January 2011 Item of the Month

Posted on by
1

The Student Voice

Documentation of the University of Connecticut comes in a variety of formats, styles, voices and completeness.  Documentation of the regional campuses can be even more difficult.  Some of the hardest  to document are the experiences and voices of the students who have passed through the many “doors” of the University, especially those not at Storrs.  On campus for a relatively brief time, students are at the core of the University and yet they tend to take the documentation of their activities and experiences of their college experience with them when they leave.   As a consequence, the little that is left behind is even more valuable–like the student newspaper.   Thanks to a recent transfer from the Waterbury campus, the University Archives now has in its collections numerous student publications dating from the 1940s (extension courses were offered at the Waterbury YMCA in 1942).  It will take a bit for the Archives to sort through the materials but there are four or five different student newspapers alone that will illuminate the interests, concerns and activities of the students on the Waterbury campus throughout its history.  Let’s hear it for the student newspaper!

The University of Connecticut Begnalight, March 1947

“How to build a stone wall”

Posted on by
Reply

Sometime in December 1971, Homer Babbidge, President of the University of Connecticut, spoke to the Monday Evening Club on the subject of stone walls, Robert Frost and the meaning of “Good fences make good neighbors.”  One of the more charismatic individuals associated with the University, Dr. Babbidge used the imagery of practical New England tidiness and poetry to illuminate broad interpretations of international borders, hint at the intellectual foundations  of education and extoll the virtues of physical labor–in nine and a half short pages!

This talk, and many other speeches, presentations, reports and studies, is available in the Babbidge papers in the University Archives housed in the Dodd Research Center.

"How to build a stone wall," Homer D. Babbidge, Jr., December 1971

 A PDF version of the complete talk is available here and a partial description of the materials to be found in the Babbidge papers can be accessed via the finding aid for the collection (http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/findaids/President/MSS19690004.html). 

A more recent, artistic interpretation of the classic New England stone wall can be found in professor Olu Oguibe’s recent installation at Real Art Ways in Hartford (scheduled through March 2011).

Connections between past and present are frequently discovered in the archives.  Please consider this an open invitation to come in and find out more about the history of UConn in the University Archives in the New Year!

     Betsy Pittman, University Archivist

2011 Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights: Deadline for Nominations, Dec. 31

Posted on by
Reply

The deadline is fast approaching for nominations for the next biennial Thomas J. Dodd Prize in International Justice and Human Rights, to be awarded in Fall 2011 at the University of Connecticut.  Information about the nomination process and past winners is available on the Dodd Center’s website.

The winner of the 2009 Dodd Prize, the Committee to Protect Journalists, has been in the news lately after releasing their annual year-end analysis of violence against journalists worldwide.  Pakistan topped the list of the deadliest countries for journalists, with high numbers in Iraq, Mexico, and Honduras as well.

 Nominations will be accepted through December 31, 2010.

A Celebration of Conn and Twain

Posted on by
Reply

Ken Noll and Jerry Krasser reading from “3000 Years Among the Microbes” by Mark Twain, December 6, 2010

You might have noticed that I posted last week about an exhibit a INTD class constructed about Mark Twain and Connecticut microbiologist H.W. Conn.  The exhibit depicts the work of the two men, particularly about how Conn’s work on microbes was influential for Twain’s essay “3000 Years Among the Microbes,” written in 1905.  The exhibit is currently up in the Plaza Alcove in Homer Babbidge Library until December 17.

Yesterday, in the library’s Class of ’47 room, was a celebration of the exhibit, where Professor Ken Noll acknowledged the work of the freshmen honors students of the class.  A wonderful bonus to the program was a reading of Twain’s essay, by Prof. Noll and Emeritus Professor of Dramatic Arts Jerry Krasser.

The local NPR affiliate interviewed Prof. Noll prior to the event and taped the reading, and information about the event was aired this morning on WNPR out of Hartford.

December 2010 Item of the Month

Posted on by
2

Moon Bear (Title page illustration)

Ed Young, a children’s book author/illustrator and winner of many prestigious awards including a Caldecott Medal for Lon Po Po:  a Red Riding-Hood Story from China, two Caldecott Honor Awards, and two nominations for the Hans Christian Andersen Award, has added to his Papers held in the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection.  Mr. Young was born in Tientsin, China and raised in Shanghai and Hong Kong, where he was interested in drawing and storytelling from an early age.  He moved to the U.S. in 1951 to study architecture but quickly changed his focus to art.  Mr. Young has illustrated over eighty books, many of which he also wrote. 

The 19 beautiful collage illustrations for his 2010 book, Moon Bear, written by Brenda Z. Guiberson and published by Henry Holt, are new to the NCLC and were deposited following his recent appearance at the 19th Annual Connecticut Children’s Book Fair.  Moon Bear is the story of one moon bear, or Asiatic black bear, as she goes through the annual cycle of hibernation, awakening, foraging, and procreation.   In the author’s note, Ms. Guiberson describes the tragic plight of thousands of Asiatic black bears who are imprisoned in tiny cages on bear farms throughout Asia.  For over 3,000 years bears were hunted in Asia for their gall bladders and bile, thought to cure disease.  Laws enacted in the 1980’s took steps to ban bear hunting but wild bears are still caught and farmed.  

Moon Bear (pg. 6/7 illustration)

Several organizations are working to create sanctuaries where sick bears can be treated and rehabilitated, such as Animals Asia Moon Bear Rescue Center in China.  For more information, go to http://www.animalsasia.org.  A portion of the proceeds of each book is donated to this worthwhile organization devoted to ending animal cruelty and restoring respect for animals throughout Asia.  Mr. Young says in his dedication:  “To Integrity, ‘the Spiritual Bear,’ so that we may reclaim green humanity lost to unharnessed ‘wants’ disguised as our needs.”

Terri J. Goldich, Curator, Northeast Children’s Literature Collection

Mark Twain and the Science of Dr. Conn

Posted on by
1

Prof. Ken Noll (far left) and students with their exhibit "Mark Twain and Herbert W. Conn"

As curators we often work with undergraduates on their class projects, and I recently had the opportunity to work with Professor Kenneth Noll of the Molecular and Cell Biology department in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences.  Prof. Noll devised a project for a INTD class he taught this semester, “Mark Twain and Herbert W. Conn: Science in Literature and Society in Late 19th Century Connecticut.”  We all know who Mark Twain is but who is Conn?  H.W. Conn was a very prominent scientist at Wesleyan University in the late 1800s/early 1900s, and although he was not a faculty member at what then the Connecticut Agricultural College (now known as UConn), he was the driving force in establishing the Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station.  Prof. Noll’s objective for the class was to have the students create an exhibit that describes Conn’s work as the Connecticut state microbiologist, juxtaposing it to Mark Twain’s 1905 essay, “3000 Years Among the Microbes,” which deflates human beings’ inflated sense of importance. 

Ken Noll and the exhibit, in the Plaza Alcove at Homer Babbidge Library

The class, all of them freshmen honors students, was split into three groups to research Conn and Twain, as well as the science behind Conn’s work, particularly his 1893 Chicago World’s Fair exhibit on dairy microbiology.  The students used many materials in Archives & Special Collections, including photographs from the University Archives, Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station catalogs, and maps, and made a field trip to the Connecticut Science Center.

 The result is an exhibit now up in the Plaza Alcove in Homer Babbidge Library until December 17. 

On December 6, at 11:00a.m., there will be a celebration of the exhibit that will feature a reading from Twain’s story by retired Prof. of Dramatic Arts Jerry Krasser and Prof. Noll.  The public is invited to the celebration, in the Class of ’47 room in Homer Babbidge Library

Laura Smith, Curator for Business, Railroad and Labor Collections

An Archival Thanksgiving

Posted on by
Reply

The Cranberry, photographed by Don Ball, Jr.

Sometimes when it’s my turn to write something for the blog, and nothing immediately comes to mind, I will then think of an anniversary that can be celebrated, or a holiday that is approaching, and how the archival material can illustrate that event.  With Thanksgiving fast approaching I thought “what’s in the archive that touches on this holiday?”.  One of the best ways to explore the archives is by using the search box to the finding aids, available on our collection management system at https://archivessearch.lib.uconn.edu/.  I decided to have some fun and put in search terms related to Thanksgiving.  Here’s what I got:

Thanksgiving: 14 hits, mostly from political and Children’s literature collections, including a Thanksgiving themed popcorn tin in the Tomie dePaola collection.

Thanks: 5 hits, mostly related to expressions of gratitude from the creators of the collections.

Turkey: 23 hits!  Wow!  But it won’t surprise you to read that the vast majority of these hits are on references to the country, not the bird, in political collections.

Gobble: only 2 hits, including the title “Gobble Gang Poems” by the poet Ed Sanders.

Gobbler: 1 hit, in the Ted and Betsy Lewin Papers (a children’s illustrators collection)

Stuffed: 7 hits! but mostly referring to stuffed toys, stuffed animals, and stuffed furniture (huh?  What kind of collection is THAT?  It’s a railroad collection, if you can believe it, a description of a photograph of the interior of a plush railroad car).

Football: Lots of hits there — 55 of them!  Most of them from the University Archives collections, references to UConn football, of course.

Cranberry: 4 hits, including the photograph that you see above of The Cranberry, a diesel locomotive owned by the New Haven Railroad, taken by photographer Don Ball, Jr.

Squash: 5 hits, three of them referring to the game, one to the vegetable, and one to a Leaf-Footed Squash Bug.

There were 5 hits for “pumpkin” but NONE for “pumpkin pie”.  That is just so wrong.  There’s always room for pumpkin pie in the archive, right?

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!

November 11, 1941

Posted on by
Reply

 

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!

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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

Posted on by
Reply

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