UB By the Numbers
Category: WebExtras
23: Tom Hollowak’s Favorite Archives
After nearly 23 years at UB, University archivist Tom Hollowak knows well the types of treasures stored in Langsdale Library’s Special Collections. He rounds out his five favorite items in the archives with:
- the Baltimore Neighborhood Heritage Project Collection, a selection of oral histories that “is an early example of ‘history from the bottom up,’” Hollowak says; it documents everyday Baltimoreans and at one time, it was the archives’ most heavily used collection
- the Citizens Planning and Housing Collection, which typifies the core of the University’s holdings documenting post-World War II Baltimore
- Lineage Collections—including those of the General Society of Colonial Wars; the Society of Colonial Wars in the State of Maryland; the Maryland Sons of the American Revolution, Founders and Patriots; the Society of the War of 1812 in Maryland; and American Clan Gregor—donated through former UB President H. Mebane Turner, who also negotiated the organizations’ contribution to an endowment that allows the University to purchase archival supplies
- the Young Men’s Christian Association Collection, used by former faculty member and associate provost Jessica Elfenbein to write her dissertation on the YMCA in 1996. Hollowak later collaborated with Elfenbein, who also served as the first scholar in residence at the archives, on three University-sponsored public history conferences that resulted in two publications.
25: Uncover the Veil
When the going got tough, students in a fall 2012 learning community got writing.
“After a few weeks into the syllabus, I realized that the lecture approach was not working as effectively as I wanted in this learning community context,” says Gregg Wilhelm, adjunct faculty and founder and executive director of CityLit Project, a program in residence in UB’s School of Communications Design. In fall 2012, he taught the ENGL 200: The Experience of Literature component of a learning community, a thematically linked set of courses offered to UB freshmen. The course was titled “iPad, eBook, uThink: How Technology Has Changed Writing, Publishing and Reading.”
So instead of lecturing, Wilhelm encouraged the students in his class to write—and, even more challenging, to write together in teams. “I fell back on ideas I have implemented in the past with teens, experimented with a team-writing component (which is a hard assignment), and we worked on this book together,” Wilhelm says.
The book, Uncover the Veil, is now a published anthology of stories conceived, developed and written by five groups of five students. The stories are based on an original prompt, and each student contributed to the five parts of a traditionally structured story: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action and resolution. Students examined how technology has changed the way that literature is delivered, but the fundamental premise of literature has remained the same: It’s “an effort to transfer content from a writer (the ‘I’) to a reader (the ‘U’),” according to the book’s introduction.
Despite many freshmen being digital natives, meaning they’ve never known a world without digital technologies, the students produced a very analog, beautifully printed book. “The students immediately became engaged, creative, critical, even argumentative at times over character development and plot points,” Wilhelm says. “It was amazing to observe.” Read the anthology now.
The students involved penned stories under pseudonyms, as indicated:
“Dude, What Happened?”
by Cham LaBram
- Amber Adams
- Marie Frazier
- Lauren Latimer
- Chastity Poe
- Brittney Spencer
“Jane Doe”
by Cornell Daniels
- Christian Algood
- Taylor Gates
- Courtney Matthews-Bey
- Danielle Preidt
- Erica Sterling
“In Too Deep”
by B.J Sscot
- Jamal Ali
- Steve Haas
- Brianna Nibbs
- Clifton Reid III
- Shelby Sullivan
“Dark Occurrences”
by C.J.2 MS
- Jasmine Armstrong
- Marquis Holmes
- Christopher Nicholls
- Jared Rixter
- Samuel Wright
“Feathers Fade to Black”
by John Smith
- Jacob Darr
- Jakiha Johnson
- Ikechukwu Opaigbeogu
- Nicholas Shrieves
- Carlene Young