University Libraries
A New Audience for ‘Orpheus’
By Maureen Schlangen
When the editors of the student literary magazine Orpheus did some housecleaning in late 2024, they determined it was time to make their multiple cartons of artistic artifacts available in University of Dayton’s open-access institutional repository, eCommons.
Senior English and communication major Bryce Russell ’25, an Orpheus staffer and literary selection panelist, contacted the University Libraries to set the process in motion, and in January, Arya Kinagi, a library student employee earning a master’s in computer science, undertook the semester-long project to create a high-resolution digital version of each issue.
“Working on the digitization of Orpheus was my first experience with a full-scale digitization project, and it’s something I’ll always remember,” she says.
Orpheus, which started in 1969 as a successor to The Exponent, a news and literary publication that launched in 1903, contains a diverse mix of poetry, prose, photography and artwork.
“What stood out to me the most was seeing how student voices and creative expression evolved over the years,” she says. “The magazines were so interesting and colorful. One of my favorite issues was Volume 118, Issue 3, “Bound” (Spring 2019). The theme resonated deeply with powerful writing. I’m proud to have played a part in bringing these publications back to life, and I hope alumni enjoy revisiting them as much as I did.”
An Eye for Details
The process called for persistence, a keen eye and sometimes a bit of sleuthing.
“At first, the number of volumes felt overwhelming, but once I got into the rhythm of scanning, editing in ABBYY FineReader [a character recognition software] and uploading to eCommons, I found myself really enjoying the process,” Kinagi says. “I learned a lot about metadata creation and the importance of preserving history in a format that’s accessible to everyone.”
Metadata — library speak for “data about data” — helps organize and describe information, making it easier for people and search engines to find what they’re looking for. It’s not always apparent.
For example, sometimes, the volume and issue numbering of Orpheus was hard to follow, says Ryan O’Grady, digital projects manager in the University Libraries. “Some issues had no dates either, so we had to infer approximate dates from the context, such as a contributor’s year in school or a reference to a historical event. I think filling in these missing little bits of metadata is a reward that people outside libraries and archives don’t really grasp.”
Kinagi grasps it.
“I genuinely love working at the library — there’s something incredibly meaningful about being involved in preserving and sharing knowledge,” she says. “This experience has deepened my appreciation for digital preservation and how it connects the past with the present.”
Browse the Magazines
Library and archives staff will add to the digital collections of Orpheus and The Exponent as missing issues become available. In the meantime, readers have more than 500 issues to explore in eCommons.
— Maureen Schlangen is the digital publishing and scholarly communications manager in the University Libraries.
Main image includes covers of Orpheus (1983, 1981, 1999, 2017), and content from Orpheus Spring 1972.