Celebrating OHIO’s 2022 Founders Day

Ohio University Libraries presents, “Celebrating OHIO's Founding: The History of Founders Day at Ohio University,” an online exhibit that details the history of Founders Day at OHIO from the beginning of the celebration through the 2000s. The digital exhibit celebrates 218 years since the establishment of Ohio University in 1804 and is available to view beginning February 18, 2022.

In February 1804, the state of Ohio General Assembly approved charter plans to create Ohio University, which became the first institute of higher education in the old Northwest Territory. OHIO is the oldest university in the state and celebrates its founding annually with Founders Day on February 18. 

The online exhibit, “Celebrating OHIO’s Founding” begins with an introduction to OHIO’s past Founders Day celebrations and to the Libraries’ Digital Archives. Bill Kimok, University archivist and records manager, is co-curator of the digital exhibit, which includes photos and materials from student newspapers, scrapbooks, yearbooks, alumni magazines and official University documents. 

Kimok said that he chose the theme for this year’s Founders Day exhibit after the success of the Libraries’ 2021 Homecoming digital exhibit, which similarly traced the history of Homecoming at OHIO. The format of the digital exhibit allows users to explore the history of Founders Day by decades and compare it with the celebration today.

“One surprising thing that I discovered while doing the research [for the exhibit] is that Founders Day was really as big an event as Homecoming during every year of the first decade of its celebration in the 1920s,” Kimok said, adding that the original purpose of Founders Day was to “bring students, staff, alumni and community together in celebration of the history of the institution.”

“What the digital exhibits do so well is connect people,” said Miriam Nelson. “They build a bridge between our digital archives and our physical collections because the curators have the opportunity to provide a lot more narrative context than they might be able to do in a physical exhibit...and can also add more context to the Digital Archives, where description is focused on each individual item.”

Nelson, director of the Mahn Center, Preservation & Digital Initiatives, was also involved in creating “Celebrating OHIO’s Founding” and said that it was interesting to watch Kimok unearth the history of Founders Day from the Libraries’ archives. 

The exhibit goes in-depth into the University’s first celebration of its founding, which was a two-day extravaganza in 1915 that wasn’t yet officially dubbed “Founders Day.”

“I’m particularly fond of the First Founders Day, which was a centennial pageant that took place in 1915 and was planned in honor of the University’s graduations in 1815,” said Erin Wilson, digital imaging specialist and lab manager. “[W]e have an incredibly detailed account of the 1915 pageant from the first dean of women, Irma Voigt.”

Wilson was not only involved with the creation of “Celebrating OHIO’s Founding,” but also the recent Digital Initiatives project that added decades worth of material to the Libraries’ collection of digitized student newspapers. 

Many photographs and some of the information in the digital exhibit come from student newspapers such as the Green and White (which ran from 1911-1939), Afro American Affairs (which ran from 1970-1982) and The Post. 

“Following a microfilm digitization project that was completed in 2021, the Libraries’ Digital Archives have grown to include The Post issues from the 1970s, 80s and 90s, thus making the complete span of issues from 1960 to 2011 digitally accessible,” Wilson said. 

She also noted that the digital exhibit was a great opportunity to promote the newly digitized issues of The Post, which are available for the OHIO community’s teaching, learning and research needs. The digital format of the exhibit makes these materials more widely available and easily accessible. 

The digital exhibit is available on Founders Day on February 18, 2022, and will be freely available to the public. Those interested in the history of Founders Day and the University’s archives will likely enjoy the exhibit, as well as those who are more broadly interested in the history of Ohio University. 

For more information about “Celebrating OHIO's Founding: The History of Founders Day at Ohio University,” contact Bill Kimok.