Digital Library Center Blog | UF

Almanack for 1884

Happy St. Patrick’s Day (tomorrow)! To celebrate, enjoy some of the related books (or at least a few that appear related based on searching for “St. Patrick”) in UFDC:

• The Youth’s History of Ireland
• Paddy O’Learey and His Learned Pig
• The Brownies in Ireland
• Celtic Fairy Tales
• Honor Bright, or, The four-Leaved Shamrock
• “Magic Clovers” in St. Nicholas
• Almanack for 1884

After finding so many great New Year’s images, I quickly scanned the University of Florida Digital Collections for images of Christmas and found these. Santa’s mighty large book of naughty and nice is from a book in the Baldwin Library of Historical Children’s Literature, one of the Special Collections in the University of Florida Libraries, and the black and white photograph is from the University Archives, another Special Collection in the University of Florida Libraries.

UF’s public awareness campaign is “The University of Florida is the foundation for The Gator Nation” and then sub-campaign taglines like “The Gator Nation is everywhere.” While it does sound a little sci-fi overlord-esque, it’s actually true in that UF does have land everywhere and does have projects conducted all over the state and all over the world. UF is also one of the largest public schools and has alumni everywhere. If Gator fans are counted, then this becomes even more validated because Gator fans are everywhere. I’m not a sports person, so I only know about any of the sports when people tell me or when my students are on the teams (the students work so hard that it’s almost an ethical imperative to keep up as a teacher). However, I’m so often on phone calls or emails with someone and they hear/read “UF” or “Gainesville” and I hear/read “Go Gators!” in return. It happens so often that it almost no longer seems strange, even when they’re in California or Texas or Canada or wherever. What had seemed strange was not that the recognition of UF and the general friendliness of the response, but that the people were actually Gator fans.

Looking at the image from Puerto Rico, with the grounds keeper in a Gator shirt seems so fitting for UF’s presence across the globe and for Halloween (Dia de Los Muertos).