The Grawemeyer Awards: Celebrating Decades of Award-Winning Ideas
Posted: April 10, 2026 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Collections, donor, Ekstrom Library, Events, Exhibits, Music Library, People, Photographic Archives, University of Louisville, University of Louisville Libraries Leave a commentBy Melissa Rothman
What if one idea could change everything?
At the University of Louisville, one alumnus not only dared to ask this question, he committed the final chapter of his life to answering it. In 1984, Charles H. Grawemeyer established an award with the visionary goal of recognizing and elevating ideas with the power to improve the world. Presented in music, political science, psychology, education, and religion, the Grawemeyer Awards continue to honor groundbreaking work that advances knowledge and inspires future generations. More than four decades later, the awards stand as a testament to the enduring power of ideas to shape the world around us.
Charles H. Grawemeyer’s philanthropic journey with the University of Louisville began in 1970, when he gifted $20,000 along with 4,000 shares of stock in Reliance Universal, the company from which he retired after 40 years. His generosity came with a specific purpose: He stipulated that the funds be used to establish a continuing program that would honor two faculty members and five students through monetary awards. This commitment to education is further demonstrated in 1981 when he established an award through the Kentuckiana Metroversity program recognizing faculty at six colleges for excellence in teaching. His philanthropy extended well beyond the awards program; over the years, he donated hundreds of thousands of dollars in endowments to Ekstrom Library to expand its collections, underscoring his profound belief in the pursuit of knowledge. What began as a modest investment and an ambitious vision, eventually culminated in the creation of the internationally recognized Grawemeyer Awards.
The first Grawemeyer Award, established in 1984, recognized excellence in music composition and carried a $150,000 prize, an unprecedented sum for a music award at the time. From this beginning, the program expanded to include awards in world order, education, psychology, and religion. Grawemeyer possessed a deep appreciation for the liberal arts and viewed them as essential to fostering positive social change. His passion for improving the world was shaped, in part, by his experience as an engineering student in the 1930s, a period when the humanities were largely absent from hard science curricula. In a 1990 address to the Rotary Club, he reflected, “Our world has advanced so fast and so far in technical achievements that there now exists a vital need to learn how these accomplishments can best be applied to humankind’s total well-being.” For Grawemeyer, the humanities were not separate from scientific progress but rather an essential component in creating meaningful change.
Unlike many honors that recognize a lifetime of achievement, the Grawemeyer Awards focus on a single idea, one with the potential for lasting impact. What further distinguishes the awards is their selection process. While scholars play a central role, Grawemeyer believed that ideas should not remain confined to academic circles. As a result, the evaluation process includes a stage involving informed lay committees. Judges are guided by three core questions: Is the idea novel? Does it demonstrate academic integrity? And is it something the broader public ought to consider? This emphasis reflects Grawemeyer’s conviction that powerful ideas should be accessible and capable of influencing the world beyond academia.
Current Executive Director John Ferré, who has worked with the Grawemeyer Awards since 1994, emphasizes the breadth and influence of the ideas recognized. When asked to name a standout recipient, he found it impossible to choose just one, instead pointing to impactful ideas across all award categories. Though he resisted singling out a particular recipient, Ferré did share a memorable moment from the awards’ history. When Mikhail Gorbachev visited Louisville in 1995 to accept the award for Ideas Improving World Order, Ferré recounted an amusing anecdote: “At the banquet, the Russians ate little. People associated with the award later learned that they had spent the afternoon gorging themselves on Kentucky Fried Chicken. They were simply too full to eat dinner.”
The awards have also experienced moments of controversy. In 2011, Greg Mortenson was named the recipient of the Grawemeyer Education Award for Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace . . . One School at a Time, a book describing schools for girls established by his Central Asian Institute in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Just days after announcing the winner, 60 Minutes aired an exposé, asserting that much of Mortenson’s claims were fabrications. Amid the ensuing scrutiny and legal challenges, Mortenson never came to Louisville to accept the award. While this incident revealed challenges within the selection process, it also underscored a deeper truth: even as the awards strive to elevate transformative ideas, as with any noble endeavor, they remain subject to the complexities and fallibility of human judgment.
In honor of Charles H. Grawemeyer’s enduring vision, Ekstrom Library has created an exhibit highlighting the far-reaching impact of the Grawemeyer Awards. Drawing from Archives and Special Collections, as well as digital resources, the exhibit features original documents, photographs, and news articles that offer insight into the history and global reach of the awards. Visitors can explore materials related to Grawemeyer’s philanthropic legacy alongside select examples of notable recipients across disciplines. By showcasing ideas that have shaped fields and influenced societies, the exhibit does more than celebrate the past; it invites visitors and students to imagine their own potential in shaping a better world.
The Grawemeyer Awards Exhibit will be on view through August 2026 in Ekstrom Library West, located across from the main checkout desk. Visitors interested in learning more can explore the official Grawemeyer Awards website. The Music Library also houses the Grawemeyer Collection of Contemporary Music, offering access to compositions by past recipients.
Article clipping – Business First, May, 1992. From the Charles Grawemeyer Papers, 2012_001‑UA. University of Louisville Archives & Special Collections.
Diane Ravitch
“2014 Grawemeyer Awards Presentation and Dinner,” Flickr, April 15, 2014
Kelly Brown Douglas Grawemeyer Award Medal.
From – Dittmer, Allan. The Power of Ideas : The University of Louisville Grawemeyer Awards in Music, Education, Religion, and World Order. 2nd ed, Jesse Stuart Foundation, 2000.
Urban Renewal Commission photographs digitized, now available
Posted: March 11, 2026 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Collections, Digital Collections, Louisville, Louisville History, New Items, Photographic Archives, Photographs, Primary Sources, University of Louisville Libraries Leave a commentBy Emma Beck
In the 1960s and 1970s, Louisville’s Urban Renewal Commission planned and oversaw the redevelopment of downtown. The project sought to improve the city and eliminate perceived deterioration of urban areas, clear room for Interstate 65, and build the main hospital network, including the University of Louisville’s Health Sciences Campus.
In 1989, the City Archives donated photographs taken by the Urban Renewal Commission to the University of Louisville. The collection consists of black and white photographs and negatives, some color prints, and a limited number of accompanying documents. We are pleased to announce that the 3,856 images in the print series have been digitized and are now available in our Digital Collections. To increase usability, images of the same location on what is presumed to be the same day have been grouped together on the same record, leading to 2,443 total records.
These images show houses, buildings, and businesses primarily in the Central Business District, Russell, and Phoenix Hill. Despite the usage of these photographs as evidence of deterioration, many of these images show people living in the thriving Black business district in Louisville, including Old Walnut Street, now known as Muhammad Ali Boulevard.
The Carousel Restaurant and L&M Used Furniture and Appliances at 609-611 West Walnut Street, Louisville, Kentucky, 1960. Source identifier ULPA 1989_026_1314
The Economic Development Department of the Urban Renewal Commission documented the locations of buildings set for demolition by block and parcel (lot number). This system made using the collection for research very challenging. To increase the collection’s usability, Cassidy Meurer, Archivist for the Barry Bingham, Jr. Courier-Journal Photograph Collection, re-processed the collection by location as part of her Master of Art History thesis, Lost in the (re)process: Challenging constructions of downtown Louisville through the urban renewal commission photograph collection.
The digitization of the collection could not be possible without student worker Abby Ward (’25) who re-numbered, scanned, and created metadata with the scans, Metadata Librarian Emma Beck who edited the collection, and Digital Initiatives Librarian Rachel Howard who reviewed it.
This collection shows snapshots of a city that exists only in the photos. For example, the image below depicts the corner of Second and Main Streets, the current location of the KFC Yum! Center. This photograph collection is significant because it documents a version of downtown Louisville on the precipice of its drastic evolution.
Second Street Bridge entrance at 209 West Main Street, Louisville, Kentucky, circa 1960. Urban Renewal Commission. ULPA 1989_026_0001.
Finding humanity in the archives: A student worker’s story
Posted: March 3, 2026 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Collections, Databases, Ekstrom Library, Government Documents, Kentucky, Librarianship / Archivy, Louisville, Louisville History, Primary Sources, Research Tips, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: Family, history, life, travel, writing Leave a commentBy Alexanna Woodard
Many people spend their weekends shopping with friends, catching a movie, maybe hitting a hiking trail, or seeing some boy band literally nobody’s ever heard of. Maybe even partying. Me? I like to spend mine hunting down grandma’s obituary from 1997.
Resources provided by the University of Louisville Libraries have made this hobby of mine possible. There’s something oddly comforting about hearing the stories of people in the past who lived before you, whether that comes from anecdotes, testimonies, community contributions, even photos and videos ranging from what they did, who they loved, and the random little quirks that made them human. It’s like peeking through a window into lives that could have been forgotten or erased. Even if the story is something simple like Grandpa Warren—a volatile World War I soldier who later retired, spent his days painting, and his nights settled into a rocking chair with a cat on his lap—in a strange way, it’s very grounding to know that these people laughed, cried, fought, and lived just like we do now. The Libraries let me catch glimpses of that humanity decades later, sometimes even centuries later.
But what do I mean by that? Well, I didn’t exactly plan on this becoming a hobby. My mom (who is a librarian) was researching our family history and genealogy while I was helping document old photos and headstones during a winter break trip. We visited Old Broad River cemetery in Black Mountain, North Carolina, and found five generations of our family there. The adventure included a lot of crouching, squinting, and taking photos of headstones that barely made it out of the 1800s.
Somewhere between the awkward squatting and playing assistant photographer for my mom (an unpaid position, for the record), I realized I was having fun. Plus, it’s good cardio, so it’s a win-win in my book. That interest became serious when my brother and I stumbled across River Valley Cemetery, a potter’s field in Louisville, Kentucky, in severe disrepair. Seeing unmarked graves, overgrowth, and even tractor tracks running through burial sites was really unsettling. These were people, the poor, the marginalized, the homeless, who seem to be an afterthought. That was the moment I decided that documentation wasn’t just interesting, it absolutely mattered.
It turns out that a gravestone can only tell you so much, which is how I ended up heavily relying on the Libraries’ databases. When I started my grave documentation hobby, all I had was a person’s headstone, name, dates of birth and death, and maybe location if I was lucky enough to find it on Family Search. I knew there was probably way more to the story than what I was finding, but I wasn’t sure where to find their stories. My mom subscribed to Ancestry’s newspaper catalog which allows her to access literally anyone. It was great but I wasn’t exactly eager to spend fifty dollars just to find where Uncle Loogie the potato merchant’s funeral was held in 1972. That’s when I remembered that the Libraries provide access to newspaper archives, and I started with ProQuest.
I was surprised by how easy it was to navigate ProQuest. What I really love about it is if you can narrow searches down to year ranges. If that’s still too broad, you can filter to only provide results from a specific month. It also highlights the name you’re looking for in yellow, and you can examine the newspaper article and see if the names, age, date, location match up which is a blessing and makes things way less complicated than I originally thought. When I find what I’m looking for, I screenshot and crop the image, then I upload my findings on Find a Grave. I always cite the source in that image caption as An obituary published by [insert newspaper] on [date] so others will know where I found the sources.
All of this is technically a solo hobby, until you factor in my mom, who knows what she’s doing. A lot of this work ends up being a team effort: my mom handles the research side, and I handle the physical documentation. I’m the one crouching, bending, reaching, and wedging myself in questionable positions like I’m auditioning for Cirque du Soleil to get readable photos of headstones or mausoleums she can’t physically reach or get on her phone, while she double-checks records and catches missing or incorrect information I might miss. More than once, I have very confidently and proudly logged someone as “Chip Douglas,” only for her to later find an obituary revealing that his legal name was something different.
There’s no way I’d be able to catch some of these errors on my own, and my mom has been doing research far longer than I have and it really shows. Thankfully, I do catch the mistakes slightly faster; I always make sure to put in the surname then death date like “Johnson 2007” and check to see if any names and dates match. If they do, I either add their photos if they don’t have one or leave it alone. If there’s already info about them and there’s absolutely no information, that’s when I add the memorial. And that’s how a hobby that started with crouching for headstone photos turned into a full-scale mother-daughter operation with public records, citations, and the occasional identity crisis courtesy of Chip Douglas and the University of Louisville Libraries. But honestly? I wouldn’t have it any other way.
Alexanna Woodard is a sophomore studying Communications at the University of Louisville and a student employee at the University of Louisville Libraries.
Rare local history lives on in UofL’s Internet Archive
Posted: February 11, 2026 Filed under: Collections, Digital Collections, Kentucky, Librarianship / Archivy, Louisville, Louisville History, Primary Sources, Technology, University of Louisville Libraries 2 CommentsBy Kaelyn Harris
The Internet Archive is a non-profit online repository containing billions of digitized materials such as audio recordings, visual materials, webpages, books, and other texts. These include older materials that have been digitized and are freely available as they fall under public domain access and usage rights. Many libraries and other information institutions, as well as motivated individual users, contribute material to the Internet Archive for preservation and access.
The University of Louisville collection, as curated by Ekstrom Library’s Technical Services department, contains books, pamphlets, and other items related to Louisville and university history, governance, economics, and society, though there are a few notable exceptions. The most-viewed item is “The Arkansas race riot” by Ida B. Wells-Barnett, with over nine thousand views. The book goes over the events of the Elaine Massacre of 1919 and the ensuing court injustices, including segments of trial transcripts.
One of the least-viewed but certainly interesting items is “Stay Alive!” by Marcus Dow, a 1928 semi-comedic book on the rules of the road for pedestrians and drivers as car ownership gradually became more common among the American populace. Some of the advice is still applicable today, but most of it exists now as fodder for a good laugh. The main key to road safety? Don’t be a jerk.
The archive collection focuses heavily on the preservation of Louisville history. There are several texts covering influential figures, like the story of the Bernheim family as written by Isaac Wolfe Bernheim, but it’s the lesser-known stories of Louisvillians past that interest me. A portion of these are memorial literature, which is created as a special remembrance of an event, occasion, or person. As a genre, it has largely fallen out of fashion with the turn of the 21st century, making these examples from the late 1800s and early 1900s special finds.
The most common example of memorial literature is a booklet from a funeral or memorial service. One such piece is Alice Fraser Bigelow, published in 1927 by an assortment of her closest friends and family members. The booklet reflects the mourners’ own feelings combined with pieces Alice herself loved, including poets Edna St. Vincent Millay, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Victor Hugo, and Theocritus. She is portrayed as a great lover of music, art, and education. Alice becomes more real to us, nearly a hundred years later, because of this book.
In a similar vein, Aunt Cilla: a tale of old Bardstown briefly chronicles the life and death of Priscilla Howell, an African American maid to the Howell and Caruthers families in the mid to late 1800s. This memorial piece is written by a wealthy white woman, Louise J. Speed, and includes period-typical biases and language within it. However, it also provides an intimate look into Speed’s remembrances of a dear friend, who left an immeasurable impact on the people she loved. Still, Speed tries to reconstruct Aunt Cilla’s life and personality as she and the neighborhood remembered her. The dedication says it all, really. “Because the story of Aunt Cilla is not fiction but a beautiful fact, I dedicate its telling to her memory with the hope that it will prove helpful to many of her race and mine.”
Both of these texts can only provide an echo of what Alice Fraser Bigelow and Priscilla Howell were like during their lifetimes. However, our study and understanding of local history would be much the poorer without them; by digitizing materials like these, the UofL Internet Archive collection preserves and shares past memories in service of building a more understanding, freely accessible future.
From the archives: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s visits to Louisville
Posted: January 15, 2026 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Collections, Digital Collections, Images, Kentucky, Louisville, Louisville History, Photographic Archives, Photographs, University of Louisville, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: civil rights, history, holidays, mlk, news 2 CommentsDr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s visits to Louisville in the 1960s were important moments in the Civil Rights Movement, with key speeches and rallies held in the city. From his 1960 voter registration rally at the Jefferson County Armory to his 1967 visit to the University of Louisville’s Brandeis School of Law, King’s presence called for justice and equality.
The University of Louisville Libraries are honored to preserve the photos below which document some of his visits, thanks to the Barry Bingham, Jr. Courier-Journal Photograph Collection in Archives and Special Collections. These images offer a glimpse into the city’s role in shaping the Civil Rights Movement.
Muhammad Ali, left, along with Dr. Martin Luther King, spoke to the media regarding Civil Rights issues in Louisville and the nation. By Thomas V. Miller, The Courier-Journal. March 29, 1967. CJ_1967_03_29_TVM_001.
Dr. Martin Luther King spoke with reporters during an open housing rally at a church in Louisville. By Charles Fentress, The Courier-Journal. March 30, 1967. CJ_1967_03_30_CFJ_001.
Dr. Martin Luther King spoke during an open housing rally at a Mt. Zion Baptist Church in Louisville. By Charles Fentress, The Courier-Journal. March 30, 1967. CJ_1967_03_30_CFJ_010.
Thanks to Cassidy Meurer, archivist for the Barry Bingham, Jr. Courier-Journal Photograph Collection, for compiling the photos and captions.
From the archives: When poison was medicine
Posted: January 7, 2026 Filed under: Collections, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, Librarianship / Archivy, University of Louisville Libraries Leave a commentBy Cassidy Polack
As I have been working on an inventory of our medical instruments in the Kornhauser Health Sciences Library’s historical collection, I have come across a wide variety of items. Surgical needles, scalpels, amputation kits, all sorts of instruments! I have also come across some historical medicines.
Historical medicines are incredibly interesting! Having evidence of the kinds of medicine used in past allows us to study how medicine has evolved, and treatments have changed. Biochemical analyses have been done on different collections of historical medicines. Often the goal is to determine what is inside the bottles, because the labels aren’t always truthful. Other times researchers look at the contents to determine how effective the treatments may have been and how they differ from modern ones.[i] The empty bottles themselves are also topics of research studies.
One of the medicines I found may be familiar to you: strychnine. Known largely for being a poison, strychnine and its root plant native to Southeast Asia and Australia have been used for the past five centuries, primarily as a pesticide for small animals, birds, and insects.
Strychnine has also been used medicinally, as it affects muscle contractions. It has been used in history as a laxative, appetite stimulant, treatment for heart issues or paralyzed muscles, and even to enhance the performance of athletes.[ii] In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, strychnine was used alongside caffeine in experimental procedures to resuscitate patients who went into cardiac arrest under anesthesia. It was later superseded by more effective and safer methods. [iii] It continued to be used in various foods and medicines until it was banned in the United States by the FDA in 1962. However, it could be found in over-the-counter medicines well into the 1980s.[iv] Today it is mostly used in rat poison and similar pesticides, though the FDA warns consumers about its use in some homeopathic remedies.[v]
Handling and storing historical medicines can be dangerous in a number of ways. Safety has been a priority throughout the entire process of this inventory. We have been working closely with UofL’s Department of Environmental Health and Safety (DEHS) to determine which items are safe for us to keep. In regard to the strychnine, together with DEHS we have decided the risk of potential harm outweighs the benefits of keeping it. Trained DEHS personnel will be cleaning the contents out of the bottles and returning them to us to safely keep in our collections.
[i] Torbenson, M., Kelly, R.H., Erlen, J., Cropcho, L., Moraca, M., Beiler, B., Rao, K.N., & Virji, M. (2000). Lash’s: A bitter medicine: Biochemical analysis of an historical proprietary medicine. Historical Archaeology, 34(2), 56-64; White, W.A. (2020). Just what the doctor ordered: Biochemical analysis on historical medicines from downtown Tucson, Arizona. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 25(2), 515-543.
[ii] Science History Institute. Strychnine sulfate tablets. 2023. Philadelphia/ https://digital.sciencehistory.org/works/4voh934; Gupta, R.C. (2007). Non-anticoagulant rodenticides. In Veterinary Toxicology, 548-660.
[iii] Somerson, S.J. (1990). Historical perspectives on anesthetic-related cardiac arrest and resuscitation. Journal of the American Association of Nurse Anesthetists, 58(4), 288-295.
[iv] Otter J, D’Orazio JL. Strychnine Toxicity. [Updated 2023 Aug 7]. In: StatPearls [Internet]. Treasure Island (FL): StatPearls Publishing; 2025 Jan-. Available from: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK459306/
[v] Center for Drug Evaluation and Research. (n.d.). Some homeopathic products may put you at risk. U.S. Food and Drug Administration. https://www.fda.gov/drugs/understanding-over-counter-medicines/some-homeopathic-products-may-put-you-risk
UofL’s earliest basketball uniforms return to Archives & Special Collections
Posted: October 23, 2025 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Collections, Images, Kentucky, Louisville, Louisville History, New Items, Primary Sources, University of Louisville, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: basketball, college-sports, Louisville, photography, Primary Sources, sports-history 1 Comment
In 1993, Archives & Special Collections (ASC) lent Athletics a pair of basketball uniforms for display. The uniforms had been worn by Charlotte Wimp and Donald M. Butler, who were UofL student athletes in the 1910s. Fans of the Hall of Honor in the Yum! Center will be saddened to hear that it has been dismantled, but for Archives & Special Collections, it meant the return of these wonderful uniforms after more than 30 years.
While the Butlers both played basketball, it’s unlikely they wore these uniforms at the same time. Charlotte Wimp (later, Butler) enrolled at the University of Louisville in 1912 and graduated in 1917. She worked initially as a teacher in the Louisville schools and then joined the Louisville and Nashville Railroad Company as a clerk. Donald M. Butler attended college in Illinois and attended our School of Dentistry, graduating in 1921.
Charlotte’s uniform appears to be made of cotton. It is lightweight, which is fortunate, since it features long sleeves and voluminous bloomers. She also had a lovely red head scarf to keep her hair from getting in the way. Donald, for his part, would have been dressed in wool. Say what you will about wool’s moisture wicking properties, he was fortunate that the top is sleeveless and the shorts were, well, relatively short. This is heavy wool and likely to be scratchy as well as warm.
In the 1980s, the Butlers gave their papers to ASC. Their donation included their uniforms as well as photographs and Charlotte’s scrapbook from her college years. The scrapbook, which is available online, features pictures of her friends and their recreational activities. There are photos of sports teams, hikes, preparations for commencement, and what can only be described as goofing around. She was active with student theater, and several productions are documented in the scrapbook, as well. The collection also includes a remarkable placard from the 1915 UofL/UK double header between the men’s and women’s teams, with the scores. The scrapbook includes a photo of the UofL players as they prepared to take the train to Lexington to defeat the Wildcats.
Remarkably, we also hold the papers of one of Charlotte Wimp Butler’s teammates, Florence McCallum, and photographs from Maurice Daniel, a classmate and fellow athlete. McCallum’s scrapbook is also online and features images of the same teams. McCallum embellished her scrapbook with cartoon drawings and inside jokes, some of them featuring Charlotte “Shrimp” Wimp.
These scrapbooks, photos, and uniforms are more than just sweet bits of memorabilia. They are in regular rotation in the class sessions we provide today’s students, introducing them to primary source materials. The scrapbooks give them a feel for how people shared information and stored memories before social media and cell phones. The uniforms allow students to connect to the physical reality of the early 20th century. Together, they help build historical empathy, as despite the significant differences, our 21st century students have a lot in common with our early 20th century students.
Celebrate International Open Access Week 2025: October 20–26
Posted: October 14, 2025 Filed under: Archives & Special Collections, Art Library, Collections, Digital Collections, Digital Scholarship, Ekstrom Library, Events, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, Law Library, Music Library, ThinkIR, University of Louisville, University of Louisville Libraries 1 Comment
Each October, the University of Louisville Libraries join the global community to celebrate International Open Access Week. This year’s theme, “Who Owns Our Knowledge,” encourages reflection on who can access research and education, how knowledge is created and shared, and whose voices are recognized and valued.
The University Libraries support open access through education, advocacy, and management of ThinkIR, UofL’s open-access digital repository. ThinkIR provides worldwide access to the scholarship of the University of Louisville community, including student research like The Cardinal Edge, faculty publications, and freestanding open access journals. Participating in ThinkIR increases the visibility of and preserves scholars’ work, facilitates connections with other researchers, and supports the broader open access movement. Faculty, staff, and students can deposit their work with assistance from ThinkIR staff, who help navigate copyright concerns, create citations, and facilitate long-term preservation. Graduate theses, dissertations, capstones, and undergraduate honors theses are automatically deposited according to program requirements, and student research papers or posters are also welcome.
The Libraries have also established “read and publish” agreements to help UofL researchers publish open access with minimal or no fees. Open Access Week is a great time to increase the accessibility and visibility of scholarship. Creating an ORCID account allows you to track your work and automatically populate your UofL researcher profile in Elements.
Join us for the following events to learn more about open access at the University of Louisville.
- Ask Us About Open Access – Table in Ekstrom Library, Monday, October 20, 9:30–11:00 a.m.
- Publish Open Access With No APCs – Online presentation, Wednesday, October 22, 12:00–12:30 p.m.
- Open Access display – Ekstrom Library, During Open Access Week
Celebrate Open Access Week by making your scholarship more visible, accessible, and impactful for researchers everywhere!
From the archives: 19th-century medical artifacts at Kornhauser
Posted: June 2, 2025 Filed under: Collections, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, Librarianship / Archivy, Louisville History, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: art, food, health, medicine Leave a commentBy Cassidy Polack
The last few months I have been undertaking an inventory of our history collection at the Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, with the hopes that we can improve our online Archives Catalog. The history collection includes rare books, papers from members of the Louisville medical community, and artifacts.
We have several shelves of artifacts, but not all of them are findable in our finding aids or aren’t described in detail. A large part of these are medical instruments of all kinds, from Civil War era amputation kits, to anesthesia equipment, to several doctors’ bags.
The very first artifact I pulled out to begin with took me down an interesting rabbit hole. It is part of a collection from Dr. Alvin Churney, who graduated from the University of Louisville School of Medicine in 1953. He practiced pediatric medicine for more than 35 years in Shively, KY. In addition to medical tools, Kornhauser also holds a small collection of photographs of Dr. Churney and his diploma from the ULSM.
This set is known as O’Dwyer Intubation Set. It was invented by Dr. Joseph O’Dwyer in the 1880s. O’Dwyer treated many children who had contracted diphtheria, which had no cure at the time and was a deadly bacterial infection that could obstruct a child’s airway. This invention allowed a physician to insert a tube into a child’s trachea, allowing them to breathe. The O’Dwyer Intubation Set was soon used worldwide.[i] The shape of the endotracheal tube underwent multiple redesigns (see fig. 1). The original material was also changed, they were initially made of brass and lined with gold, but by 1889 were replaced by rubber tubes.[ii] These changes made the tubes more comfortable and therefore functional.
O’Dwyer passed away in 1898 from diphtheria himself. His invention saved many children’s lives, and he was said to have “made the most conspicuous real contribution to medical progress within the past fifty years.”[iii]
[i] Sperati G, Felisati D. Bouchut. O’Dwyer and laryngeal intubation in patients with croup. Acta Otorhinolaryngol Ital. 2007 Dec;27(6):320-3. PMID: 18320839; PMCID: PMC2640059.
[ii] Borschke Frank, Walters Bradford L. (2015). The History of Endotracheal Intubation. News & Views. Michigan College of Emergency Physicians.
[iii] Gelfand Craig. Diphtheria: Dr. Joseph O’Dwyer and his intubation tubes. Caduceus. 1987;3(2): 1-35.
New Employee Spotlight: Melissa Johnson, Associate Director of Collections
Posted: March 12, 2025 Filed under: Collections, Kornhauser Health Sciences Library, Librarianship / Archivy, People, University of Louisville Libraries | Tags: Books, education, libraries, library, news Leave a comment
We are excited to introduce Melissa Johnson, the new Associate Director of Collections and Assistant Professor at Kornhauser Health Sciences Library. With a personal connection to libraries and a deep commitment to supporting students, Melissa is already making an impact in her role.
A first-generation student, Melissa’s family came to the U.S. from Cuba, and she saw firsthand how essential libraries were to her family’s success. “I saw how important the library was to me as a student and also to others,” she shared. “Libraries provided resources that we couldn’t otherwise access.”
Melissa brings much experience to her new position. She holds a master’s in history as well as in library science, and has worked at institutions like George Mason University and Nova Southeastern University in collection development, reference, and instruction. She is passionate about ensuring that the library collections meet the evolving needs of the university community, saying, “Each business that you entrust to take care of your collection is looking out for their shareholders. But a collection development librarian looks out for the library users, for the students, the faculty, and the staff.”
As Associate Director of Collections, Melissa is focused on making Kornhauser Library’s collections more agile and responsive to the needs of students and faculty. She is particularly excited to help first-generation and underserved students access valuable resources that support their academic success.
Outside of her work, Melissa is a fan of classic B-movies, especially old-school Godzilla films and Abbott and Costello comedies.
Her advice for students, faculty, and patrons? “Don’t be shy. Every person that works in the library is a resource that’s available to you. We are here to help you succeed.”
Please join us in welcoming Melissa to the University Libraries.
University of Louisville Libraries News 
