News & Updates

LITS Involved with Several 2015 Orientation Trips

By Kristin Strohmeyer

September 22, 2015

All incoming members of the Hamilton College class of 2019 participated in one of many orientation trips.  Hamilton College offers three branches of orientation adventure trips that provide a fun and friendly atmosphere for easing new students into college life. Several members of LITS were involved with orientation trips this past August.

As LITS First Year Experience librarian, Alex Rihm was excited to meet students informally before the beginning of the school year. In addition to being involved in the three LITS staff-led trips, Alex met with Visiting Assistant Professor Andrew Rippeon’s letterpress and book arts trip and discussed primary source databases with Professor Marianne Janack’s communal societies group.

Carl Wohnsen ’00, LITS AVS Multimedia Systems Technician, proposed and helped to plan a cycling trip on the Canalway trail.  Students rode from Utica to Waterford, making stops to visit historical and cultural sites such as E17, the canal’s tallest lock, the Herkimer Home State Historic Site, and the Arkell Museum in Canajoharie along the way.

Christian Goodwillie, LITS Director and Curator of Special Collections and Archives worked with Professor Marianne Janack’s Intentional Communities XA Trip to acquaint them with resources in Special Collections and Archives relating to communal societies. Goodwillie also accompanied the class on their tours of the Oneida Community Mansion House and Araminta Farms, a newly forming intentional community in Hamilton, New York.

LITS Circulation and Interlibrary Loan Assistant Katrina Schell ’03 planned the storytelling-themed “Telling Our Stories, Communicating Our Selves” XA trip. Students began their adventure with an overnight in Burke Library, then listened to stories of local octogenarians in Clinton, participated in a “how-to” story-telling workshop, and then explored the underworld of Howe Caverns. The trip culminated with each student preparing and telling a story of their own to the group.