Author Archives: Jean Cardinale

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About Jean Cardinale

Jean Cardinale is the head of the UConn Libraries' Public Programming, Marketing & Communications efforts.

November 11, 1941

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Tuesday, November 11, 1941.  Armistice Day.  I met my classes as usual.  At 8 o’clock I met my elementary economics classes, discussing economic problems of natural resources.  At 9 o’clock I met the consumption class giving back their recent hour examinations, and finishing the work on housing. I also made a bare start on a discussion of savings.

 Bill Mattson reached Willimantic at 11.11 by train from  Boston, and Edith met him there.  Ernest Russell drove down from Hadley and arrived at my office just before noon, as I got back from my 11 o’clock class.  We drove home, and met Mattson.  The two men stayed for dinner, supper, and over night.  As usual, Edith put on a wonderful display of culinary art and of old-fashioned hospitality.

 Thus begins the journal entry for this day in 1941 by UConn faculty member and later Provost, Albert Waugh.  A tireless and meticulous diarist, Waugh recorded his daily activities both mundane and extraordinary throughout his life, allowing researchers to see first hand what was happening in Storrs, Connecticut, from the time of his hire in 1941 through his retirement in 1973.  

The Waugh daily journals have been available for research as part of the Waugh papers since their donation in 1985.  An invaluable resource for several University histories, the journals were originally considered for digitization in the late 1990s when the University Libraries received its first IMLS grant for what is now known as Connecticut History Online (http://www.cthistoryonline.org/cdm-cho/index.html).  The sheer volume of the journals made this impossible and the CHO project went on to digitize predominantly images (approximately 14,000 at last count) over the course of the next several years.  Technological advances in more recent years, however, has made the option of electronic access to the materials viable.  In the last year, Archives & Special Collections, with the permission of the Waugh family, has digitized the entire 30 plus span of journals.  In the next several months, researchers will be able to access PDF (portable document format) copies of the journal entries directly from the finding aid, completing one of A&SC’s largest digitization efforts.   

There was also a happy side effect to this lengthy project, in addition to meeting the Waugh family and hearing their stories first hand.  Collaboration with the Waugh family on this project resulted in the discovery of additional journals!  Subsequent donation of these new discoveries has expanded the dates of Waugh journals from 1941-1973 to cover the period from the 1920s through the early 1980s. 

As soon as we go live, it will be announced here so stay tuned!

     Betsy Pittman, University Archivist

The Book Fair is coming, the Book Fair is coming!

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November 13-14, 2010, on the Storrs Campus of the University of Connecticut at the Rome Ballroom

The Connecticut Children’s Book Fair is two days of fun for the whole family, featuring presentations and book signings by well-known authors and illustrators, and tons of books for sale. Enjoy storytelling, crafts, holiday shopping, balloon animals on Saturday and a puppet show, City of Hamburgers, on Sunday. Maisy, Danny the Dinosaur, Biscuit, and of course Clifford the Big Red Dog will be visiting throughout the Book Fair.  There will also be a special teen panel on Sunday: “Giving Teens a Voice: Writing and Editing Teen Fiction” led by David Levithan with guest speakers Eliot Schrefer, Samantha Schutz, and Natalie Standiford.  

Go to the Book Fair’s web site at http://bookfair.uconn.edu for complete information.  

See you at the Fair!

Help Us Help You

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UConn Faculty & Students  – Please take a few minutes and help the UConn Libraries help you

From:      Brinley Franklin
               Vice Provost, University Libraries

The University of Connecticut Libraries needs your help and participation in the Fall 2010 LibQUAL+TM  Survey.

The LibQual+TM Survey has been used by more than 1,200 libraries internationally to periodically and consistently track, understand, and act upon their users’ opinions of library service quality.

As in the past, the LibQual+TM Survey results will inform our Libraries’ planning on how to best provide library services to the UConn community. This survey process has been reviewed by UConn’s Institutional Review Board (IRB) and all responses are confidential and will not be associated with a respondent’s e-mail address or other personal information.

One participating student* (grad or undergrad) will win a $500 GIFT CARD from the UConn Co-op!

The link to the survey can be found in your e-mail.  If you missed the e-mail, have questions, or need assistance in any way, please contact librarysurveys@uconn.edu

Please complete the survey by:  December 10, 2010

Thanks for participating!

* Participation in the drawing is optional.  Eligible students must be registered to take classes at the University of Connecticut during the Fall, 2010 semester; have completed no more than one online survey;  have entered an optional “uconn.edu” e-mail address at the time the online survey form is completed; not be an employee of the State of Connecticut, including student employees of the University, or of the UConn Co-op; permit the University of Connecticut to make public a photograph, name, home town, academic year and major of the winning entrant; agree to any rules and restrictions placed upon the use of the gift certificate by the UConn Co-op.

New state-wide Book Festival in planning stages

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The Dodd Research Center is one of the sponsors of the first state-wide book festival, to be held at UConn’s Greater Hartford campus on May 21-22, 2011.  In addition to the Dodd Center and UConn, other sponsors include the CT Center for the Book at the Hartford Public Library, the UConn Co-op, the CT Library Association, CT Humanities Council, CT State Library, and the CT Commission on Culture and Tourism.  The Honorary Chair of the Festival is Wally Lamb, award-winning author of She’s come undone, I know this much is true, and The hour I first believed, among other fiction and non-fiction works.  Mr. Lamb will be the featured speaker at a Gala Reception on November 20, 2010 at the Town and County Club in Hartford and the public is welcome to attend.  For tickets and other information, please go to the Festival’s web page at http://ctbookfestival.org/ or send an email to ctbookfestival@gmail.org.    

Other authors appearing at the Festival will include Dick Allen, Connecticut’s award-winning Poet Laureate for 2010-2015; Ronald L. Mallett, a physics professor at UConn and author of Time traveler; Diane Smith, an Emmy Award-winning TV journalist and author of six books based in Connecticut, and many others listed on the Festival’s web site.  The Festival will bring together writers of books for adults and teens and activities will include readings, signings, storytelling and other presentations, great food offered by area restaurants, and an activity tent for kids aged 3-12.  Watch the web site for the schedule of events.   See you at the Fair!

Human Rights Film Series Screening of “State of Fear,” Nov. 10

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Please join the Human Rights Institute, the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, and the Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies (CLACS) for the third film of the monthly 2010-2011 Human Rights Film Series: Human Rights in the Americas.  More information and a full listing of films in the series are available on the Dodd Center’s website.

Film poster for "State of Fear," directed by Pamela Yates.

November Film: “State of Fear”
Directed by Pamela Yates

Wednesday, November 10, 2010
4:00 pm, Konover Auditorium
Thomas J. Dodd Research Center   

Film Synopsis:   

State of Fear” is set in the deserts, mountains, and jungles of Peru, and tells a gripping story of escalating violence and repression, and of courageous resistance by human rights defenders. Terrorist attacks by the Shining Path guerrillas provoked a military occupation of the countryside. Military Justice replaced Civil authority, widespread abuses by the Peruvian Army went unpunished, and the terrorism continued to spread. Eventually nearly 70,000 civilians died at the hands of the Shining Path and the Peruvian military.

Through vivid depictions of several horrific attacks in Peru’s mountains, as well as through revealing, poignant interviews with victims, soldiers, and insurgents, the film shows the agony that Peru’s war inflicted. The film is narrated primarily by members of Peru’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, who emphasize that, if internal war is not to recur, we must understand its various causes and know its tragic effects.

 For more information about this and other events at the Dodd Research Center, please go to http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/events/index.htm

November 2010 Item of the Month

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Las Hijas de Eva, Puerto Rican women magazine

An issue of Las Hijas de Eva, Semanario consagrado al bello sexo: Literatura, Música, Teatro, Noticias, Modas y Anuncios.

The Thomas J. Dodd Research Center through the years has developed  a very unique collection of Latin American and Caribbean materials that support the research of the Latin American and Caribbean studies program on campus. One of the collecting areas has been on Puerto Rico.  The Puerto Rican Collection consists of two different acquisitions– the Geigel family library and the Puerto Rican Civil Court Documents. The Geigel family library, which is the core of the Puerto Rican Collection,  includes over 2,000 volumes of books, pamphlets, government documents (mainly from the US government) and some periodicals, that document the social, economic, political and literary history of Puerto Rico during the late nineteenth century and early twentieth century.

The collection was acquired from the Geigel Family from Puerto Rico in the early 1980s by the recommendation of the then UConn history professor Dr. Francisco Scarano. Owed privately by Doña Luisa Geigel de Gandía, resident of Santurce (San Juan, Puerto Rico), this library represents the collecting efforts of three generations of Geigel family members.

Geroglífico

A pictorial riddle

The collections time span covers from 1800 – 1977 but the bulk of the collection is from 1850-1950. The collection includes many first editions of literary books and rare printing of newspapers and magazines from the late 19th century.

For the item of the month, I am showcasing a very unique title, the periodical Las Hijas de Eva (1880), a late 19th century women magazine edited by many well-known Puerto Rican writers and intellectuals, both men and women, such as Alejandro Tapia y Rivera, Lola Rodríguez de Tío, Manuel Tavárez, etc… The magazine followed the same stylistic format found in 19th century Spanish women magazines  and it was digitized as part of a bigger project, the Spanish Periodicals and Newspapers: Women’s Magazine Digital Collection. What make this magazine unique is the fact that it had many women contributors writing articles and poetry which was unusual in late 19th century Puerto Rican society. This weekly magazine includes articles (written by men and women authors), poems, travel accounts and word games and puzzles.

Salto de Caballo--crossword game

Another type of word game, Salto de Caballo.

To find the books and periodicals in the Puerto Rican Collection, you can search for individual titles using the UConn Library catalog HOMER.

For further information about these materials, contact Marisol Ramos, Curator for Latin American and Caribbean Collections.   More information about the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center and using the archival collections can be found here.

The “Vault” of UConn Basketball

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This afternoon, Ken Davis will be signing copies of his new book University of Connecticut Basketball Vault, The history of the Huskies, published by Whitman Publishing.  Davis will sign copies of the book at the UConn Co-op on Friday, Oct. 15, beginning at 4:30 p.m., just before the 2010-11 basketball season kicks off with First Night activities at Harry A. Gampel Pavilion.

University of Connecticut Basketball Vault, The history of the Huskies

The book is part of The College Vault series and features a “time capsule” approach, including historic images and reproductions of ephemera that are part of the team’s history, such as game programs, statistics sheets, and other items that enhance the comprehensive narrative about each team.  A considerable portion of the research was conducted in the University Archives and items from the collection have been reproduced as part of the publication.  More information about the author and the book in the UConn Today article by Kenneth Best (10/15/2010).  Details about the book signing are available on the Co-op website.  A copy of the publication has been added to the collection in the University Archives.

Little Magazines of the Mimeo Revolution: Poetry, Exhibition, Film!

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Long before the photocopier, desktop computers, and blogs, the mimeograph machine put inexpensive printing technology in the hands of poets and artists.  The Mimeo Revolution of the late 1950s brought about an explosion of DIY printing and independent literary magazines.  Although many of the mimeo magazines and small presses were short-lived, poetry superstars emerged from the mimeographed pages, including poet and little mag publisher, Ed Sanders.

The revolution was spawned by the youthful, counterculture poet-publisher, cranking out 100 copies of an outlandishly titled magazine on cheap paper.  The image of the iconoclastic and self-motivated poet, breaking the chain of convention, heading out for the territories with a sack full of magazines and making it new, formed and solidified in our common imagination as a direct result of the mimeo explosion. (M. Basinski from An Author Index to Little Magazines of the Mimeograph Revolution)

Join us for an afternoon as we explore the Mimeo Revolution and celebrate the poets and presses that made it flourish.  Events are free and open to the public.

October 26, 2010, 3:00pm to 6:00pm, Dodd Research Center

Program:

3:00pm Gallery Talk Little Magazines in the Archives with Melissa Watterworth, Curator of Literary Collections (McDonald Reading Room)

3:45pm Unveiling of special re-issue of the 1968 limited edition book Krulik Ksiega or Book of Rabbits by Cleveland poet Tom Kryss

4:00pm Poetry reading with Ed Sanders! (Konover Auditorium)

4:45pm Film showing If I Scratch, I Write: d.a. levy and the Mimeograph Revolution

6:00pm Reception with refreshments

For more information contact melissa.watterworth@uconn.edu

Great American Pastime at CAC

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It’s the top of the eighth inning. The Yankees lead the Giants 3-0 in the second game of the 1922 World Series, and students at Connecticut Agricultural College listen to the game on radio on the lawn in front of the Mechanic Arts Building.

It was the first time that the entire World Series was on radio, and this second game would end in a 3-3 tie after a controversial call “on account of darkness” in the tenth inning.

Radio was relatively new for the campus – WABL, the first student radio station at CAC, began broadcasting that fall from studios in the Mechanic Arts Building. The station’s equipment was probably the source of the hook up to a speaker that was placed outside the front door of the building.

Students kept track of the game with a box score on a blackboard placed in front of the building

The winner of the “subway” series was the Yankees. They beat the Giants in five games.

Students of Connecticut Agricultural College listen to Game 2 of the 1922 World Series on October 5, 1922. Freshmen can be identified by their beanies, and just to the left of the photo center is a lone co-ed joining the boys for the afternoon of baseball. The Mechanic Arts Building on North Eagleville Road is now the Islamic Center on the main campus in Storrs.

October 2010 Item of the Month

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Wwe’ve selected materials from the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) Records pertaining to oil exploration and expansion in the Ecuadorian Amazon. These materials have been selected in conjunction with the our ongoing Human Rights Film Series, which continues with a screening of the documentary film, Crude, directed by Joe Berlinger.  The film will be shown on Wednesday, October 13, at 4 pm in Konover Auditorium, and is free and open to the public.

The North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA) was founded in response to the April 1965 U.S. invasion of the Dominican Republic. This armed intervention by the United States against a popular uprising–classic gunboat diplomacy–preempted the restoration to power of freely elected president Juan Bosch. It also paved the way for the thirty year dictatorship of caudillo Joaquín Balaguer. NACLA’s founders were especially struck by the Johnson administrations’ ability to disseminate its version of events virtually unchallenged, while mainstream opinion makers set the tone of a limited public debate. Moreover, as the U.S. intervention in Vietnam began in earnest, progressive critics and opponents of U.S. policy, both abroad and at home, began seriously to consider questions about the nature of public education, the role of independent media, and how to make critical analysis of the U.S. power structure accessible to a broad and interested public.

NACLA, which took shape from these questions, was founded in October and November of 1966 in a series of meetings of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, the University Christian Movement, and returned Peace Corps volunteers, along with assorted other individuals and organizations. According to its articles of incorporation, NACLA’s role was “to encourage, produce and distribute information designed to identify and explain those elements and relationships of forces in the United States and Latin America which inhibit and frustrate urgently needed profound social and economic change.” The “congress” in NACLA’s name was suggested by the “Congress of Unrepresented People,” a contemporary group of civil rights, antiwar, and labor activists who came together to challenge elite conceptions of the national interest as fundamentally opposed to the real interests of the majority of the American people.

Most of the materials contained in this NACLA Collection were collected during the first twenty years of NACLA’s history (1966-1986). The special reports, newsletters, and eventually, magazines appearing under the NACLA imprint were the outcome of research and writing done by members of the collective. The materials that they amassed in their files ranged from newspaper clippings to original government documents to revolutionary communiques to corporate proxies. As NACLA established fraternal links with publications, political parties, and nongovernmental organizations across the region, it also acquired a substantial and varied collection of periodical publications, many of which can now be found only in this collection.

The item of the month below is a selection from the periodical holdings from the NACLA Collection, from August 2, 1987  (NACLA Box 125, Folder 5).

Action Bulletin from Survival International USA, a non-profit organization that aims to protect the human rights of indigenous peoples worldwide.

First page from the Survival International USA Urgent Action Bulletin.

Constitution Day and Congress Week

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The 2010 University of Connecticut Constitution Day observance highlighted the anniversary of the ratification in 1920 of the Nineteenth Amendment: The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex.  This year’s presentation included a panel discussion and a keynote lecture on September 16, 2010.  The keynote speaker was Pamela S. Karlan, Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law and Co-Director, Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford University.

In addition, the Dodd Research Center observed Congress Week (September 13-17, 2010) with an exhibition in the McDonald Reading Room that will be available for viewing through the end of September.  The theme this year was “Main Street to Capitol Hill”  and the exhibition illustrates the activities of the Connecticut Congressional delegation in representing the transportation concerns of their constituents.  From the grading and widening of roads in Meriden to renovations of the docks and bridge in Mystic and the revitalization of Broad Street in New Britain to highspeed rail in Hartford, the concerns of state and town officials, as well as the taxpayer are reflected in the congressional collections housed in Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.    The Center actively collects the records of the state’s Congressional delegation and the materials date from the 1930s to the present supporting the research interests of scholars investigating the work of the state’s representatives over time and across political parties.  The collections represented in this exhibit include:  Prescott S. Bush, Sr.  (Republican, Senator 1951-1962), William Cotter (Democrat, Representative 1971-1982), Thomas J. Dodd   (Democrat, Representative 1953-1957, Senator 1958-1971), Robert N. Giaimo (Democrat, Representative 1959-1980), Nancy L. Johnson (Republican, Representative 1983-2006), Barbara B. Kennelly (Democrat,    Representative 1981-1998), Francis Maloney (Democrat, Representative 1933-1934, Senator 1935-1946), Stewart B. McKinney (Republican, Representative 1971-1988), Bruce Morrison  (Democrat, Representative 1983-1990), Robert Simmons (Republican, Representative 2001-2006).

Congress Week, September 13-17, 2010

Mark Your Calendars!

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Lots has been going on in Archives & Special Collections lately as the semester reaches full swing!  Curators are teaching classes, researchers are filling the tables in the reading room, and a variety of events are happening in Konover Auditorium.

A few upcoming events of note:

Album cover by praCh, who will be performing at the Dodd Research Center on September 16 at 4 pm.

Lecture and Performance by Cambodian American rapper praCh
Thursday, September 16, 2010
4 pm
Konover Auditorium

Named by Newsweek as the “pioneer of Khmer Rap” and the “first Cambodian rap star” praCh first received international acclaim with his debut hip hop album, Dalama…The End’n is Just the Beginnin’ (2000). Over the course of a decade, he has emerged as a multimedia force, releasing two sequels to Dalama, in 2003 and 2010.  Born in the farmlands of Cambodia but raised on the mean streets of America, praCh is a committed transnational activist. He battles oppression via rhyme and lyrics, and by example, and makes clear the reasons why hip hop is global and will continue to matter.

Ed Dorn and son, March 1960, photofinisher’s date. From the Charles Olson Papers, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

If hip hop is not your speed, on September 21, 2010, our visiting Strochlitz Researcher Justin Katko, will give a talk entitled, “The Archive’s Other Fiction: Alternatives to Edward Dorn’s Gunslinger.”  Katko is a writer and PhD candidate in English Literature at the University of Cambridge, and recipient of a  Strochlitz Travel Grant.

Where does a text end and its archival footprint begin?  Can a text be built to rely upon previous, archived versions of itself?  Can coherency be claimed for a text which intentionally relegates component aspects of itself to the archive?  These questions will be addressed through the lens of Gunslinger, a modernist quest narrative by American poet Edward Dorn (1929-1999).  Gunslinger is a long narrative poem which exceeds the bounds of its own printed text in a number of manifest ways, including a rare secret installment printed as a standalone newspaper.  This talk will address the way in which archived versions of a single poem from the Gunslinger epic both clarify and complicate the work’s fragmented and difficult narrative.   Interpretation of Dorn’s masterpiece is only just beginning to be impacted by the archival materials which constitute the Edward Dorn papers.