University Libraries’ Undergraduate Research Fellowship is a great opportunity for IMME students with an interest in academic research to work with a library mentor and look at some interesting materials related to Mathematics and English. This kind of project can be a great way to show employers of your skills and capabilities. You may need to plan ahead to have one of these positions in the summer. I explain all below.

Projects may address a range of subject areas and can result in learning objects, digital images, curated exhibits, or performances.  Experiences vary, but may include work with scholarly communication, metadata, primary resources and artifacts (as found in our Archives or Special Collections), development of open education resources, knowledge discovery tools, bibliography/resource curation of a discipline, digitization, and more. This is a paid summer fellowship of $4,000 for a 10 week; 40 hours/week project, paid hourly. 

To give you an idea of what you might find in the university archives, I had a talk to a special collection librarian, Jolie Braun who flagged up to me a really intriguing list, including:

• the papers of fascinating mathematicians such as Tibor Radó, 
• notes from a course with Heinrich Martin Weber, 
• and the papers of Scott Helmes who creates mathematical art and poetry. 

Jolie Braun also informed me that the library recently purchased three late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century American cipher books (handwritten notebooks created by students studying mathematics before textbooks were easily available). There were also several early mathematics textbooks like Freshman Mathematics at the Ohio State University (1957) in the Rare Books and Manuscripts Library. Among other returns that might be starting points of interesting projects were:

• a 1979 volume Comics teach the language of mathematics in the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library and Museum,
• A History of Mathematics at the Ohio State University: 1873 – 1969 (1969),
• from the archive of the choreographer Twyla Tharp, a 1962 vinyl record Music from mathematics,
• C.H. McDowell’s Dictionary of Mathematics (1947);
• John J. Kinsella’s 1945 book Wartime applications of mathematics for use in junior and senior high school,
• Lectures given at the Galois Institute of Mathematics at Long Island University (1934),
• Mathematics for practical men: being a commonplace book of pure and mixed mathematics (1877) by Olinthus Gregory,
• an instructional art object by engineers Bob Gardner and Rob Van Der Meer titled The math doctor,
• or from 1728, The Athenian oracle: being a entire collection of all the valuable questions and answers in the old Athenian mercuries. Intermix’d with many cases in divinity, history, philosophy, mathematics, love, poetry; never before publish’d by a member of the Athenian society.

Bear in mind that the fellowship deadline occurs at the beginning of the spring semester, so it would not be a bad idea to start thinking about this now. You will find details here. You can reach Jolie Braun here.