Friday, July 13th, was a great day for Special Collections as we celebrated the successful completion of another year’s work with Opportunity NOW, the Nashville program that gets high school students working at local companies across Davidson County. Our students, Rana Naeim and Kena Cheatham toiled away in the Preservation Office and in Special Collections cleaning, organizing and documenting over 300 books from the University of Nashville Book Collection. These books are some of the original items from the university’s library that have survived over 150 years of use and gives us a glimmer of what it was like to be a college student in Nashville prior to the Civil War.
Rana and Kena spent six weeks learning about the history of the University of Nashville and meeting with librarians to learn what they do and how varied their jobs are. A big shout-out to Molly Dohrmann, Jim Thweatt, Laura Matthews and Rachel Lavenda for all of their time and hard work preparing the collection for this project.