Another reason academic libraries should love the NEH: Or what I did last summer

Abstract

This essay is an implicit argument for academic librarians to seek out and participate in National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) Summer Seminars and Institutes for Academic Faculty. It takes the form of my account of the NEH Seminar that I attended for four weeks in July 2022. The seminar was called Printing and the Book During the Reformation: 1450–1650, and it was aimed at higher education faculty. Since attending my first NEH Summer Institute in 2007, I’ve felt like this is a scholarly activity that librarians have not pursued as readily as others in the academic community, almost certainly because of the amount of time it takes, which is admittedly a challenge. Nevertheless, the payoff is worth it for participants and their organizations, especially for the three reasons I mention at the end. This seminar took place at The Ohio State University and consisted of 16 participants from colleges and universities across the United States. With only a couple exceptions, all of our seminar activities took place in the Thompson Library and mostly in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library (RBML), or the glass-fronted classroom at the opposite end of the first floor.