ILLUMINATION KNOWLEDGE for the 2Ist CENTURY at the UNIVERSITY of MARYLAND LIBRARIES Summer 2014
IN THIS ISSUE
Transforming Spaces The changing nature of library environments
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Student Spotlight
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Remembering Katherine Anne Porter
AS LIBRARIES NATIONWIDE move from using spaces primarily for print collections to spaces that are devoted to services, we at the University of Maryland are similarly preparing to transform environments. “Space-planning initiatives are designed to keep the library an integral part of the university,” says Associate Dean Gary White, “and to emphasize the important role that libraries play in research, teaching and learning at the University of Maryland.” Librarians and staff have worked diligently during the past year to study and develop recommendations for transforming these spaces and services to better serve our faculty and students, while at the same time updating and creating new learning spaces that are aesthetic, functional, and flexible. A goal is to expand this same “commons” concept already in place in the highly popular Terrapin Learning Commons, a technology-rich collaborative environment on the second floor of McKeldin Library. continues on page 7
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Unraveling History’s Mysteries
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Inspiring Students
QUIET STUDY SPACE. Architects envision a quiet study area in the rear of McKeldin’s first floor. Funding for the renovation has not been approved by the university because of tightened budgets.
McKELDIN LIBRARY RECONCEIVED Our future goals:
Enhance student study spaces to increase the number, utility and diversity of student study spaces
Consolidate public service points to simplify delivery of
services and allow for greater crosstraining of employees
Create an inspiring and attractive main entrance to
improve the visitor experience for prospective students and their parents and to contribute to “Maryland Pride”
Donor support helps us achieve our transformative space goals. To find out more about making an impact, contact Heather Foss, University Libraries Director of Development, at 301.314.2579 or hfoss@umd.edu
Going Green
Dear Friends, The University Libraries are all about change. As I look toward completing my tenure as dean, it’s gratifying to reflect on all we have done to better serve our users. Many of the improvements have come in the form of upgraded technologies or innovative public services. This issue of Illumination highlights some interesting examples, from boosting our green initiatives to digitizing important works of Katherine Anne Porter. And yet, there’s much left to do to improve the public spaces in many of our libraries. McKeldin Library, for example, is a beloved building on campus and we must now find a way to respect that historic centrality while making it functional for the digital age. Over the next several years, we hope to make incremental updates to ensure the future of McKeldin Library, and in so doing, contribute powerfully to student success at Maryland. We hope that many of you reading this will take part in these projects as visionaries, friends, volunteers, and donors. We’ll update you as progress unfolds. Have an enjoyable summer! Thank you,
Patricia A. Steele Dean of the Libraries You are receiving Illumination because you have recently attended a Libraries event or supported us with a gift. To be removed from our list or to help our sustainability efforts by requesting the electronic version only, please email Kristy Robb, Development Coordinator, at 301.314.5674 or email libraries@umd.edu.
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THE UNIVERSITY of Maryland recently received a STARS Gold Rating in recognition of its sustainability achievements from the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. STARS, the Sustainability Tracking, Assessment & Rating System, is a program that measures and encourages sustainability in all aspects of higher education. We’re proud to have contributed, in small measure, to this achievement. The University Libraries have had a sustainability committee and a sustainability officer since early 2011 and are actively contributing to the university’s “green” culture. Thirteen library units participate in the university’s “Green Office” program,
S T U D E N T
which promotes mindfulness about recycling and responsible energy consumption. We also: l PROVIDE compostable or reusable serving containers and utensils at staff functions, thereby minimizing landfill-bound trash l OFFER water-bottle filling stations in several of our libraries as part of a campuswide effort to minimize the use of disposable plastic bottles l ENCOURAGE campus members to reuse items through a free exchange program
S P O T L I G H T
Annie Hendrick A JUNIOR studying graphic design, Annie Hendrick has been a student employee in the Office of the Dean and the Office of External Relations at the University of Maryland Libraries since the summer of 2013. In her job as office assistant, she has designed a number of invitations and brochures, often creating stunning visual pieces from only a basic concept. “We greatly appreciate Annie’s positive attitude and get-it-done approach,” says Director of Development Heather Foss. “She has helped to staff
many donor-related events and is unfailingly pleasant and respectful in her interactions with students, staff, and donors alike.”
DONATED IN HONOR OF
Be one of the first to
leave an electronic legacy at the University of Maryland Libraries with your very own digital bookplate Make a contribution to the Legacy Bookplate Fund by visiting us at
ter.ps/bookplate
Your Name Here
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um
Remembering Katherine Anne Porter in Letters and Life K
ATHERINE ANNE PORTER afficionados gathered recently in Hornbake Library to learn about a new digital archive of the author’s correspondence and hear four of her friends share Porter recollections. Dovetailing with a literary conference in Washington, D.C., the evening symposium featured an open house in the Katherine Anne Porter Room which houses her papers and memorabilia, a presentation by Liz DePriest and Trevor Muñoz on the creation of a digital archive of her letters to her family members, and reminiscences by people who had personal relationships with Porter. Mary Winslow Poole shared childhood memories of Porter, who was a boarder in her home during World War II. Poole’s mother was a portrait artist struggling to raise her young children while her husband was serving overseas. Porter lived with the family and formed friendships with the artist and her children. Poole and her brother, John, presented to the University Libraries a portrait her mother had painted of Juan Ramón Jiménez, a former professor in UMD’s Department of Spanish and Portuguese who won the Nobel Award for Literature in 1956. Jane DeMouy is a writer and Porter scholar whose book, Katherine Anne Porter’s Women: The Eye of Her Fiction, examines Porter’s perspectives on femininity and the role of women as portrayed in her fiction. DeMouy befriended Porter after completing her doctoral dissertation. As Porter’s health was failing, DeMouy spent many hours visiting her, reading to her and even bringing her cat for visits to the cat-loving author. Ted Wojtasik is a novelist and visiting faculty member of English and creative writing at St. Andrews University in North Carolina. His friendship with Porter also began at the end of her life. During their relationship, they shared interests in literature and writing and discussed and shared books. At the conclusion of his remarks, Wojtasik donated to the Libraries Porter’s annotated copy of Writers at Work: The Paris Review Interviews: Third Series that she had given him more than 35 years ago. E. Barrett Prettyman Jr. shared the story of how he met Porter, looking her up in the phone book after reading what he felt were unfair criticisms of her novel, Ship of Fools. They developed a close friendship and eventually he became her lawyer and the executor of her estate. Information about the archive of letters can be found at ter.ps/digitalkap. To support the Katherine Anne Porter Endowment, please visit ter.ps/givekap.
TOP: Portrait of Nobel-winning poet Juan Ramón Jiménez by Marcella Comès Winslow donated at the event by her daughter, Mary Winslow Poole, and son, John Winslow. ABOVE: E. Barrett Prettyman Jr. reads an inscription to him in one of Porter’s works. BELOW LEFT: Liz DePriest enjoys the Katherine Anne Porter Room before her presentation. Behind her, Rosemary Winslow, sister-in-law of Mary Winslow Poole, views photographs of Porter. BELOW RIGHT: María Walsh, Porter scholar Professor Darlene Harbour Unrue, and Unrue’s writer daughter Jane in the Porter Room before the program.
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IN SIDE T H E VAU LT
Unraveling History’s Myste The “Thursday Gang” Inventories
EVERY THURSDAY MORNING of 2013,
Curator of Literary Manuscripts Emerita Beth Alvarez and University Archivist Anne Turkos started the day at the Riversdale House Museum to help the museum staff and officers of the Riversdale Historical Society discover hidden treasures among a previously unknown cache of documents covering multiple generations of the Calvert family. Riversdale was the home of Charles Benedict Calvert, the founder of the Maryland Agricultural College (the original name of the University of Maryland), and thus a place of very special meaning for the university.
RIVERSDALE is a restored plantation home built between 1801 and 1807. Construction was begun by Henri Stier, a Flemish aristocrat, and was completed by his daughter Rosalie and her husband George Calvert, grandson of the fifth Lord Baltimore. UPPER RIGHT: The roster of the original students at the Maryland Agricultural College. BELOW: The contents of the recently discovered trunk.
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Historians and museum staff alike had long believed that no extensive written record of Charles Benedict Calvert’s life and accomplishments existed since only scattered documents had previously been available, so the discovery of this amazing grouping of more than 7,000 documents covering multiple generations of the Calvert Family was particularly remarkable.. The materials came to light after the 2010 death of Rosalie Eugenia Stier Calvert Ray, the only child of two of Charles Benedict Calvert’s grandchildren. When Mrs. Ray’s residence was emptied, her grandson Matt Ray took possession of a trunk filled with old papers that she had stored in attics and basements over the years. Faced with the enormity of examining thousands of documents, Ray loaned them to the Riversdale Historical
ries the Calvert Cache Society in 2012 to assess the quality and quantity of the family papers. Alvarez and Turkos were part of a team of six individuals who inventoried the documents one by one, recording the date, contents, creator, recipient, document type, subjects, and physical condition on spreadsheets. The “Thursday Gang,” as they came to be known, also included Barbara Hornbake Angier, University of Maryland alumna and daughter of R. Lee Hornbake, for whom Hornbake Library is named; Jennifer Flood, Registrar for the Riversdale House
Museum; and Patrick Gossett and Howard Menaker, President and Vice President of the Riversdale Historical Society, respectively. As they worked, the six encountered 19th-century handwriting difficult to decipher and shared exciting finds, such as the receipt for the suit in which Charles Benedict Calvert was married; the accounting of funeral expenses for Charles Benedict’s wife, Charlotte, solving the mystery of her burial site; documentation of the construction and furnishing of Riversdale in the early 1800s; and correspondence concerning the legal and financial affairs of the Calvert descendants fathered by George Calvert with Eleanor Beckett, an enslaved woman. “To be part of such an endeavor is a once-in-a-lifetime experience for an archivist,” Turkos said. “It’s extremely
rare these days to encounter such a large quantity of 19th-century documents that are still in private hands and have not been previously made available to scholars. What made this find all the more remarkable was the vast number of documents that related to Charles Benedict Calvert. We have learned so much more about our founder through this project.”
“To be part of such an endeavor is a once-in-alifetime experience for an archivist,” Turkos says. “It’s extremely rare these days to encounter such a large quantity of 19th-century documents that are still in private hands.” Alvarez agrees. “Working on this project provided a fascinating window into 19th-century life. Vivid portraits of Charles Benedict Calvert and his son George Henry Calvert emerged from the correspondence and financial documents we inventoried. The papers also provide insight into Maryland political and economic life of the times.” Registrar Jennifer Flood has merged and edited the “Thursday Gang’s” spreadsheets enumerating the contents of the 17 boxes and four drawers, and now the museum staff and the historical society must decide upon the next steps for the project. Whatever the ultimate fate of these pieces of history, both Alvarez
and Turkos deeply appreciate the chance to have been a part of this adventure into the past. Riversdale Museum Director Edward Day noted the importance of their contribution: “At Riversdale, we always welcome collaboration with the university whether it be through the School of Architecture, Preservation, and Planning, Department of History, or in this case, the University Libraries. I believe that it was this connection that made the project special. The expertise that Anne and Beth provided cannot be overstated—the project simply couldn’t have been undertaken, let alone completed, without them.” 5
New Award Honors Gemstone Students THE UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES
“Funded by a donor, the annual awards recognize student teams that demonstrate excellence in the research process.”
and the university’s Gemstone Program, a division of the Honors College, partnered in April to award prizes to three student teams for their research projects. Funded generously by Michael Rosenzweig (‘65, ‘70, ‘74) to recognize his in-laws Donald and Katherine Buxton, the top award went to students researching the cause of Alzheimer’s disease. A panel of judges selected the winning team after three sophomore-level student teams presented their research progress at an inaugural ceremony in early April. The Friends of the Libraries funded two additional awards. Students in the Gemstone program work together on a single project for three years—first selecting the research topic, then working with a mentor, expert and librarian to advance their hypotheses and refine their conclusions, and finally reporting on their findings. Gemstone is a multi-disciplinary, four-year research program for selected honors undergraduates of all majors.
Because projects are self-funded, students from the winning team will use the $2,000 award to advance their research goals, not to underwrite a well-deserved celebration or pizza party. The bulk of the budget, team members say, will be used to care for the laboratory mice they’ll use to test insulin and TZD (a diabetes drug) to try to target a point in the “insulin signaling pathway” that contributes to Alzheimer’s disease pathology. “We started from square one,” says Shannon Morken of her 11 teammates, whose majors range from neurobiology and chemistry to public policy and business. The team worked every night until 5:00 a.m., slept a few hours, went to class and kept on going. The hard work paid off in their first place award. Says team member Kelles Gordge, “We’re college students. We’re pros at deadlines.” Read more about the winning team and their research: http://teambrainblast.weebly.com
2014 Gemstone Team Awards FIRST PLACE
Team Brain Blast $2,000 The Donald and Katherine Buxton Award
ADDITIONAL HONORS
Team HAPTIC $1,000
Team M.U.S.I.C. $1,000 Sponsored by Friends of the Libraries
Team Brainblast (inset) presents its research.
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Transforming Spaces, continued from pg 1
Research Commons McKeldin Library, 4th Floor
Planning for the Research Commons has begun in earnest. We have now transformed the previous Asian Studies Collection space into what will become a traditional “reading room” for study and contemplation. The Research Commons will partner with the FIA (Future of Information Alliance), which shares its office space on this floor, and will also develop in partnership with the Graduate School, Office of Research, Division of Information Technology, and the Honors College, among other units.
Science Commons
Engineering & Physical Sciences Library Science librarians studied and benchmarked other premier institutions and have developed a services model for the future to support the STEM disciplines. Recently, we have begun work to plan for the integration of a campus computer lab/classroom into the ground floor of EPSL and have developed a space plan for the entire library.
Architects re-envision McKeldin’s entrance (below) as a grand gateway with clear navigation to popular services.
Media Commons Hornbake Library
Similarly, a task force has been working over the past year to develop models for offering spaces and services for media creation and related services. The team is developing a services model that includes easyto-use media creation tools and staff support, and will launch prototype services this coming academic year.
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N ON PR OFIT OR G . U.S. POSTAG E
PA ID
PE RMIT N O. 1 0 COL L E G E PARK , MD
www.lib.umd.edu Dean of Libraries 6131 McKeldin Library College Park, Maryland 20742-7011 libraries@umd.edu
— C O M I N G
T H I S
S U M M E R —
Beyond the Battle: Bladensburg Rediscovered ON AUGUST 24, 1814, the armies of a fledging nation and a great empire fought just outside the little town of Bladensburg, a battlefield located about three miles from the university’s campus. The United States lost to the British
EXHIBITION
Opens August 2014 Hornbake Library Gallery
that day, and the outcome was the humiliating capture and burning of its new capital city Washington. This exhibit and symposium explores Bladensburg as an historic center of commerce and culture that should be remembered for its significance “beyond the battle.”
Old mill near Bladensburg, Maryland, 1861
SYMPOSIUM Sat., October 11, 2014 A public event featuring presentations by university scholars, community researchers and other experts