University Libraries honors June 6 “D-Day” with digital exhibit

Ohio University Libraries will be celebrating "D-Day" on Thursday, June 6, 2024 with an online exhibit titled, “Ohio University and The Post during World War II: Stories from the Digitized Student Newspaper Collection,” with its main focus on the student-run publication, The Post.

The exhibit will be featuring the first look into a complete digitization of one of the largest student publications at OHIO. Bill Kimok, University archivist and records manager, curated the special online exhibit for D-Day and has spent several years working diligently to get the newspaper collection digitized and online.

“When we [the staff in the Mahn Center] knew that we would be having this [digitization] project completed by this spring, we decided that we should find a way to make this known to as many people as possible,” Kimok wrote in an email.

Over 100 consecutive years of The Post, and its predecessor, The Green and White, showcase news from campus and local, to national and international stories. The Post digital issues range from 1911 to 2011, and the topics of coverage include sports, entertainment, multimedia and feature stories, among much more. The complete digitization will now allow anyone to access those early newspaper issues online. The Post was previously only available in bound print copies and microform formats for use by students and researchers.

The Post’s digitization goes in tandem with June 6, as it marks the 80th anniversary of the D-Day Allies landing in Normandy, which was a crucial turning point of World War II. Issues from The Post during that time period highlight what campus was like at the time of crucial points in history.

For the exhibit, Kimok selected stories directly from The Post leading up to, during and after the war to try to capture the atmosphere and mood of the period. The stories include direct military participation of students, faculty and administrators, as well as what the institution and its remaining personnel, especially including students, were doing on campus to support the war effort.

“I have always been amazed at how well our student newspaper staff at OHIO have documented what has been going on in the world and paralleled that with contemporary campus life and culture,” Kimok wrote. “[It] gives us the news from the students’ perspective of these matters.”

Greta Suiter, manuscripts archivist, is the curator of the Cornelius Ryan Collection, a collection highlighting the well-known journalist and author who specialized in military history, specifically WWII. Suiter also worked on an installation with OHIO students to showcase posters relating to June 6.

“For D-Day this year, we [the Mahn Center staff] installed infographic posters created by students in the VICO 4112/5112 Illustration Capstone: Advanced Informational Graphics spring semester class on the fifth floor of Alden Library,” Suiter wrote. “These were created using the 80th anniversary of D-Day and the Cornelius Ryan Collection of WWII papers as inspiration.”

Make sure to check out the D-Day celebration exhibit, the VICO posters on Alden Library’s fifth floor and the newly digitized versions of The Post. To learn more information about the exhibit, contact Bill Kimok.