LIBRARY NEWS

NOTABLES

FEATURES

IN THE NEWS

Where in the Libraries?

PUBLISHED

IN PASSING

25 YEARS AGO IN THE LIBRARIES

LIBRARY NEWS

• Eric Rohmann, the 2003 Caldecott Medal winner for outstanding illustrations in My Friend Rabbit, spoke at UW-Madison Nov. 17. Rohmann lectured at 7 p.m. in L160 Elvehjem Museum of Art, showed slides of his illustrations and signed books after the lecture. The lecture, "Pictures into Stories: How Ideas Become Books," was a part of the School of Education's American Education Week festivities and was cosponsored by the School of Library and Information Studies, the Arts Institute, and the Curriculum and Instruction Department.



• College Library celebrated Halloween in a rather unusual way: with two large pumpkins weighing 431.75 pounds combined. College Library held the "Annual Great Pumpkin Contest" in which library patrons guessed the weight of two pumpkins. The student with the best guess won a scholarship fund contributed by College Library staff.
  
  This year, College Library placed two pumpkins in its library lobby for the month of October, "King Louie," who weighed 268.25 pounds, and "Big Max," who weighed 163.5 pounds. Patrons placed guesses based on the total weight of both pumpkins. A few weeks into the contest, however, the smaller pumpkin began to deteriorate and had to be removed. For the remainder of the contest, College Library placed a picture of both pumpkins alongside the remaining pumpkin and continued to take submissions for the remainder of the month. The winner, Erica VanHeerden, had a guess of 430 pounds.
  
  The contest originated with Jaye Rosandick, a security officer in College Library, who has donated his home-grown pumpkins for the contest. According to Rosandick, five years ago he grew a 223-pound pumpkin in his yard, 20 miles west of Madison. He asked Assistant Director Linda Balsiger, then the building manager, if he could bring it in the library, and he and Bruce Broker, who works in the Computer and Media Center at College Library, decided a contest for the students was in order. Since then, Rosandick has donated two pumpkins each year, and he and Broker run a weight-guessing contest, called the Great Pumpkin Contest Scholarship, popular with the students and the staff.
  
  Although the pumpkins are gone, another neat attraction remains in the lobby. One of the Memorial Union Terrace chairs honoring the Union's 75th anniversary, sits in College Library. The chair, designed to look like a pink flamingo, was originally placed on Bascom Hill but had to be moved indoors for better protection. See: http://college.library.wisc.edu/news/union_chair.html.
  
  
• An exhibit in Memorial Library's lobby looks at human suffering and destruction through words and images. The exhibit, Memory Sites: Destruction, Loss and Transformation, is based on an original exhibit by Angelika Bammer at Emory University, which examines memorial art dedicated to the past. The exhibit places books, illustrations and images into three cases documenting history's darkest moments. Images from the exhibit document Hitler's rule in Nazi Germany, Jewish persecution, Sept. 11, the bombing of Hamburg, and others. One image, "The Library of Burned Books" by Micha Ullman, is part of a memorial dedicated to an event May 10, 1933, in which the Nazis burned books considered "undesirable" in a bonfire in Berlin. The exhibit records Bammer's memory of historical events, and the books along side the exhibit show some of her memories of these events. Jill Rosenshield, Special Collections, put together the exhibit, which runs through Jan. 12. The exhibit is part of a larger theme of memories in honor of Memorial Library's 50th anniversary. An upcoming exhibit will display books having to do with memory.

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NOTABLES

• Michael Cohen has been named head of the Copy Cataloging and Catalog Maintenance Unit in the Cataloging Department in Central Technical Services and will assume the position Dec. 1. Cohen previously served as a Technical Services librarian and as assistant director for the Center for Instructional Materials and Computing. He held positions in the General Library System in the Machine Readable Cataloging Department, the bibliographer's office, College Library and the Memorial Library Circulation Department. Cohen was also a systems applications supervisor for the South Central Library System and a cataloger at the Legislative Reference Bureau and at UW-Whitewater.
  
  
• Center for Instructional Materials and Computing Access Services Librarian Anna Lewis was selected to the "Leaders of the Pack" mentoring program, one of 10 chosen for the project. Hosted by the Library Administration and Management Association, this program will pair a future library leader with a mentor and give participants a travel stipend for the American Library Association's 2004 Midwinter Meeting and Annual Conference. They will also participate on a LAMA committee.
  
  
• Ginger Cassidy, a graduate student in SLIS, has become the program assistant for library services at the CIMC. Her duties will include providing online and Live Help reference assistance and helping with webliographies and CIMC displays.
  
  
• Jenny Zook has become a reference librarian at the Law Library, filling in a vacancy left by former foreign law librarian Telle Zoller. Zook worked as a library manager and a librarian in Chicago law firms, including Latham and Watkins, after earning her bachelor's and master's degrees at UW-Madison. Sunil Rao is the new foreign law librarian.
  
  
• Lynelle Moseley, Memorial Library's night and weekend supervisor, left Nov. 7 to take another full-time position on campus. Jeff Gayton, formerly a weekend security officer who has also worked in circulation, will fill the position.
  
  
• Lisa Haller joined the Library Technology Group Nov. 3. Haller's duties include production and user support, networking and development.
  
  
• Jaime Martindale has accepted the position as the map and geographic information systems Librarian at the Robinson Map Library in Science Hall. Martindale, replaces Mary Galneder, who recently retired. Martindale, a Milwaukee native, previously served as the GIS librarian at Cornell University and received her degree from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

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FEATURES

• Visitors from as far away as Kansas and as close as Memorial Library swung by the book sale, hosted and staffed by the Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries. The semi-annual book sale, which ran from Oct. 22-25, raised more than $21,000 after sales tax, making it the second-largest book sale in its history.
  Read more about the book sale
  
  
• Memorial Library is one of several campus buildings hosting colorful prints from the Tandem Press, a fine arts press associated with the Art Department in the School of Education. The prints were hung on various floors of the library in October and will remain in the library for approximately one year. Because they are displayed in public places, the university may lease the artwork instead of purchase it. Tandem Press prints are also located in the School of Education building, at the UW Foundation, and in Olin House, the chancellor's residence. They were created by artists from across the country who spend an average of one-to-two weeks in Madison working with Tandem Press printers, according to executive director Paula McCarthy Panczenko. During their stay in Wisconsin, the artists, primarily painters and sculptors, work with the master printers. Artists and printers create prints using etchings, woodblock prints, lithographs, and sometimes hand-painted designs. The artists create one proof, and printers make prints based on that proof. Tandem Press typically publishes limited editions of 20-to-30 copies.
  

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IN THE NEWS

• The Wisconsin Book Festival, held Oct. 22-26 in Madison, drew media attention from several publications, including The Daily Cardinal, The Capital Times, The Isthmus, the Wisconsin State Journal, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel and the Badger Herald. Local publications covered events such as a lecture by former United States Poet Laureate Billy Collins and a book sale at Memorial Library sponsored by the Friends of the UW-Madison Libraries. The Capital Times also published an image of the Wisconsin Book Festival poster designed by Silver Buckle Press curator Tracy Honn. UW-Madison Libraries Director Ken Frazier, Friends Liaison Tom Garver and senior editor of Library Communications Don Johnson were cited in stories published during the event. Liz Owens of Library Communications coordinated the Billy Collins lecture.
  
  
• The Capital Times recently featured the School of Human Ecology, honoring the 100th anniversary of home economics at UW-Madison. The story discussed a book by professor Rima D. Apple, The Challenge of Constantly Changing Times: From Home Economics to Human Ecology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1903-2003. The book was published by the Parallel Press, a University of Wisconsin-Madison Libraries imprint.
  
  
• Ken Frazier, director of the UW-Madison Libraries, was cited in the Oct. 20 issue of The Daily Cardinal concerning the Patriot Act and its relation to the General Library System. The article titled "Library information still open to federal browsing under act" discussed the USA Patriot Act, which allows the FBI to subpoena records if the information could help fight terrorism or espionage. Frazier said he is concerned with protecting library users' privacy.
  
  
• The State Historical Society hosted a talk on the USA Patriot Act Oct. 11, according to the Badger Herald and the Wisconsin State Journal. The lecture was sponsored by the Madison Institute and featured Christopher Pyle, a politics professor at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. He spoke out against the Patriot Act, encouraging students to argue against it as well.
  
  
• Garrison Keillor host of National Public Radio's "The Writer's Almanac," read a poem by Parallel Press poet Dennis Trudell on his show Oct. 15. The poem called "My Father Gets Up in the Middle of the Night to Watch an Old Movie," is from Trudell's poetry chapbook, Marquees of Buffalo. The chapbook was published in July by the Parallel Press, an imprint of the UW-Madison Libraries. "The Writer's Almanac," a daily program with an emphasis on poetry and history, is produced by Minnesota Public Radio and is syndicated by NPR
  Read the poem online or hear the NPR broadcast version from Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2003.
  
  
• Diana Wheeler, a reference and instruction librarian at Wendt Library, was recently quoted in Mechanical Engineering after the Engineering Library purchased a software service called Knovel. According to Wheeler in "Too Much Information," Knovel provides access to more than 450 engineering and scientific reference books, allowing users to search the contents of a book online. The service also allows users to pull information from a table or graph and design a new one, creating a new way of conceptualizing data.
  
  
• The Isthmus featured the Parallel Press Nov. 7, including its history and its poetry chapbook collection. UW-Madison Libraries director Ken Frazier discussed the press, an imprint of the UW-Madison Libraries, describing philosophy, mission and production process. The article also quoted several Parallel Press authors, including Dennis Trudell (Marquees of Buffalo), Heather Dubrow (Border Crossings) and Andrea Potos (The Perfect Day). Designer Tracy Honn, typesetter Greg Britton, and Liz Owens (Library Communications) were also mentioned.
  
  
• Debra Shafer, who works in Circulation at Memorial Library, was recently in radio and television commercials by Magic 98, a local radio station. Shafer said she and a friend were walking by the Capitol, where Magic 98 was auditioning people for its commercials. They decided to try out themselves, and Shafer got the part. She spoke in commercials advertising a birthday contest in which one month and one day were drawn out of two shoe boxes. People who had a birthday that matched the date drawn from the shoe boxes could win $1,000, $3,000, $5,000 or $10,000. The contest, which ended the week of Nov. 13, ran for four weeks, and dates were drawn every Thursday morning at 7:30 a.m.

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Where in the Libraries?

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PUBLISHED

• Jo Ann Carr, director of the CIMC, co-authored an article that ran in the September issue of American Libraries. Carr's article, "Information-Literacy Collaboration: A Shared Responsibility," focuses on the importance of K-12 librarians and academic librarians collaborating to help develop information literacy skills in students.
  

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IN PASSING

• Frieda S. Cohn, a former librarian in the UW Computer Center, passed away Oct. 7. She was 88. Cohn received her master's degree from UW-Madison and worked for the Computer Center, spending more than 50 years in the UW System. Cohn loved sports and tutored student-athletes in calculus and math. She held tickets to UW sporting events for 71 years in a row and attended some of the Olympic Games.

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25 YEARS AGO IN THE LIBRARIES

• Royalty in Memorial Library? It's true. According to the Nov. 17, 1978, issue of Added Entries, the newsletter of the UW-Madison Libraries.
  "On Friday morning, November 3, Crown Princess Sonja of Norway paid a short visit to Memorial Library. Her Royal Highness was in Madison to attend the opening of the Art of Norway exhibit now on display at the Elvehjem Art Center and the Norwegian exhibit being shown at the State Historical Society Museum.
  
  "Crown Princess Sonja came to Memorial to see the display of historical travel books in the second floor display cases. The display, entitled 'Norway: A Traveler's Paradise,' is comprised of books mostly dating from the nineteenth century depicting early-day travel in Norway. The display was set up by Elizabeth Breed and Erwin Welsch."

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Quotation

"One of the greatest gifts adults can give -- to their offspring and to their society -- is to read to children."

--Carl Sagan (1934-1996), a former professor of astronomy at Cornell University

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