LIVE IN A PLACE LONG ENOUGH AND THEY'LL PROBABLY name it after you. So it was with Dorothy Daub, the librarian who served Oberlin's College and public libraries from 1931 until she retired in 1966, and the little house next to Wilder Hall that she called home for 37 years.

It was in 1948, after a fire destroyed her Elm Street home, that Daub moved with her widowed mother to 145 West Lorain Street. Back then, the two-story brick residence was simply called the Bailey-Gager Place, named for the Massachusetts shoemaker, William Bailey, who built it in 1862, and the Gager family of Norwalk, who lived there until the end of World War II. But the old house and the quirky librarian were a perfect match: Unpretentious, the house nonetheless stands out among the town's many historic buildings just as Oberlin's most beloved librarian stood out among its residents. After her death at age 86 in 1985, the house had been her home for so many years that the College officially dubbed it Daub House.