@library.edu the newsletter of the Swarthmore College Library
Spring 2009 Vol. 11, no. 2
Professors use collections to engage students by Donna Fournier, Anne Garrison, Pam Harris, and Melanie Maksin
The library’s value extends well beyond being a place to study and get books. These four professors are incorporating the library’s resources into unique assignments for their students, making use of primary sources like letters, maps, certificates, recordings, and journal articles. Abbe Blum: Ways of Seeing, Ways of Telling English
Ellen Ross: Living in the Light: Quakers Past and Present
Archival research takes on deeply personal meanings in some assignments. Ways of Seeing, Ways of Telling English (English 9X), taught by Abbe Blum, examines the nature of stories and encourages students to become active participants in these narratives. While reading Octavia Butler’s Kindred, students were given an opportunity to imagine themselves in the role of Dana, the novel’s protagonist. A modern woman, she is drawn back to antebellum coastal Maryland to protect a boy who grows to manhood and fathers a daughter, Dana’s ancestor. Students were asked to prepare themselves, using the resources available in the library, to survive such an experience in the 19th century. Exploring the library went beyond digital resources and included a visit to FHL for an examination of primary documents such as period maps of the area, genealogies, manumission certificates, and fugitive slave narratives. Students were introduced to a Quaker abolitionist and member of the Underground Railroad, Isaac T. Hopper, whose portrait hangs in Parrish Hall. Immersing themselves in the social, cultural, and ideological framework of the time helped the students to see that preparing for a trip in history is much more complex than packing for a visit to a foreign country. This perspective encouraged students to consider the different ways research extends and shifts their knowledge of what research is and of how narratives are constructed. The class also began to see the importance of how one exists in his or her own time, and the ways that Swarthmore, with its legacy of social engagement and activism, is linked to this living history.
Some assignments take advantage of the rich special collections available on campus. In Living in the Light: Quakers Past and Present (Religion 23), taught by Ellen Ross, students are invited to use the Friends Historical Library and the Peace Collection to complete their final research paper. The assignment is open-ended, on any topic related to the Quakers, and students work closely with Professor Ross to craft their topics and discover their sources. For example, when a student wrote about 19th century Quaker women and peace efforts, Professor Ross and the student deciphered the flowery script of letters from the Peace Collection written by Lucy Biddle Lewis, who was active in Quaker postwar relief work and was the National Chairman of the Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom. Other students were immersing themselves in diaries and journals that bring the past to life or deriving inspiration from the experience of working in an archive. One student said, “After talking to the librarians in special collections, I changed my topic. It helped me to get more focused on what I like.” This personal investment in the research process is one of Professor Ross’s goals for the assignment. Not only does it allow students to explore world-class collections, but it also entices many of them into the library to engage in research and writing on a topic that sparks their interest. As Professor Ross notes, “Some students never darken the doors of the library,” but the guest book at FHL is filled with her students’ names. continued on page 4
The future of liberal arts library collections by Peggy Seiden, College Librarian
Is the future of liberal arts college libraries and their collections a different future than for research libraries or other academic libraries? To try to answer this question, college library directors and heads of collections met together at a symposium, “Shaping Liberal Arts College Library Collections: New Models & Active Strategies,” held in the fall at the F.D.R. Presidential Library and Home in Hyde Park, NY. The continuing crisis in scholarly publishing, the migration to the online environment, new types of purchasing options, and the development of new modes of resource sharing challenge traditional funding or organizational models and affect how users engage with collections. The conference planners hoped that ultimately, the meeting would yield some best practices particularly in the area of collaborative collection development (CCD) in light of the broad shifts in information seeking behavior and scholarly publication. The conference’s first session focused on users. Attendees heard from students and faculty including Sarah Willie-LeBreton, Swarthmore professor of sociology, and Rachel Kitzinger, ’69, parent ’08, and Vassar College professor of classics and current Dean of Planning and Academic Affairs. Each panelist was asked to comment on the ways they use (or don’t use) library resources, as well as their hopes for the future of libraries. Faculty expressed concerns over keeping students engaged with print collections while recognizing the transformational nature of the online environment. Janet Gray, director of the Science, Technology and Society Program at Vassar, noted that online resources have accelerated the pace at which students can be brought into the research process and have allowed her to continually revise the vast majority of her course content. Yet she added that she wants students to know that journals are “hard, readable things” and there is danger in relying solely on online resources. Kitzinger, in particular, talked about how the physical arrangement of materials in a library provides contextual cues to how we organize knowledge that is essential to the research process and that may be missing in the online environment. Faculty requested that the library of the future ensure that new modes of scholarship and new forms/collections of data gathered through experiential learning be preserved. The students from Vassar, Bard, and St. Lawrence were particularly savvy users of both traditional and non-traditional library 2
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resources. While their prowess in library use may not be the norm for undergraduates, they reflected many of the same attitudes and behaviors as we have observed at Swarthmore – the use of a wide range of resources both online and in print. Both students and faculty had difficulty envisioning a library that would be significantly different or better than the one they use today, because the library works well for them as it is. Nevertheless, a paradox emerged from the panelists’ comments. The traditional liberal arts library collection was faculty driven and reflected the faculty engagement in shaping student learning, not only in the classroom, but through the materials they selected for the collection. While most institutions still have some level of faculty input into acquisition decisions, much of what institutions acquire is shaped by other factors, such as online journal packages and collaborative collection development decisions. At Swarthmore, we once subscribed to about 2,500 journals – the majority of which were selected by faculty to support theirs and their students’ research. Today, faculty and students have access to nearly 10,000 individual journals, and our users take full advantage of these increased holdings. Tripod presents students with materials from three institutions, and students can easily locate other monographic sources through EZ-Borrow or Worldcat. Some consortia, including the Tri-Colleges, have developed purchase agreements among each other wherein book acquisitions are shared. Our approach values providing our community with broad and deep collections that can be retrieved within a day, rather than more narrowly focused local collections. Students see the whole of what they have immediate access to as the collection. Their remarks indicated that they tend to view ConnectNY as a part of their local collection, not as an interlibrary loan system that it actually is. Add to this, the “free web” and scholarly databases that cover and can direct students to a significant portion of published knowledge, and it is clear that the idea of shaping students’ research experiences is no longer a matter of shaping the local library’s collections. When the promises of Google Books continued on page 4
@library.edu Editors: Pam Harris, Terry Heinrichs, Annette Newman Thank you to all who contributed to this issue. Email: libnews@swarthmore.edu Swarthmore College Library 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081
Thousands of books are coming and going in ILL office by Terry Heinrichs A book that doesn’t contain the letter “E” in any of its 50,000 words is the item most requested by other libraries from the Swarthmore College Library collection. Ernest Wright’s novel “Gadsby,” technically a lipogram, has been sent “dozens of times” according to Sandy Vermeychuk, head of the Interlibrary Loan Office. And what do people from Swarthmore want from other libraries? “Usually, we get highly specialized requests depending on the thesis topic,” said Vermeychuk. “Some have wanted information on the biotechnology of dragonfly wings, the history of jazz band organizations in New Orleans, or historical details on the period of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle Sandy Vermeychuk East.” Others have asked for articles and books in the biomedical field and on advanced research topics. About 21,000 transactions a year take place in the Interlibrary Loan Office. Two-thirds of them are items that Swarthmore provides to other libraries. “Requests from our patrons, especially for journal articles, have gone down some in the last couple years – from 7,250 to 7,000 – because we offer more online journal packages,” Vermeychuk said. These give access to many more titles than previously available just through the library’s print subscriptions. Swarthmore’s books have done some travelling – to countries like England, Japan, Hong Kong, and South Africa. Books have
come to us from around the world, from the University of South Africa, Queens University in Belfast, and from libraries in Germany, Taiwan, and France, but not from Russia and China. Books from academic libraries in Pennsylvania and nearby states can be ordered with the fastest method, EZ-Borrow, an unmediated system that gets heavy use here. Books not available through EZ-Borrow are handled by the ILL staff, who locate a library that owns those titles and then request them. Through Swarthmore’s membership in SHARES, patrons can borrow from major international research libraries, art museums, and specialized museums, and faculty are permitted to go to those libraries and use their materials on site, including rare items. The interlibrary loan service can be costly, but Swarthmore does not charge its users. Some schools do charge, explained Vermeychuk, sometimes $10 to $25 per book requested. Kerry McElrone is the other staff member who helps with the thousands of comings and goings of books and articles in the Interlibrary Loan Kerry McElrone Office, located on the main floor of McCabe Library. Several student workers help with copying and sending journal articles, packing and shipping books, and shelving books when they are returned to Swarthmore. Photos by Annette Newman
New at Underhill The recently installed window seat at Underhill Music and Dance Library offers a comfortable spot and a scenic view of Crum Woods.
Photo by Annette Newman
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Professors use collections to engage students continued from page 1
Barbara Milewski: Music of the Holocaust and World War II Era
Patricia Reilly: Renaissance Art in Florence and Environs
There are many assignments that require the use of resources that can’t be found on paper or rendered in pixels on a computer screen. In Barbara Milewski’s Music of the Holocaust and World War II Era (Music 6B), the course begins with a musical snapshot of Europe and the United States in the years leading up to the outbreak of World War II. It then traces music making in the Nazi ghettos and camps, and examines the use of art and popular music for propagandistic purposes during the War. It concludes by considering music composed in response to the Holocaust during the postwar period. For their final projects, students apply what they have learned to the music of other conflicts, such as those in Rwanda, Cambodia, Armenia, and Ireland. To explore the music of these diverse times and places, students rely on recordings held in Underhill Library, and Donna Fournier, the music and dance librarian, is happy to add new CDs to the collection to assist students with their research. In addition to making these musical connections, students are encouraged to connect with communities of survivors and to interview them about their experiences. Through these conversations, students learn about the role of music in the lives of their subjects before, during, and after the conflict, and how that role may have changed over time.
Some assignments blend traditional library research with the opportunity for creative expression. Patricia Reilly’s Renaissance Art in Florence and Environs (Art History 51) introduces students to the art and architecture of Florence and Tuscany from the thirteenth to the sixteenth centuries. For the final paper, each student selects a work of art that interests them, and then critically evaluates the scholarly literature related to their chosen artwork and presents a well-researched analysis of the methodological trends and interpretations of the work. They locate critical articles from different decades—the 1950s‘60s, the 1970s-‘80s, the 1990stoday—to trace these trends and interpretations over time. To find appropriate sources for this analysis, many students turn to Art Index and JSTOR, databases available via the library’s Subject Portal (http://trilogy.brynmawr.edu/guides/). In addition to this paper, students create a written, performed, or visual work. Examples have included creating a series of letters between Brunelleschi and his 10 year-old son regarding his son’s future career and an analysis of a desco da parto (birth tray for sweets) for a Medici birth. All of these assignments engage students with the scholarly information not only surrounding art history, but also history, sociology, and literature.
The future of liberal arts library collections continued from page 2
are fulfilled, students at even the smallest of colleges can potentially have access to the scope of resources once provided only by the largest of research libraries. So it would seem that the future library collection is one without limits previously imposed by budget and space constraints, a library wherein users can access most of recorded knowledge, at least in its digital form. Even where we continue to acquire physical materials, what we provide access to is greatly enhanced by CCD initiatives. And that is all to the good. As Sarah Willie-LeBreton noted, shaping collections is inherently a political act. Consortia and CCD initiatives allow for a diversity of approaches as to how one looks at a discipline. Our (librarians’ and faculty’s) pedagogical role is less in selecting the materials we think students should access, than it is in teaching them about how to find these resources and how to become more intelligent consumers of this information. Kitzinger spoke at several points about principles or guidelines that faculty and librarians should lay down about how they want 4
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their students to learn. She said that the challenge for the library of the future is to slow students down so they ask the right questions. The students seemed to agree. They all spoke about the serendipitous way that they had learned about the library and they admitted that their peers were much less informed than they were. Nearly every one of them mentioned that students should be given the opportunity to learn more about the range of library resources (particularly primary sources) and how to use them. So to return to that initial question – to what extent is the future of the liberal arts college library collection different from that of the research library? The answer is probably very little. We will no longer shape our students’ encounter with published knowledge through what we choose to collect and provide access to. That genie is long out of the bottle. We can choose to shape those experiences through providing more opportunities for students to learn both formally and informally, to slow down and to ask the right questions.
Everything is connected From the history of photography to women’s rights to the founding of Swarthmore by Chris Densmore, Curator, Friends Historical Library
We never know what connections may be made within our collections because of the way research projects intertwine. As you read this, you’ll see how a series of research requests link the history of photography to women’s rights to the founding of Swarthmore, demonstrating the unique interdisciplinary value of the collection at Friends Historical Library. Last year, a Swarthmore College class interested in the history of photography visited Friends Historical Library to see examples of 19th century photography. One example shown to the class was a photograph of George Truman taken in Baltimore in 1840. Photography had only been introduced to America in 1839, making this one of the earliest documented examples of photography. Later that year, a researcher from the West Indies contacted us. He was studying the end of slavery in the Danish West Indies and was very interested in the visit of George Truman to that place in 1840. Might we also have a photograph of Truman? Yes we do, and we can document that photograph as having been taken just prior to Truman’s visit. By the way, did the researcher know we had unpublished letters of Truman describing slavery in the Danish West Indies? No, but he would like copies. So, we retrieved the appropriate box of the Truman Family Papers to find the West Indies letters. It happened that in the same box there was a file on a cousin, William Master of Philadelphia, including his membership certificate in the Pennsylvania Abolition Society in 1796. A daughter of William Master, Jane Master, would later marry Richard D. Hunt of Waterloo, New York. In 1848, Jane Master Hunt hosted a gathering at her house in Waterloo, New York, attended by several women, including Lucretia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and at that gathering, these women decided to organize the First Women’s Rights Convention, which was held at nearby Seneca Falls, New York, in July 1848. The home of Jane and Richard D. Hunt is now part of the Women’s Rights National Historical Park. The early women’s rights movement was closely connected with the anti-slavery movement. Jane Master Hunt grew up in a household of committed abolitionists. Lucretia Mott was a founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society and of the Philadelphia Female Anti-Slavery Society. The Motts, Truman, and Master families were also Quakers, which is why their papers are at Friends Historical Library. The same papers help to tell the story of emancipation in the West Indies, American abolitionism, Quakerism, and the emergence of the women’s rights movement, and, by the way, are useful for the history of photography. There is a Swarthmore College connection as well. Lucretia Mott was a founder of the college. While retrieving the Truman papers from the stacks, I passed a rack of architectural drawings dating from the 1860s showing the proposals for the campus of what was to become Swarthmore College, some of them drawn by George Truman, the same individual whose photograph began this search. Each new research request brings with it new opportunities for connections to be made within our Friends Historical Library collection. Each new connection helps us to better document, understand, and utilize the unique materials we are entrusted with preserving. Images courtesy of Friends Historical Library
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Mellon librarian interns selected by Pam Harris and Audrey Harmon-Smith
Patrick Cummins
Brian Seitz
Tri-Co libraries welcome new staff Patrick Cummins and Brian Seitz are the new web developers for the Tri-College libraries. They are responsible for maintaining the existing software and developing custom programs for the web systems, which include Tripod, the subject portal, ContentDM for Triptych, Embark, and the proxy server. Patrick’s goals are to “automate as many repetitive library tasks as possible, focus on delivering more relevant information to the users of our tools, and investigate opportunities outside of the libraries for the Tri-Co to share IT resources.” He previously worked as a manager of web development for a private K-12 online education provider, as a systems analyst for Comcast Corporation, and freelanced for start-up corporations in the medical, sports, and social markets. He has a B.S. in information systems from Drexel University. Brian aims to “bring the Tri-Co systems into the next generation by combining the best vendor/open source software along with customizations for Tri-Co use.” He has worked at CheetahMail leading the design of custom projects, at the Space Telescope Science Institute developing software used for the Hubble Space telescope, at web startups, and has done freelance web work for interactive ad agencies. Brian received a B.A. in computer science from New York University.
Newton Prize winners announced Laughter is the key to victory, according to comedian Spike Mulligan, one of the favorite authors in the book collection of Julian Chender ‘09. Chender won first place in the A. Edward Newton student book collection competition for his “Humor: Jews, Soldiers and Other Suffering People,” which focuses on the humor of war and suffering, with the theory that “humor works to relieve, if only briefly, the pain of such situations.” Stephan Graf ‘09 won second prize for his collection, “Post 1945 Art and the Politics of Identity.” No fan of fiction, Graf collects a mix of art books, including one he picked up at the McCabe book sale two years ago. The Newton Award has the distinction of being the longest running book-collecting contest in the United States, having begun in the 1920s. Today, more than 30 schools, from Bryn Mawr College to Harvard, offer their own version of a competition. Julian Chender and Stephan Graf will receive prizes of $500 and $300 respectively and will present a talk on their collections, which will be on exhibit in McCabe Library in March. 6
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Hot on the trail of becoming the librarians of tomorrow is the new crop of students chosen for the Mellon Librarian Recruitment Internship: Ashley Davies ’10, Heather Hightower ’09, Amber Kavka Warren ’11, Rachel Lee ’10, Stephanie Su ’11, and Aakash Suchak ‘11. The interns receive in-depth exposure to the library field over the course of the spring semester, participating in a seminar on librarianship, taking field trips to local special collections, and completing independent projects. For the past six years, the Mellon Foundation has awarded a total of $2,075,000 for the various phases of the program, making the profession visible to large numbers of undergraduates at Swarthmore, Occidental, Oberlin, Saint Augustine, the Atlanta University Center, and Johnson C. Smith University. The emphasis of the program is on learning about the variety of available career opportunities. Leadership development is also an integral part of the overall experience. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, two out of three librarians are aged 45 or older. This means that a wave of librarians will soon retire from management and leadership positions, so it is critical that new leadership talent be attracted to the profession. The Mellon grant will also continue to focus on recruiting students from the four federally-defined minority groups (African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, and Native Americans), since they are significantly underrepresented in librarianship. Librarians Pam Harris, Peggy Seiden, and Meg Spencer manage the program at Swarthmore.
Former intern awarded scholarship Former Mellon intern Jen Thompson ‘08 is attending the School of Information and Library Science at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with the assistance of an Association of Research Libraries (ARL) Diversity Scholarship. This scholarship offers “leadership development and a stipend of up to $10,000 over two years to MLS students from underrepresented groups who are interested in careers in research libraries.” The Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) and 52 ARL libraries provide the funding. Jen’s Mellon internship at Swarthmore in Spring 2006 had a “huge impact” on her choosing librarianship as a profession. She came to see “how essential librarianship is for the public.” Her projects as an intern included working on collection development in Reference and on the book sale. One of her favorite parts of librarianship is “helping patrons do research or find something in the library. It is as much a learning experience for me as it is for them. The fact that I have learned something new every day while working in the library is very important to me.”
exhibits in McCabe Library
JANUARY
Swarthmore Pull: Student Printmaking 2005-2008 In this age of cheap books with beautifully printed images, it is hard to envision a world where few of us had pictures in our daily lives. The advent of printmaking allowed for wide access to text and images by allowing an image to be recreated over and over. Prints are no longer pulled by hand to illustrate books on a large scale; but rather than rendering printmaking obsolete, technical advances in the graphic arts have allowed traditional printmaking to develop into an art form in its own right. This exhibition features the work of student printmakers in Daniel Heyman’s printmaking class from the past three years, and includes work demonstrating a range of printing techniques, including intaglio, monoprints, stencils, Japanese woodblock, linoleum and rubber stamp. These contributing artists display their vivid and evocative portraiture, poster art, and comics: Hannah Christensen, Rebecca Commito, Marie Cosgrove-Davis, Emily Crawford, Adrian Davalos, Kate Guertzen, Christopher Green, Bizzy Hemphill, Daniel Heyman, Jim Marzluff, Sebastian Moya, Laura Post, Alison Santiago, Peter Tomkins, and Faye Walker.
“The Greek” by Chris Green ‘09
FEBRUARY
Bicentennial Celebration: Lincoln and the Quakers During the turbulent years of the Civil War, a group of staunch abolitionists urged Abraham Lincoln to decree the emancipation of slaves. In honor of the 2009 bicentennial celebration of Lincoln’s birth, Friends Historical Library and McCabe Library have cooperated in putting together an exhibition of original documents on Abraham Lincoln’s relationship with the Quakers. Audrey Harmon-Smith ‘08, current Mellon Library Fellow, created an accompanying website http://www.swarthmore.edu/library/exhibitions/lincoln/. Opening reception and lecture to be announced.
Photo courtesy of Friends Historical Library
MARCH
APRIL-MAY
Newton Award Winners
Wild Card!
We’ll be honoring this year’s winners of the A. Edward Newton Competition with an exhibit featuring the winning collections. Julian Chender will introduce his collection, “Humor: Jews, Soldiers and Other Suffering People,” and Stephan Graf will present his collection, “Post 1945 Art and the Politics of Identity.”
We are looking forward to working with student curators this coming spring. Students interested in learning first hand about curating and exhibitions will be working with books and objects currently held in Swarthmore’s collections to create a series exhibit in the main space of the library.
by Leonard Q. Ross Harcourt, Brace & co., c1937
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New Tripod tools available by Kate Carter
Choice reviews These reputable reviews offer additional information about a book to help you evaluate its usefulness. Many books now offer a link to the review in the box on the right of the Tripod record (where the cover image and links to previews in Google Books are).
LibraryThing for Libraries Many Tripod records now include links to similar works and other editions of books held in Tripod, as well as descriptive tags which users can click to browse for more works on that subject. For an example, see Freakonomics: http://tripod.brynmawr.edu/record=b27204 08 and scroll to the bottom of the page.
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Try this tab on the library homepage: http://www.swarthmore.edu/library.xml. It’s a quick way to search ProQuest, JSTOR, and other databases without having to navigate to the native interface. Just enter a search term into the box and select which database you'd like to search. You're then taken to the results set for your term in that database.
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