Libraries@UW-Madison

Newsletter Archive | Library Communications

Issue 54

2/15/2007

News for Staff of UW-Madison Libraries

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LIBRARY NEWS

UW-Madison was one of four institutions of the Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) that completed the eighth NEH/CIC Coordinated Preservation Microfilming Project, which focused on library materials dealing with the history of U.S. railroads and their influence on American life, landscape, history and technology.
The narrative proposal and budget for this $394,000 project were prepared by Memorial Library staff members Andrea Rolich and Sandra Paske. In the two-year project period, UW-Madison, along with the other participants (Northwestern University and the Universities of Illinois and Iowa) cataloged and microfilmed more than 1,300 volumes, as well as repaired or re-housed more than 450 volumes.

Paske, a senior academic librarian at UW-Madison Libraries, and Rolich, the senior academic librarian in the Preservation Department at UW-Madison, served as directors of Wisconsin’s segment of the work, as well as coordinators of the overall project--which was finished in late December.

The director of NEH chose this venture for inclusion in the Endowment’s We the People initiative, a designation applied to work that preserves and provides access to documents that foster understanding of “significant events and themes in our nation’s history and culture.”

Since 1988, UW-Madison’s participation in NEH/CIC grant-funded projects has brought $1,417,939 to the General Library System and has resulted in the preservation reformatting of 14,668 volumes (4,041,242 pages) of valuable research materials.
The Wisconsin Historical Records Advisory Board is now accepting nominations for the 2007 Governor's Archives Awards.

The three awards in relation to achievement, innovation and advocacy recognize work being done with Wisconsin's historical records.

The deadline for nominations in April 2, and award winners will be announced in June. Click here for more background and eligibility information, and read about past winners here. For more information, contact Karen Kron of the Wisconsin Historical Society.
The UW-Madison School of Library & Information Studies is once again offering its scenic Scottish tour from July 14-25, 2007.

The trip begins in the capital city of Edinburgh, and continues in the northern highlands and the Isle of Skye. It concludes in Glasgow, and will feature visits to important libraries and several historic sites.

The $2,389 price tag includes airfare, accommodations, all breakfasts, nine dinners, group excursions, ground transportation, tickets to all events, and instructional fees and gratuities.

Receive a more detailed itinerary, or contact the tour leader, Jane Pearlmutter, (608) 262-6398.
An additional MadCat workshops will occur later this month, and every library staff member is welcome to attend. They will be taught by School of Library & Information Students Instruction Field Project students.

Feb. 19, 12:30 p.m. - 1:45 p.m. in Steenbock Library, Room 105

Mills Music Library, located in B162 Memorial Library, underwent a major renovation. The most noticeable differences are the new carpet, vibrant yellow walls and comfortable furniture. An open house will be held this Friday, Feb. 16 from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. in the library.


Before the Mills Music Library was redone, it was much more stagnant.		Now, it is much more welcoming with better and more comfortable furniture.

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NOTABLES

Memorial Library Reference and Instruction Services gained a new employee, as former Japanese Studies liaison Rebecca Payne joined the staff.

In the past, Payne worked extensively with different reference and instruction teams.

While a search for a new Japanese Studies liaison is performed, East Asian Studies librarian Dianna Xu will assume Payne's responsibilities for collection development and research services.
Keras Rubka-Nimz was hired as a part time Slavic copy cataloger in mid-January. He will also keep his other part time job--working as a UW-Madison LTE/LSA in the Math Library.

A graduate of UW-Oshkosh, Rubka-Nimz and his wife moved from Krakow, Poland, in 2003. Before joining CTS, Rubka-Nimz was employed at the Madison-based Disability Determination Bureau, a social security branch.

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FEATURES AND EVENTS

UW Library Archives now features an online site dedicated to UW hockey. Both older and more recent photos are shown on the site.
On Thursday, Feb. 8, Louise Robbins, director of the School of Library & Information Services, presented the case of two Americans who spied for the Soviet Union during the 1940s in Washington, D.C.

Among the issues the case raises are how information is gathered and used, not only in the provision of library services, but in the development of evidence and in the construction of history.

The Librarians' Assembly Program committee sponsored the event.
On Feb. 23, the Memorial Library lobby will light up with an exhibit dedicated to Ibero-American writers. Paloma Celis Carbajal, a bibliographer for the Latin American and Iberian Studies Collection, organized the exhibit with assistance from Graphic Designer Dan Joe.

The work of nine writers will be shown. The exhibit runs until March 10 in conjunction with the "Ibero-American Writers in the Era of Globalization" conference from March 7-10. The invited authors, whose works are among the most important that have been produced in the Spanish language in the last decade, will deliver lectures and discuss their place and role as artists and intellectuals in post-national and globalized contexts. The fact that so many different countries are represented will allow several social and cultural issues crucial to contemporary Spain and Latin America to be addressed from disparate national and culture perspectives.

The conference was organized by UW-Madison graduate students from the Spanish and Portugese departments and will be held in the Pyle Center.

The nine authors are: Jorge Volpi, Cristina Rivera Garza and Ricardo Chávez Castañeda, from Mexico; Mario Mendoza, from Colombia; Edmundo Paz Soldán, from Bolivia; Mayra Santos Febres, from Puerto Rico; Marta Sanz, from Spain; Pedro Mairal, from Argentina; and Paulo Lins, from Brazil.

For more information, contact Paloma Celis Carbajal, (608) 262-3240
A symposium titled "Alternative Print Culture: Social History and Libraries" will be held in the auditorium of the Wisconsin History Society from April 13-14.

The symposium is in honor of UW-Madison journalism professor and Wisconsin Historical Society librarian, James Danky, who is retiring from the historical society after 35 years as a librarian. He was also the director for the Center of History of Print Culture in Modern America for 15 years.

In conjunction with the CHPC, the historical society is proposing to offer a $1,000 annual short-term research fellowship to be titled "The James Danky Fellowship."

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FYI: NATIONAL LIBRARY NEWS

The University of Texas-Austin and Princeton University are the latest universities to team with Google. More than 1 million volumes will be digitized at both Princeton and Texas, which boasts the fifth-largest academic library in the United States.

They are the 11th and 12th libraries to have joined the Google Book Search Project, along with Wisconsin. Others include: Oxford, New York Public Library, Harvard, Yale, University of Virginia, Stanford, University of Michigan, University of Complutense of Madrid and the National Library of Catalonia.

Texas is widely know for its Latin American works, including more than 950,000 books, periodicals and pamphlets from the renowned Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection.
Public libraries are feeling the burden of government services telling their clients to receive documents online, according to a study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and the American Library Association.

"To control their own costs, federal and state agencies are shifting the burden of e-government to public libraries with little regard for the impact on these front-line service providers," the study said.

For people who do not have access to computers but must receive government documents, they are told to "go to the library." Librarians must field more calls and assist more people in person.
"About the Book" pages have been added to the Google Book Search project. The addition, titled "Places Mentioned in this Book," displays an interactive map with pointers to cities and addresses mentioned the book's text.

Read War and Peace or The 9/11 Commission Report for a couple of examples.

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SNAPSHOTS



"Artistic Collaboration," the second annual exhibit featuring art by 17 library employees, debuted in Memorial Library lobby on Feb. 2. There was also a reception Feb. 6 in the staff lounge of Memorial Library. The artwork will be displayed until March 29.

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PUBLISHED

The newest edition of Memorial Library Community News is now available online.
The Parallel Press has just published a chapbook of poetry by Bob Toomey called Family Reunion: Reflections Carved in Sand and Stone. Toomey worked at Memorial Library until 2001. He passed away in May 2005. Both his partner Jane Cooper and his sons edited the 30-poem collection.

The chapbook sells for $10 and can be purchased from at the reception desk in 372 Memorial Library.

Read more about it.
The University of Wisconsin Digital Collections continue to grow, as six new addition were recently added.

UW-Madison Zoology Museum Collection: The Galapagos Collection
In December, 20 volumes containing 1,225 pages of material from the Galapagos Islands make up the new collection. The UW-Madison Zoology Museum online collection is particularly unique because in the past 29 years, it is one of only three museums the Ecuadorian Government has allowed to collect, preserve, transport, and maintain scientific anatomical specimens from the Galapagos Islands.

Currently, journals and books are available online, and photos should become accessible in the near future.

Arab-Israeli disputes and foreign economic policy
New additions to the Foreign Relations of the United States Collection cover the years 1955-57 and include topics such as Arab-Israeli disputes and foreign economic policy. The acquisition contains 20 volumes and nearly 18,000 pages of material--the largest page count of the recent additions.

The U.S. State Department's Office of the Historian produces the entire series, which first chronicles the beginning of President Lincoln's administration in 1861.

The Appleton Public Library Local History Collection
The Appleton Public Library Local History Collection added 11 volumes containing 3,900 pages at the end of 2006. The collection now offers view of the Fox Valley's Outagamie County from the mid-1800s to 1989.

The collection features biographical sketches from some of the county's first one hundred settlers, as well as Appleton's 75th anniversary celebration and Appleton's city directory for the the years 1887-88, 1891-92, 1893-94 and 1925.

The Appleton Library Local History Collection is a collaborative effort by the UWDCC and the Appleton Public Library.

Brown, Door, Kewaunee & Shawano Counties: Historical Atlases, Directories and Plat Maps
Northeastern Wisconsin is the focus of this collection, and additions to it include one city directory from Green Bay and Fort Howard--both located in Brown County. The 1874 directory includes information on the early settlement of Green Bay as well as a business and street directory.

The new volume is 192 pages and was added Dec. 5, 2006.

Waterford Area Local History
Books, manuscripts, photographs, maps and newspapers illustrate the early settlement of Waterford, a town located just southwest of Milwaukee. The most recent addition to the collection, A History of the Waterford Graded School--District 1, is described by its author as "an attempt to give as simply as possible a history of education in Waterford against historical background and colorful present."

The photographs and texts are documented in one 49-page volume.

Neenah Public Library Local History Collection
Neenah, a city of 25,000 residents located in the Fox Valley, is commonly known for its paper-making industry. However, the newest addition to the city's public library history collection focuses on the area's historic homes.

The entire collection is on the early 1800s to the 1950s, the newest acquisition is a 1982 report listing districts and individual properties within Neenah's city limits that are potentially eligible to be added to the National Register of Historic Places.

Included in the report are photographs and maps of historic Neenah.

Chipstone Furniture and Ceramics collections
Chipstone prints contains extensive description of the beautiful historical prints which are primarily 18th-and early 19th-century works in a variety of print media (etchings, lithographs, etc.). The collection added 135 images, and provides a representative sample of themes and techniques that can be used for teaching and online demonstration purposes.

The Housekeeper’s Book: comprising advice on the conduct of household affairs
This text is a compendium of useful information on housecleaning, servants, cooking techniques and recipes, flowers, laundry and more. Although the volume is 236 pages, a 10-page contents section provides detailed access to the extensive collection of recipes and hints. This detailed level of household information is useful for the historical study of material culture and everyday life. Since the book was published in Philadelphia in 1837, it thus gives important insight into the material culture of the early United States.

The Mirror of Graces
Also known as The English lady's costume: ...with useful advice on female accomplishments, politeness, and manners.... by a Lady of Distinction..., this 290-page book was published in 1811, and is a readable and informative "conduct book" directed to young women of the early 19th century. It covers dress, deportment and dancing, as well as providing recipes for making creams, soaps and cosmetics. There are four colored plates depicting women's costume for morning, evening, promenade and the opera.

Wisconsin Sheet Music Database
The Wisconsin Sheet Music Database is an index of items housed in the sheet music collection of the Wisconsin Music Archives at the Mills Music Library. The collection added 550 images which contain music written by Wisconsin composers, published by Wisconsin publishers and pieces whose subject matter is Wisconsin. The publications date from the late 1850s to present, and primarily include popular music traditions. The newest additions, funded through a Friends of the Library grant, include waltzes, marches and polkas from such as artists as Eduard Holst, Carrie Jacobs-Bond and Joseph Clauder.

The log book of Preston Reynolds
This 104-page log book kept by Preston ("Pick") Reynolds documents a 1903 canoe trip he made with three other young men from Madison, Wis. The trip began in what is now Wisconsin Dells, proceeded down the Wisconsin River and to the Mississippi River. They went as far as Rock Island, Ill., and then started up the Rock River. In addition to colorful descriptions of their adventures, Reynolds has illustrated the volume with many pen and ink and wash drawings.

United Nations: general international matters and national security policy
Fourteen volumes which add up to nearly 12,000 pages were added to the Foreign Relations of the United States series, the official documentary historical record of major U.S. foreign policy decisions that have been declassified and edited for publication. These new additions include volumes from 1955-60, and cover varied locations such as Eastern and Western Europe, Lebanon, Jordan, Japan and Korea. Topics also include United Nations: General International Matters and National Security Policy.

For more information about digital resources at UW-Madison, please contact Peter Gorman or Vicki Tobias. Or, visit the UWDCC Web site.
Five years in the making, the Kohler Art Library has developed a new database that is an illustrated, descriptive index to their physical Artists' Book Collection. The database offers more than 750 titles, over 500 of which have one to four images to visually represent the structure and content of the book. Each record in the database contains the book title, creator's name, publisher, date, physical description and a complete transcription of the colophon. One can search for book titles and book artists, as well as press names medium, book structures and types of binding, among others.

Lyn Korenic, director of the Kohler Art Library, formulated the idea to create a "visual finding aid" to the collection after receiving hundreds of requests to examine specific aspects of the book art collection. Artists' books are finely crafted and visually stimulating works made by artists as works of art. They comprise limited edition, one-of-a-kind, and offset books, representative of major book artists working during the past 30 years. The database will help users discover the body of typography, papermaking, graphics, bookmaking, design and creative writing that comprises the collection.

To view the Artists’ Book Collection contact Lyn Korenic at (608) 263-2256.
ARTstor, a searchable database of about 500,000 digital images, made its way to UW-Madison Libraries in early February when two demonstrations were presented on the database.

ARTstor contains images of art, architecture, design, photography, decorative arts and material culture, among other forms of visual culture. Two of the specialized collections focus on American Indian art and culture, and women in the United States.

Users can search, view and download images for presentations.

Examples of some image collections include the Carnegie Arts of the United States Collection, a widely-used collection of images documenting the history of U.S. art, architecture, visual and material culture. Others are the Huntington Archive of Asian Art, a broad photographic overview of the art of Asia from 3,000 B.C. to present, and the MoMA Architecture and Design Collection, a comprehensive collection of digital images representing the collections of the Department of Architecture and Design of the Museum of Modern Art in New York.

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25 YEARS AGO IN THE LIBRARIES

From the "In the Spotlight" section of the Feb. 19, 1982 addition of Added Entries:

"Ed Van Gemert, Assistant OCLC Coordinator, WILS Network, was previously employed as Government Services Librarian, Reference and Loan Library, Madison, and Director, State Agency Library Processing Department in pre-MARC Department days.

Ed received a B.A. Degree in Political Science and an M.A. Degree in Library Science from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Ed has a wife, Susan, one small daughter and one large dog. In his leisure he prefers outdoor activities, namely canoeing and cross-country skiing."

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Quotation

"If something in your writing gives support to people in their lives, that's more than just entertainment--which is what we writers all struggle to do, to touch people."

—Dean Koontz, suspense novelist, (1945-present)

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e-mail Libraries@UW-Madison

SEARCH ALL NEWSLETTERS

PREVIOUS ISSUES

LIBRARY NEWS

NOTABLES

FEATURES AND EVENTS

FYI: National Library News

SNAPSHOTS

PUBLISHED

25 YEARS AGO IN THE LIBRARIES

LIBRARY NEWS

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NOTABLES

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FEATURES AND EVENTS

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FYI: NATIONAL LIBRARY NEWS

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SNAPSHOTS

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PUBLISHED

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25 YEARS AGO IN THE LIBRARIES

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Quotation

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