@library.edu the newsletter of the Swarthmore College Library
Fall 2011 Vol. 14, no. 1
Library offers films, streaming video, viewing facilities by Pam Harris and Terry Heinrichs From the Harry Potter movies to Human Planet to Orchestra 2001 in Russia, the TriCollege libraries have thousands of DVDs and VHS films that library patrons may borrow. The Swarthmore College Library owns almost 12,000 of those videos. About 6,000 feature films and almost 3,000 documentaries are kept in McCabe Library. Cornell Science Library has a collection of 519 videos on a range of science topics. Underhill Music Library holds 1,305 videos; 157 of these are unique dance videos created at Swarthmore. Beginning in 1985, these dance videos contain student and faculty performances and visiting artists’ lectures, workshops, Photo by Annette Newman and performances. (To see a list on Spencer Jones ‘13 viewing a movie in the family room in McCabe Library. Tripod, use “Swarthmore Dance Department” as a keyword search and limit this to videos/DVDs.) tion includes Dance in Video, Ethnographic Video Online, Sunka Simon, associate professor of German, Film and Media Filmakers Library Online, Opera in Video (all from Alexander Studies, writes that “McCabe library and the LRC have been Street Press), and Films on Demand (Films Media Group). immensely supportive to faculty and students in FMST and Use the Videos & DVDs search in Tripod for specific titles; GMST in purchasing German films and media products for some but not all items from the following resources will be listteaching and research. For novices in national and world cineed individually in Tripod. However, the best way to find videos mas, for fans of Hollywood cinema and cinephiles of experiin these resources is to go to them directly and search. mental films, the LRC and the library hold a plethora of treasDance in Video streams 600 videos of ballet, tap, jazz, contemures. Go and discover them on your own or through our classes porary, experimental, and improvisational dance, as well as foreand screenings!” runners of the forms and the pioneers of modern concert dance. McCabe, Cornell, and Underhill Libraries have video viewing Included are classic performances, experimental works from upequipment and spaces. On level three of McCabe, there are indiand-coming dance troupes, documentaries by and about leading vidual viewing stations, a family room, screening room, choreographers, and videos on dance training. work/study room, and video classroom. McCabe also has a few Ethnographic Video Online provides the largest, most compreportable DVD players that may be borrowed. Cornell has equiphensive resource for the study of human culture and behavior, ment in its downstairs Sigma Xi room. Underhill has DVD and with more than 600 films covering every region of the world. VCR players. Featuring the work of many of the most influential documentary Streaming videos With the most recent addition of Filmakers Library Online, the college community is now able to stream over 6,000 videos in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. The collec-
filmmakers of the 20th century, such as John Marshall’s legendary The Hunters, one can find a host of topics, from language and culture, to magic and body language, and everything in between. continued on page 6
More online resources added to collection by Amy McColl The Library has added some exciting new resources in the last few months, ranging from streaming video to digital dissertations to online newspapers: Filmmaker’s Library - Provides access to streaming documentaries of over 900 titles in the humanities and social sciences produced from 1978-present. Dissertations and Theses Full Text - A collection of scholarly research in the humanities and social sciences containing 2.7 million searchable citations to dissertations and theses from around the world, and 1.2 million full-text dissertations that are available in PDF format. Scientific American, 1910-1947 - Brings together 38 years of historic advancements in science, technology, and medicine with over 38,300 articles. We now have online coverage from 18461869, and 1910 to the present. Royal Society of Chemistry Journal Archive - Contains all articles published by the RSC from 1841 to 2004, including top titles such as ChemComm, The Analyst, PCCP, Organic & Biomolecular Chemistry, and Dalton Transactions. Encyclopedia of Behavioral Neuroscience - Covers the behavior of animals and humans and the neurobiological and physiological processes that control it. Confidential Print: Middle East - Covers Middle Eastern history from 1812-1958; countries included are: Afghanistan, Egypt, Sudan, Persia, Suez Canal, Turkey, Jordan, Arabia, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel, Palestine, and Syria. Cambridge Companions Online - Lively, accessible introductions to major writers, artists, philosophers, topics, and periods. All are collections of specially commissioned essays, shaped
and introduced to appeal to student readers. Chicago Tribune Historical - Provides full-page images and article images from the Chicago Tribune from 1849 to 1987. 19th Century U.K. Periodicals, New Readerships and Empire Collections - Contains full-text articles and images from periodicals published in Great Britain from 1800-1900, with subject areas such as women’s issues, humor, leisure and sport, travel and anthropology, economics, and politics. Times of London Digital Archive - Provides full-text and fullimage articles from the Times of London for the years 17851985. CQ Press Reference titles, including Cities in American Political History (available Oct. 2011), Encyclopedia of U.S. Indian Policy & Law, and Voter Turnout in the U.S.,1798-2009. Historic Documents Online (also CQ Press) - Online equivalent of the entire run of the print serial Historic Documents, issued since 1972. Each annual volume contains approximately 100 documents covering the most significant events of the year. AP Stylebook - Provides a fully searchable version of the Associated Press Stylebook, including an A-Z guide to usage, spelling, and a pronunciation guide with audio files. Thirteen new Oxford Digital Reference titles, including such titles as Dictionary of African Biography (available Jan. 2012), International Encyclopedia of Linguistics (2nd ed.), International Encyclopedia of Dance, Encyclopedia of Rhetoric, Oxford Encyclopedia of the Music of India, and Continuum Companion to Twentieth Century Theatre.
Patron-driven acquisition pilot by Amy McColl The TriCollege libraries are beginning a pilot program to offer e-books on demand to library patrons. The libraries have contracted with EBook Library (EBL) to load records into Tripod, and patrons will be able to access full-text e-books after authenticating via the EZ Proxy server. Subject areas will be expanded from our usual print offerings in order to give patrons a wider range of choices. In addition, e-books can be downloaded and read offline on a laptop and e-book reading devices supporting Adobe Digital Editions software.
@library.edu Editors: Pam Harris, Terry Heinrichs, Annette Newman Thank you to all who contributed to this issue.
Outside seating now in front of McCabe Library.
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Email: libnews@swarthmore.edu Swarthmore College Library 500 College Avenue, Swarthmore PA 19081
Triarte features digitzed art and artifacts by Pat O’Donnell
It began with a student. In the summer of 2010, Isa St. Clair ’11, a theatre major with a minor in classics, began work at Friends Historical Library. Almost immediately, she inquired about an Etruscan vase sitting on a shelf in the Reading Room. Isa had spent the previous two summers at the Mugello Valley Archaeological Project in Tuscany and had no problem recognizing Etruscan pottery. Her interest and expertise met a need of Friends Historical Library. In addition to Quaker and Swarthmore College records, Friends Historical Library oversees collections of Benjamin West drawings, Arthur B. Davis prints, and classical artifacts. Although the existence of the West drawings and Davis prints were known to specialists in art history, most people are unaware these treasures existed at Swarthmore. There are existing check-lists of these collections, but trying to describe an unnamed Benjamin West sketch in words is rarely satisfying. Users want to see an image. The solution is the TriCollege Art and Artifact Collections Database (Triarte). Triarte currently includes 26,000 objects from Special Collections at Bryn Mawr, Swarthmore and Haverford. Access to this online resource is limited to the TriCollege community and is used for both classes and research. Triarte is powered by a customized version of EmbARK Web Kiosk by Gallery Systems.
Angelica Kauffman by Benjamin West
The Benjamin West drawings were the first priority because of the current revival of interest in West’s work by museums and scholars. Isa scanned each image and entered the available data into Excel. She concluded with a collection of about 500 Greek and Roman coins, drawing on her knowledge and love of classical art and artifacts. She was so engaged in the project, that she returned to the library for a week following her graduation to finish the last of the cataloging. Nick Gettino ‘13 completed the Davies scanning in late May. With guidance from Susan Dreher and Pat O’Donnell, the Excel database was uploaded and the images transferred. Swarthmore’s holdings in these three collections were seen for the first time during the summer. Users can access them on campus at http://triarte.brynmawr.edu or off-campus via EZProxy or VPN. Friends Historical Library will continue the arts project over the course of the next two years, using the knowledge and expertise of Swarthmore students. Future additions to Triarte include Greek and Roman pottery, 18th and 19th century Quaker maps, and, in cooperation with the Art Department, an inventory of the college’s collections of fine and decorative arts.
Toil of Three by Arthur B. Davies
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Print preservation: the library collection in shifting sands by Peggy Seiden, College Librarian In 1991, when Hurricane Bob roared up the eastern seaboard, the inhabitants of Cape Cod lost power for nearly a week. Twenty years later, when Irene promised to do the same, the prospect of losing our ability to cool and light our homes, cook, or watch television was daunting. But a loss of power also means, in most cases, a loss of the internet. We might all breathe a sigh of relief to be freed from the tyranny of email and social media for a few days - there are other ways to communicate. But increasingly, we have come to depend upon the internet to connect us to both current and historic scholarship. We still have access to the print for most of this digital scholarship, but will this always be so? photo by Annette Newman Early in June, NPR’s Peggy Seiden “On the Media” broadcast an interview with Brewster Kahle, founder of the Internet Archive and its related initiative to digitize millions of books. On the show, Kahle raised the question: if we have digital books, is there any need to have physical books? In his case, he answered in the affirmative. Kahle goes on to say, “We’re discovering what librarians have known for centuries in this new digital world, so I’m feeling like a little naive.” Kahle has built a high density, long-term preservation facility that could be expanded to hold 10 million volumes and serve as part of a distributed preservation system. His rationale is based on both the poor quality of previous digitization efforts, such as Google Books, and knowing that there may likely be something that we will want to do next with the physical books (though we may not know what that is). It’s not certain whether or not we have definitively solved the problem of preserving digital materials, but there has been a coordinated national effort to develop strategies that at least begin to address preservation of the digital scholarly record. However, is digital preservation enough to guarantee that researchers will continue to have access to these materials? There is a growing consensus that for some period of time, we will also want to continue to preserve print, even when there is a digital facsimile. The original concept behind JSTOR was to digitize com4
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monly held journals so that libraries could remove their journal back runs from their shelves in an effort to save or repurpose stack space. But despite generally high quality digitization processes, concerns remained, and many libraries, including Swarthmore, continued to retain their print copies of nearly all the JSTOR titles. In 2005, the TriColleges decided that they would divide up the responsibility for maintaining print holdings of JSTOR journals. Even though many of our students and faculty showed a marked preference for accessing these journals online, there was “an emotional attachment” to the print, a sense that having disciplinary core journals in print was essential to the library’s or college’s identity. There was some validity to the argument because of the intrinsic value of the printed artifact, the possibility that there was missing content, or the need to consult the print if there was significant amount of image content. But use patterns did not bear out the utility of retaining print. Nevertheless, the TriColleges upheld their commitments to each other until this year when renovations at Bryn Mawr forced us to reconsider our retention decisions. McCabe Library has little room for growth and in fact has exceeded its projected maximum shelving capacity. There is the possibility that we will need to build a classroom in Cornell Library. We don’t have the luxury of retaining volumes upon volumes of little or never used print content. De-accessioning JSTOR journals housed in McCabe alone would free up some 3500 linear feet of shelving or nearly a quarter of the stack space on the second level. In a recent study, Paul Courant, University Librarian at Michigan (Swarthmore ‘68), and Matthew Nielsen estimated that open stack storage of a volume costs $4.26/year. But can we do this and be confident that should we ever need access to the print copy, we could get it? Given the expense of housing print collections, and the need to repurpose library spaces, it does not make sense that every library needs to retain their print holdings. In 2009, Ithaka, the parent organization of the JSTOR project, published a report entitled “What to Withdraw: Print Collections Management in the Wake of Digitization.” The underlying study determined that the needs for continuing print preservation are “significant but not unlimited.” It made recommendations about the number of copies needed and minimum time period to vouchsafe access to the original for print authentication (in case of failure of digital delivery mechanisms or for re-scanning). Fortunately, certain library organizations have been giving a great deal of thought to how we guarantee that a sufficient number of print journals, government documents, and mono-
Stacks in McCabe Library
graphs will be preserved for future scholars and readers. These efforts, collectively referred to as shared print management, offer up the possibility of regionally based shared collections of print in trusted repositories. In most cases, the shared collections are housed in existing library storage facilities, but in others, consortia member libraries take responsibility for long-term retention of titles in a distributed model. The motivation behind these efforts is two-fold: to build trusted repositories (so that libraries have some level of comfort with de-accessioning their collections with the assurance that their patrons can still access these materials if needed) and to serve as a guaranteed source for these materials. The initial focus of these efforts was on the JSTOR corpus. A number of consortia/organizations, such as the Five Colleges in Massachusetts and the Center for Research Libraries, have taken on the responsibility of comprehensively collecting the print issues and volumes and serving as trusted repositories for these materials. Across the country, other organizations are taking on responsibility for preserving other collections of print journals. The Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) libraries are preserving works of a number of major STM (scientific, technical, medical) publishers including Springer, Elsevier and Wiley. Locally, the Pennsylvania Academic Library Consortium, Inc. (PALCI) has a fledgling program to distribute the responsibility for archiving American Chemical Society, American Institute of Physics, and the American Physical Society journals across member libraries. Both Ohiolink and the Associated Southeastern Research Libraries (ASERL) have projects to develop shared comprehensive federal documents collections. While libraries have been placing low-use monographs in storage for years, to do so in a more strategic way is far more difficult and complex. However, there have been some promising conversations, and if the infrastructure under development for shared print journal and documents archives is sufficiently robust, one can imagine that libraries will begin to tackle the harder issues around books. Until we do, we run the risk of libraries independently making decisions to withdraw little used materials and seriously diminishing access to
photo by Annette Newman
these works. Key to the success of developing a national shared print strategy is the ability to disclose information about permanent holdings (at a volume level) as well as the development of operating agreements about access and ownership. The Center for Research Libraries, with grant funding from the Institute for Museum and Library Services (IMLS), is leading efforts to build the infrastructure necessary to a national shared print strategy, as well as facilitating conversations among consortia regarding priorities for preservation and development of standards and best practices. Local Issues It will be a long time before we can comfortably de-accession all the journals we access online. JSTOR only accounts for a few hundred titles among thousands of online journals to which we subscribe. But for many of these other titles, we do not have extensive backfiles either because they have not yet been digitized or because they are too costly to purchase. Our policy is to continue to retain print if we do not own the backfiles or if there is no trusted long-term digital preservation strategy. We are participating in the PALCI initiative mentioned above and are responsible for archiving several ACS and AIP titles. In the last five years, attitudes towards print retention and use have begun to shift on campus. This past year, the TriColleges became affiliate members of the Five Colleges storage repository in order to ensure access to print JSTOR volumes should the need arise. Now we are in the process of querying faculty about JSTOR volumes we might de-accession. In most cases where images are not a significant (greater than 5%) portion of the articles, faculty have approved our removal of the volumes. Given Swarthmore’s historically rich holdings, it is likely that we still have a role to play in preservation, albeit not on the scale of major research libraries. However, we will also benefit greatly from our ability to repurpose stack space for people to use or for additional collections. There is no question that print is important to scholarship for the foreseeable future, but the nature of our local collections is certainly about to change. @library.edu Fall 2011
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Library offers films, streaming video continued from page 1
Filmakers Library Online is the most recent streaming video acquisition in the library. It provides award-winning documentaries on race and gender studies, human rights, globalization and global studies, multiculturalism, international relations, criminal justice, the environment, bioethics, health, political science and current events, psychology, arts, literature, and more. It presents points of view and historical and current experiences from diverse cultures and traditions world-wide. This release now provides close to 1,000 titles. Films on Demand streams over 4,000 videos in the humanities and social sciences from the Films Media Group, long recognized as the finest provider of educational film. With such producers as PBS, Frontline, and the BBC, and topics that cover a multitude of disciplines, including education, psychology, biology, and political science, this is the place to go for quality video. Opera in Video streams over 250 important opera performances, captured on video through staged productions, interviews, and documentaries. The collection, which will number about 250 on completion, presents an overview of the most commonly studied operas in music history. Performances cover the full range of operatic composition, from the Baroque to the 20th century. Netflix on the Big Screen Watch movies on the big screen in McCabe Library’s family room, on Level III, with Netflix (bring your own popcorn). Before heading upstairs, be sure to borrow the two remote controls from the Circulation Desk – one for the TV and one for the Roku Box. Hundreds of free movies and TV episodes are immediately available, or stop by the Research & Information Desk, on Level I of McCabe, to add more movies to the instant queue. Film screenings and public performance rights: What you need to know Thinking about having a film festival or inviting the public to a film screening? Showing a film to a group may require obtaining public performance rights (PPR). It is up to you to determine what you need to do to comply with copyright law. The library often purchases titles that include PPR. Do a title search in Tripod for the movie you are showing to see if we have PPR; the information is included in the notes at the bottom of the screen. If we do not have PPR, follow the steps outlined on the library’s guide to public performance rights, or contact a librarian.
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Popular films at Swarthmore by Linda Hunt All-time top circulated films Big Lebowski The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover Chocolat Amadeus Love’s a Bitch (Amores Perros) Love Actually Last Temptation of Christ The Godfather (original) Mulholland Drive Amelie (le Fabuleux destin d’Amelie Poulain) Last year’s most circulated films Lion King Up Burn After Reading Mulan Big Lebowski Revolutionary Road Twilight Milk The Godfather (original) Hercules (Disney) Hot new films Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince The Fighter The Prophet (un Prophete) Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows The King’s Speech Top new TV series The Wire Vientos de Agua Mad Men All-time popular TV series Sex and the City Sopranos
Film and media studies faculty talk about interesting movies
Patty White
Bob Rehak
Sunka Simon
I saw Tree of Life by Terrence Malick - he’s one of the great auteurs of contemporary American cinema, but this is only his sixth film. It won the top prize at Cannes this year. There is much that is beautiful and moving in this film and it has really stayed with me. Malick went to Harvard as an undergrad, where he studied with philosopher and film theorist Stanley Cavell, and the film is very much informed by Malick’s take on American transcendentalism. But there’s also much that is annoying, even laughable in the movie (and not just the dinosaurs that somehow make their way into a story of growing up with a harsh father in 50s Texas). The mother is so idealized and ethereal and overlit that the movie threatens to run aground on this lack of imagination. I love to see a great artist make a great, big flawed movie. I can’t wait for a woman director to get the chance to do the same.
A movie that recently caught my eye was Labyrinth (1986). Directed by Jim Henson and scripted by Terry Jones of Monty Python fame, it’s a trippy fantasy built around Henson’s creatures and British concept illustrator Brian Froud’s designs - as well as a marvelously daft performance by David Bowie (who also provides songs) as the Goblin King. It’s particularly relevant to my research on special effects, because it comes out of a key transitional moment when predigital effects - matte paintings, miniatures, make-up, puppets - were at an apogee of sophistication, just beginning to give way to their CGI replacements. An artifact of the analog era, its industrial origins are as much of a lost neverland as the dreamtime of its narrative.
Personally, Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010) stood out not so much due to its special effects or spectatorial impact (I was actually disappointed by the effects; Fringe does them better and integrates them more successfully into the narrative), but for its expression of and response to the current sociopolitical situation in the United States and some astounding confirmations of feminist psychoanalytical film criticism’s insights. The film makes visible the epistemological shift between a 20th century North America based in large part on scientific explorations and insights, privileging “facts” over affect and a new order that holds stock (literally) in implanting subconscious messages (“job-creators” instead of “millionaires”???) and triggering affect-based reactions to re-balance power structures in the favor of globally connected monied elites (which in the film happen to be Asian heavies). Of course, favoring affect-based motivation changes on the psychic frontier over a rational economic dialogue allows the female-coded monstrous to surface. The psychological, and here also neo-colonialist, rape of the Other for financial gain gets warped by a woman scorned. Race and gender stereotypes collude to almost erase the white man’s responsibility for it all. The film explores long held assumptions of Woman “who does not exist” but in the liminal split between the Real and the Symbolic. And from there in Inception, she haunts the deepest layers of the colonizer’s unconscious which, in this case, is mapped and overseen (!) by her “sister’s” welllaid architectural grid. Woman as spectacle, specter and spectator! @library.edu Fall 2011
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Comic book aims to inspire peace by Wendy Chmielewski For decades, the Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR) promoted nonviolence as a way to bring about social justice. FOR staff members, such as Bayard Rustin, Glenn Smiley, and George Houser, advised Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the use of such strategies during the Montgomery, Alabama, Bus Boycott in 1955. Three years later, the FOR decided to produce a “comic book� for readers of all ages that would promote nonviolence as a viable and practical alternative in the struggle for civil rights. The story of the Montgomery Bus Boycott, the work of Martin Luther King, Jr., and the heroism of ordinary people in the city became the focus of the comic book, Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story. The comic book was distributed by the FOR across the United States. In the 1960s, a Spanish language version, Martin Luther King y la historia de Montgomery, was distributed throughout Latin America. Earlier this year, Dalia Ziada of the American Islamic Congress, and based in Cairo, Egypt, believed that people throughout the Middle East would also be inspired by the story in the comic book. Ziada translated the comic book into Arabic, and distributed over 2,000 copies of it in Morocco, Tunisia, and Cairo, during the days of uprising in February and March. The Swarthmore College Peace Collection has copies of Martin Luther King and the Montgomery Story in all three languages, as well as thousands of other documents detailing the history of the FOR from its origins in 1915 to the present day. More information is available on the FOR website.
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Milestones at the library Holly Kinnamont ‘12 uncovered details of the library’s history from the librarian’s annual reports and set up a timeline display during the summer. 1935-1936: Librarian notes popularity of student senior theses for research and asks that they be cataloged. “Typewriting room” has six desks and one typewriter. 1936-1937: Rare and unusual items stored in “treasures room.” Classes for freshmen about using the library - 30 minute lecture on card catalog, encyclopedias, almanacs, and the stacks. 1937-1938 : British Americana collection started. Included mostly information about travel to the U.S. by British visitors. Phone + Philadelphia Union Library Catalog = instant Interlibrary Loan. 1938-1939: Library handbook printed. 1939-1940: 500th anniversary of printing observed. President Aydelotte led lectures about printing. Many exhibits with major wartime propaganda. 1940-1941: The Swarthmoreana collection was founded. Popular student-run library exhibits: Fractional currency, ivory carvings, Bookmakers’ club. 1941-1942: Exhibits: Literary Hoaxes, Martha Graham, Mexican Wartime Cartoons. 1942-1943: Popular reference lectures: “English for engineers” and “English for pre-meds.” Official collection of wartime posters was started. 1943-1944: 49 Chinese Naval officers enrolled at Swarthmore. This helped popularize reference lectures even further. 1949-1950: Instituted library tours during freshmen orientation. 1951-1952: Introduction of microfilm. Battle of the closing library hours: Students want the library to stay open later on the weekends. 1960-1961: Dupont Science Library opens. Collection reaches 200,000. (74 years to reach first 100,000 volumes; 23 more years to reach 200,000.) Library begins storage of course exams for studying. (Honors exams had already been kept for many years.) 1962-1965: Implementation of the “Three-College” library corporation. 1967-1968: Completion of McCabe Library. The late-night study debate: Not enough space on the usual late-night floor, so all floors are open until midnight. 1971-1972: Appointment of first subject specialist: humanities librarian, James A. Hinz. 1972-1973: Underhill Music Library opens in Lang. Introduction of computerized cataloging at a conference—speculation about a computerized catalog for McCabe. 1973-1974: Student workers and assistants, who had previously only worked in circulation and shelving in the libraries, are now trained for reference work at Dupont Science Library. 1974-1975: Introduction of Xerox machines - 5 cents a copy. 1975-1976: Microfilm replaced many periodicals and dominated research, especially in cramped Dupont Library. Library catalog is computerized. 1977-1978: Two research guides published: information tools in American History and a detailed guide to bill-tracing from Congressional materials. 1978-1979: Keyboard terminal computer purchased for the first time: LA 36 Dec-writer II in Dupont. Plans for a campus computer center are developed. 1980-1981: Computers used through cooperative agreements with regional libraries like BMC/HC through PALINET/PARLIE library networks. 1982-1983: Cornell Science and Engineering Library opens. McCabe reference desk installed with full reference staff. Workshops help students with independent research. 1983-1984: Videocassettes became one of the most popular resources. Popular collections: “Children’s Books,” “Collecting Stamps,” and “US-USSR Reconciliation.” 1990: Tripod, the online TriCollege library catalog, debuts. @library.edu Fall 2011
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staff news
Anna Goslen began her position as McCabe Library’s technical services specialist for media and metadata in July. She is responsible for ordering and cataloging videos, managing video viewing spaces, and soon will be working with the digital initiatives team in implementing Triceratops, the TriCollege institutional repository. Anna grew up in Charlotte, NC, and attended college and graduate school at UNC-Chapel Hill. In her spare time she enjoys baking, design of all kinds, reading, crafts, listening to live music, and visiting museums. She is looking forward to exploring more of Swarthmore College and the surrounding area.
Lucy Saxon joined the reference services department in August as the reference and instruction library intern. A graduate of Haverford College, where she studied Comparative Literature and French, Lucy received the MLIS from San Jose State University in 2009. She brings an interesting variety of library experiences, ranging from an internship at the Graduate Theological Union Library in Berkeley to her most recent position at the Margate City (NJ) Public Library. Lucy grew up in Swarthmore and graduated from Strath Haven High School. She enjoys the performing arts, fresh air, and reading.
Daisy Larios, who was a Mellon fellow at Swarthmore College Library 200708, is one of 18 winners of the Luce Scholars Program for 2011-12. As a librarian who is excited about the hundreds of new public libraries in South Korea and the new National Digital Library there, Daisy will receive financial and administrative support from the Henry Luce Foundation during her year in Seoul. While an undergraduate at Occidental College, she took part in the Mellon Librarian Recruitment Program. After her fellowship at Swarthmore, she worked at Drexel University’s library and earned the master’s degree in library and information science.
Ancestry.com digitizing Quaker records at Swarthmore by Pat O’Donnell Ancestry.com has come to Swarthmore. The very friendly face behind the scanner of the largest for-profit genealogy company in the world is Consuelo Hubbuch. Consuelo commutes from Bucks County and holds an MLS from the University of Pittsburgh. This is her first job for Ancestry, and her scanning station is located in the back of the Friends Historical Library workroom in McCabe Library. Ancestry has signed a multi-year agreement with Swarthmore, Haverford, Earlham, and Guilford Colleges to digitize original Quaker records which have been deposited in the four institutions. If these records have not been microfilmed already, Consuelo painstakingly scans each page of volumes that date from 1668 up to 1930. The scanning operation is being coordinated out of Silver Spring, Maryland, and existing microfilm is being digitized in Utah. Eventually all of these files will be transcribed so that they can be searched online. In a few years Swarthmore will own a copy of the database. 10
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Rare Book Room New artists’ books acquired by library by Anne Garrison
5 Year Plan Aaron Sinift Edition of 180 (2010) 5 Year Plan (5YP) is a handmade collection of 32 artworks by 32 contemporary artists. The artworks are printed onto the side of sling bags called jholas that are commonly made by Gandhi ashram collectives throughout India. Each book is handmade at every step by local weavers, printers, and bookbinders in India, and the proceeds from the book were donated to Doctors Without Borders. Contributing artists include Yoko Ono, Francesco Clemente, Donald Baechler, Chris Martin, and Julie Doucet. The book is owned by many libraries and museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, the Library of Congress, and Yale University.
Amanuensis Robbin Ami Silverger Edition of 10 (2009) “Amanuensis uses the reflection and reduction of the written word, along with the expressiveness of its materials: gold gilded mirror, paper, and silk on glass – to describe the loss of one’s identity. The pages of the books are fragile, glass, housed in an oak case, like a casket. The words are printed in reverse and can only be read in the mirror, made precious by its material. The text loses letters as it repeats within the first 5 booklets. Here, the signature is considered the written mark of identity and, like our name, defines who we are. An amanuensis is a copyist. Amanuensis was part of an installation about the signature at Lehman College Gallery (2009).”
Many book collections recently donated to library by Amy McColl In the past year, the Library has been the recipient of several significant and generous book collection donations, primarily from alumni, but also from donors outside the college community. We received a large donation in summer 2010 from Richard B. Angell, class of 1940, with a focus on philosophy and mathematics. (Following Dr. Angell’s death in December 2010, his family generously donated some additional volumes, including some manuscript materials.) Both Swarthmore and Haverford College Libraries benefitted from a large donation of primarily Japanese language volumes by Cornelius Kiley, a former professor of history at Villanova University. Last September, the library received the collection of Professor Emerita Kathryn L. Morgan, thanks to the generosity
of her family, and in particular her daughter Susan Morgan Crooks. Joseph Becker, class of 1966, donated a large collection of his books on Biblical archaeology last December. We continue to receive a steady stream of enlightening and entertaining DVDs from the collection of Kenneth Turan, class of 1967. We received a donation of books in Arabic this year from the collection of Dr. Stephen Dale of Ohio State University. The books had originally belonged to his student, Joseph B. Roberts, who tragically died shortly after earning his Ph.D. from Ohio State. We have also received many donations from current, former, and emeritus faculty members, including Daniel Hoffman, James Kurth, Barbara Milewski, Sally Hess, Gerald Levinson, and Robin Wagner-Pacifici. Thanks to all for their contributions. @library.edu Fall 2011
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Seven Libraries Exhibition: August 9 – September 9 McCabe Library Lobby Selected items from the seven libraries at Swarthmore are on display: Beit Midrash, Black Cultural Center, Cornell Science Library, Friends Historical Library, McCabe Library, Peace Collection, and Underhill Music Library. Curated by Holly Kinnamont ’12.
Remembering 9/11 Through Artists’ Books Exhibition: August 24 – October 7 McCabe Library, 2nd floor This exhibit features artists’ books from the McCabe collection which seek to understand, eulogize, and commemorate the events of ten years ago. Parachuting Head from Falling to Earth - Michael Kuch, 2002
Newton Exhibit Exhibition: September 12 – October 14 McCabe Library Lobby Book collectors Ben Goossen ‘13 and Chris Geissler ‘13 received first and second prize for the 2011 A. Edward Newton Student Book Collection Competition. Their beautiful, yet well-worn and slightly dog-eared, books are testimony to the long lasting appeal of N.C. Wyeth and J.R.R. Tolkien.
IX XI MMI Mac McGill, 2003
Abecedarium: An Alphabet Soup of Artists’ Books Exhibition: October 17 – December 2 McCabe Library Lobby Ranging in design and concept from the austere to the zany, this exhibit highlights an array of artists’ books that take the alphabet as inspiration.
Conspiracy Walls December 5 – January McCabe Library Lobby Students in Assistant Professor Bob Rehak’s Conspiracy class (Film and Media Studies) will display their work. 12
@library.edu Fall 2011
Parents Weekend Library Book Sale Friday, October 21 – Sunday, October 23 McCabe Library Lobby Friday 12-5 p.m. (faculty, staff, students and families only) Saturday 10 a.m.–5 p.m. (open to the public) Sunday 1–5 p.m. (open to the public)