UofL Today with Mark Hebert on Great Day Live is sponsored by the University of Louisville
Alright, something today that may surprise you just a little bit, I
didn't know about this. If you can spend hours looking through family photo
albums you may never come up for air at the U of L archives. Some half a million
photos from Louisville history plus thousands more manuscripts and records that are
open to you:
anybody who wants to browse.
I'm glad no one left these out in the rain!
Walk in and for a small copying fee you can take pictures with you and Mark Hebert has details
about UofL's Archives and Special Collections. Really, we're going back
through Louisville's entire history.
Anything from the city of Louisville that you want to know about, chances are
it's in the archives at the University of Louisville, it's unbelievable. It goes back
to the 1800's, I mean photos back to the 1800's so if you got grandpa who owned a
barber shop in downtown Louisville and you want to see if there's a picture of it,
chances are there is one in the UofL Archives. And I don't think people realize this
resource is there for you to go find stuff or your old neighborhood-want to see what your old neighborhood looked like the 1920's?
Chances are it's there. And you have somebody who helps you because obviously you
just can't walk in on your own. Yes they have reference folks out there that can help you out so let's take a
look at the video you can see some of stuff that's available.
Katie Yokum and Pete Duval are on a tour of sorts. "little hometown tourism, I've known
about these archives for twenty, twenty-five years it's been on my bucket
list, I've thought for years about coming here and just never done it and today
was the day." Yokum has come to the University of Louisville's Archives and Special
Collections room in the basement of U of L's main library lured by the iconic
photos like this one she'd seen in the Standard Oil collection that's housed here.
Archives director Cary Daniel says there are thousands of rare books, hundreds of
files of documents and even more containing photographs--2 million of them!
"That's a lot of stuff!" Most of it tied to the history of Louisville.
"Archives and Special Collections really exist in large part to document the life of
Louisville" There are volumes of city records and the original charter of the city of
Louisville from 1780 signed by Thomas Jefferson. There's also the oldest known
document tied to UofL--its 1798 charter--as well as a rare fourth folio of Shakespeare
from 1685. But Daniel says local folks who find their way to the archives are
most interested in old photos that jog personal memories. "People routinely
find pictures of their house, of their business, or of their grandparents
business, even better making those connections with the past. People learn
about their neighborhood that way. You have people come in and go through the
photocopy files and subject files and literally walk down memory lane.
You know, pick out the department store file and remember when we you know we
went there and we had lunch? Just really the
photos evoke memories and it really is a privilege to be part of that."
You know what's cool though, when you see photos that you remember from your childhood, areas you
remember and then you see the photo, you're like, oh I remember that exactly right, it's a little different than the way you put it in your head.
Well we were trying to figure some of them out, who are they, what's that photo? Oh yeah, we did the same thing
when we were in there. And you should know that a lot of the stuff is now online.
They've digitized thousands and thousands of these photos so you can just go on to
the archives web page at U of L and look at these photos they don't even have to
go to the UofL archives, the room there in the basement. Boy there was a lot of stuff down there. Was Thomas Jefferson just here to
see a Madonna concert or what was going on? He was hangin' around with Donald Trump. Yes, it's a busy weekend at UofL. This Saturday the state of
Latinos in Louisville seminar is coming up which has statistics and a lot about
education and healthcare and things going on with Latinos which is a growing
population here in Louisville. That's all day Saturday, also on Saturday the U of L
Women's Book Fest, it's their tenth anniversary, it's all women authors from
Kentucky that you can go in and talk to and buy their books, and the Engineering Expo for students of
all ages if you're interested in math science those kinds of things. The
engineering students at U of L will be helping out with that, that's Saturday
as well. It's a community unto itself. And then the Ms U of L pageant is Saturday night as well
so if anybody wants to check out who we're going to have as the Miss Kentucky
contestant from UofL, that's Saturday night. I might make a run at that, you never know. I don't know if you've got enough hair.
Thanks so much guys. Uof L Today with Mark Hebert airs Mondays and Tuesdays on 93.9 FM, Metro TV Monday
through Friday and Thursdays at five on KET. You can always find out more about
UofL online at Louisville.edu