Archive for the ‘Feeds’ category
Tribute to a Veteran and to a Library Historian on 11-11-11
November 11th, 2011Most Data Collected on a Postal Card
November 11th, 2011
Melvil Dewey was largely responsible for standardizing the catalog card at 7.5 x 12.5 centimeters in 1877. Almost immediately, Dewey began lobbying the U. S. Post Office Department to issue a postal card similar in size. That became a reality in 1898 when a postal card the same size as a catalog card was issued by the USPOD. Postal cards of this size are referred to as "library cards" by the philatelic community. I've been collecting these cards for a number of years, and next week I will have an exhibit of them at the big Chicago stamp show. My exhibit focuses on the various uses that libraries made of this postal card. One use that I found to be intriguing was its use by the California State Library to collect monthly public library data. By my count this report on a postal card that is slightly smaller than a 3 x 5 inch index card contains 36 data elements. The card above is the monthly report for the Carnegie Library in Redding, California for December, 1906. One of the more interesting data elements is a request for the three most popular books during the month. For the Redding Carnegie Library they were My Lady from the North, The Conquest of Caanan, and Lena Rivers. Dewey argued that all USPOD postal cards should be standardized at this size. Of course, this made little sense for most users of postal cards since postal cards only cost one cent regardless of size, and the larger the size the more information that could be communicated. Just think how much more data the California State Library could have asked for if the card had been larger. The postal card above is shown at its actual size.
Win a NOOK at Game Night Tournament
November 9th, 2011As reported previously, Gleeson is hosting a Game Night at the library on 11-11-11 from 4-8 pm.
Part of the night includes a Super Smash Brothers Tournament and the grand prize is a NOOK Color! So spread the word. The stakes are high, and the potential for fun is even higher.
Follow the Yellow Brick Road
November 9th, 2011
On exhibition in the Donohue Rare Book Room through December 16 are over eighty volumes from the Rare Book Room’s Dr. M. Wallace Freidman Collection of L. Frank Baum and Oziana. L. Frank Baum (1856-1919) wrote over thirty-eight children’s books, the most famous of which The Wonderful Wizard of Oz was published in 1900 and later was made into a motion picture by MGM in 1939. Baum went on to write fourteen books in the series. Following his death, the series was continued by Ruth Plumbly Thompson. Baum also wrote several non-Oz titles, including Mother Goose in Prose (1897), The Master Key (1901), Phoebe Daring (1912), The Sea Fairies (1911) and Sky Island (1912) among others. The exhibition brings together a selection of Baum’s work, showing the breadth of his life’s work and a range of illustration by such figures as Maxfield Parish, W.W. Denslow and John R. Neill.
The Gleeson Library is pleased to exhibit these materials to coincide with the exhibition Monster in the Bookshelf: The Artwork of Studio 5 in the Thacher Gallery. The books on exhibition are all from the permanent collections of the Donohue Rare Book Room and are available to students and researchers who wish to use them.
John Hawk
Head Librarian, Special Collections & University Archives
Dartmouth’s Book Battle, An Eyewitness Account
November 8th, 2011
One of the most fascinating events in American academic library history occurred on the evening of November 11, 1817 at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. As a result of controversy relating to the governance of the College, the New Hampshire state legislature had created a separate legal entity which it named Dartmouth University in 1816, but the Trustees of Dartmouth College refused to recognize the new entity. It was this situation that led to the attempted take over of the Social Friends' Library, a student literary society library at Dartmouth College, on November 11, 1817 by a group with allegiance to the new Dartmouth University. I recently acquired a stampless folded letter written on November 12, 1817 which contains an eyewitness account of the events of November 11. The letter was written by Thomas Green Fessenden, a Dartmouth student, and mailed to his friend John S. Barrows in Fryeburg, Maine. Some excerpts from the letter read: "about seven o'clock an alarm was given by the College"; "we found 18 university persons in number, who had broken into the Social Friends library with ax and clubs in order to take the books"; "these villains intended to steal the library but they were detected and the victory was completed...within 15 minutes more than 100 were assembled and the demons were kept in the trap"; "we had sentrys set round the College to keep the other riotous mobs which were collecting - we then went to moving the libraries from the College which we did". I wrote previously about the Social Friends' Library and the legal controversy at Dartmouth on April 17, 2010 and April 19, 2010. The legal controversy was resolved with an 1819 Supreme Court ruling in favor of the College. An expanded account of the legal controversy and the attempted takeover of the library is contained in the book A Brief History of the Dartmouth College Library 1769-2002 by Lois A Krieger (Trustees of Dartmouth College, 2002) which is available online in digital form. Images of my new piece of postal librariana are shown above.
