “while students, faculty, librarians and others use copyrighted material on a daily basis, Fair Use/Fair Dealing Week is a time to promote and discuss the opportunities presented, celebrate Read More

Our guest blogger is Elyse Ridder, a graduate student in the joint program for Musicology (MA) and Library & Information Science (MLIS) at the Catholic University of America, and a student employee in the CUA Special Collections. During my time as a student employee at the Catholic University Special Collections, I have explored a few Read More

What is Love Data Week? Love Data Week is an international celebration of data. This week was created to promote data discovery, use, protection, sharing, and preservation, specifically in everyday life to inspire communities to use data and was established to bring change that can make a difference. These changes come in a variety of Read More

Textbook affordability continues to be a serious concern for our students. What is the result of the unchecked commercial textbook publishing market? Most students will never purchase the required textbook-directly informing student success, retention and equity in the classroom. Open Education Resources (OER) for higher education have made significant progress over the last few decades Read More

Our guest blogger is Rebecca Lemon, a Library and Information Science (LIS) student at Catholic University. Last semester, as part of my Library and Information Science (LIS) coursework, I had the opportunity to arrange and process two small, related collections, the National Right to Life News Collection and the Long Island Pro-Life Collection , housed Read More

Encountering a book once owned, signed, or inscribed by a distinguished person, is in some way encountering the person who signed it or closing the distance to only “a few handshakes away”. Holding the very same volume, read by someone we admire, turning the same pages, can become a transformative and inspirational experience. Books such Read More