During the winter term we held a slate of pop-up special collections meet and greets with our rare materials in Weiser Hall, mainly featuring items from the Joseph A. Labadie Collection.
Books, pamphlets, documents, and other materials laid out for January's meet and greet.
We set up on the built-in counter just outside the Advising / Library Outpost on the first floor of the building. Many of the folks who visited found us by chance, stopping by as they made their way to the elevators or to the exit doors. Over the course of the term we had a lively group of engaged folks who chatted with us over the material, and our audience grew with each meet and greet.
Rare materials on display for February's meet and greet.
In January, we featured Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and his legacy. In February, we brought materials related to Black Power. We featured International Women's Day in March, and in April, we displayed books and ephemera about environmental activism for Earth Day later in the month. We also held our fifth and final event in April, during the Weiser Hall building dedication.
Speaker's Guide on International Women's Day March 8. February, 1950. Prepared by National Education Department and National Women's Comission Communist Party, USA. From the "Women - Culture - International Women's Day" file in the Labadie Subject Vertical Files.
These meet and greets provide an opportunity for folks to not just see these materials, but learn about the collections and talk with us about their interests. Over the course of the semester, we referred several students to our Reading Room or to our Labadie curator, Julie Herrada.
Visitors at our early April meet and greet featuring a selection of materials on environmental activism.
During our March meet and greet, we had someone come over after she'd seen our tweet on the pop up go out. She was especially excited to see the "Action Now in Japan" pamphlet, published in 1980 by Japanese women of the International Women's Year Action Group, and she ended up exploring the pamphlet thoroughly and posting some of her findings on Twitter.
Paula R. Curtis's Twitter thread about the "Action Now in Japan" pamphlet.
If you’d like to see more images of featured items from these events, check out our Unstacked! posts on Tumblr. Look forward to a new slate of meet and greets in Weiser Hall this fall!