Archive for the tag 'Ohrstrom Library'

The Library in Your Lap

December 12th, 2011

This phrase, coined by current senior, RG ’12, is such a great way of expressing the always available digital content purchased/subscribed to by Ohrstrom library.

When you are off the SPS grounds, such as during the upcoming Winter Break, simply visit vpn.sps.edu and log in with your SPS credentials.  All of the library’s digital holdings will now become available, including:

Analog hungry?  Stop by the library before the break to pick up a physical book(s).  We will be happy to provide an extended due date.

Image courtesy of rogdorf under this Creative Common license.

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Welcome Back to Ohrstrom

September 2nd, 2011

Welcome to students just beginning their St. Paul’s School experience, and welcome back to those of you with familiar faces.  The crisp excitement of the new school year is in the air, eagerly blowing across Lower School Pond and up the steps of Ohrstrom Library.  There will be much that is reassuringly familiar when you come into the Library, but you will also discover much that is refreshingly new.

New and exciting this year is the addition of eReference to the Ohrstrom Library’s collection which will allow for online access to hundreds of dictionaries, encyclopedias, handbooks and guides. Several hundred new eBook titles have also been added, and a new database, NBC Learn,  opens an electronic gateway to thousands of historic and current event videos, images, newsreels, and broadcasts.

Unchanged is the commitment of the Ohrstrom Library staff to providing the best academic resources possible to St. Paul’s School students, faculty and staff.  Welcome back to your library.

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Happy Anniversary Ohrstrom!

April 21st, 2011

Leather bookmark created for the dedication of Ohrstrom Library

Leather bookmark created for the dedication of Ohrstrom Library

It was twenty years ago this week that Ohrstrom Library was officially dedicated and welcomed into the St. Paul’s School community.  The Spring 1991 Alumni Horae article described the dedication ceremony this way:

With moments of high ceremony, with inspiring speeches, and with good fellowship Ohrstrom Library was dedicated over the weekend of April 20-21, 1991. Open to students at the start of the winter term, the Library represents the “love and labor of many” who contributed imagination, thought, time, effort, and financial support during some six years to make this remarkable building possible.

Fittingly, all constituencies were represented in the Chapel of SS. Peter and Paul on Sunday, April 21, during the blessing of the Library by the Right Reverend Douglas Theuner, Bishop of New Hampshire. Holding symbols of their activities —blueprints, plans, minutes of meetings, hard hats, and a full range of Dewey Decimal system volumes —were representatives of the architects and builders, the Library Review Committee, the library staff, and the Library Association.

The February 1992 issue of School Library Journal featured an article about the process of bringing the dream of Ohrstrom Library to reality. Ohrstrom’s head librarian at the time, Rosemarie Cassel-Brown, described her experiences this way:

Looking back over the years of planning and our first year in the new building, I can think of many special moments: the trustees’ meeting at which the decision to build a new library was made; the unveiling of Robert Stern’s design; the ground-breaking ceremony in the spring of 1988: the thrill of seeing the new building take shape across the pond from the old library; and, the inauguration ceremonies and celebrations in the spring of 1991.

If I were to single out one experience I would not have missed for anything, it would be the challenge and the joy of being part of a team of people dedicated to the common goal of creating this uniquely beautiful new library for a great school. The level of mutual trust and regard and the growing appreciation of one another’s perspectives, talents, and responsibilities was remarkable and, I would venture to say, quite unusual.

I think it is fair to say that the collaborative spirit that was instrumental in bringing Ohrstrom Library to St. Paul’s School continues to be part of the daily experience in the operation of the library.

Read the full Alumni Horae article HERE.

Read the full School Library Journal article HERE.

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New Archives Exhibit: The Early Libraries of SPS

April 7th, 2011

Ohrstrom Library Digital Archives is featuring a new online exhibit:  The Early Libraries of St. Paul’s School. The exhibit features thirteen photos from the archives collection of the different locations that have served as libraries over the years, leading up to the construction of Ohrstrom Library.

It was twenty years ago, on April 21, 1991, that Ohrstrom Library was dedicated, and this exhibit celebrates the strong tradition of enthusiasm and support for libraries at St. Paul’s School that has continued uninterrupted from its beginning in 1873 to the present time.  This online exhibit is based on a similar exhibit now on display in the upper level lobby exhibit cases.  Browse the online exhibit and take a few minutes the next time you are in the library to see the display.

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New on OLDA: Form Plaque Photos

March 3rd, 2011

The Ohrstrom Library Digital Archive – OLDA for short – has some new images available from the SPS Archives for online viewing. A series of photographs have been digitized featuring forty-two of the Form plaques on display in the Coit Upper Dining Hall. The first nine plaques from the Forms of 1859 through 1867 have been added to the website this week and include descriptions of the symbols present in the designs as described by the carver, John Gregory Wiggins.

Click HERE to see the images.

Wiggins was a teacher at St. Paul’s School from 1912 -1916, until he left to pursue a full-time carving career. Counted among his many ecclesiastical commissions are the carvings he created for the New Chapel – including the allegorical animals that adorn the pews in the choir room. Wiggins began carving Form plaques in 1921 and over the years he designed and carved the plaques for the Forms of 1858 through 1953.  These include all the plaques on display in the Coit Upper Dining Hall and the colorful heraldic shield plaques in the Upper Cloister.

More images will become available on OLDA over the next few weeks, and a selection of the images will be collected into an online exhibit with more detail on the history and tradition of the plaques.  Over time, images will be added of plaques carved by other artists that continued the tradition after Wiggins.

In addition, you can follow the process of the creation of the Form plaque for the Form of 2011, as documented in the SPS Form Plaque Project blog and SPS Form Plaque Project Facebook page. This project is the result of the Form of 1973 Mentor Fellowship awarded to me last spring, and I will be carving the plaque over the summer that will be displayed in the Coit Middle Dining Hall when completed.  Over the next few years I will be carving additional Form plaques for the missing years going back to 1991 so that a cherished school tradition begun ninety years ago by John Gregory Wiggins can continue into the future.

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