Exhibits Feature Bicentennial Themes

The Special Collections Division has planned three exhibitions as part of our celebration of the bicentenary of the founding of the University. The first, "Be to My Faults a Little Blind," was a great hit during the fall season. The title was taken from a caption in a Scribner's Magazine article published in 1888 featuring life at Georgetown. The exhibition evoked the flavor of student activities from our very first student, William Gaston, whose account was on display, through modern times. Since we appear to have been the first American university to establish an archive, our collection is unusually abundant.

We are particularly fond of the accounts of the rebellion of1850: "it broke out on account of the grub, mostly . . . "; the Prefect of Studies' report of March 7, 1832: ". . . those who sunk shamefully and failed scandalously did not and could not with all their tricks and wiles and cunning escape the hand of retributive justice . . . "; and the issue of True Comics featuring Georgetown's legendary athlete, Al Blozis.

The second of the library's bicentennial exhibits is entitled "Fruits of Freedom: The Catholic Press in America 1789-1829." Drawn almost entirely from the library's unparalleled holdings of early Catholic American printing, the exhibit focuses on those publications which served to unite American Catholics, to provide them scriptural and spiritual consolations, to protect them from the almost completely secular society in which they lived, and to enable them to worship. Among the items shown are a number which are quite probably unique, including the earliest extant American catechism (printed in Georgetown in 1793), the first attempt at a directory of the church (1817), and a pastoral letter of the Vicar-General of New Orleans settling a jurisdictional dispute (1805).

On January 11, Dr. Paul Koda of the University of Maryland library delivered an address at a reception marking the exhibit's "official" opening, using the Catholic materials shown as reference points in a discussion of early American printing and publishing.

During the spring and summer we will be showing a documentary history of Georgetown and its origins from Ignatius and the Ratio Studiorem to the present day.