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mid-term 2 study guide

October 27th, 2011 by david silver No comments »

Mid-term 2 for Intro to Media Studies covers all the assigned readings, lectures, and guest lectures from September 27 to November 1. The test includes 33 multiple choice, true or false, and fill-in questions. You have the entire class period to take the test.

In preparing for mid-term 2, you should read and understand the following:

Steven Lubar, “Radio,” in InfoCulture: The Smithsonian Book of Information Age Inventions (Houghton Mifflin Co, 1993), pp. 213-241.

Reyhan Harmanci, Battle over KUSF’s Future Rages On, The Bay Citizen, March 19, 2011.

Sami Grover, Cutting-Edge Animation & Video, Made in Off-Grid Treehouses, Treehugger blog, July 20, 2011.

Robert A. Rosentone, “The Historical Film: Looking at the Past in a Postliterate Age,” in Marcia Landy (ed), The Historical Film: History and Memory in Media (Rutgers University Press, 2000): pp. 50-66.

Richard Campbell, Christopher R. Martin, and Bettina Fabos, “Television and the Power of Visual Culture,” Media & Culture: An Introduction to Mass Communication, 7th edition (Bedford/St. Martin's, 2010), pp. 143-171.

Joseph Turow, “Understanding the Strategies of Media Giants,” Media Today: An Introduction to Mass Communication, 4th edition (Routledge, 2011): pp. 192-223.

You should also review your class notes and be familiar with the following:

* early amateur radio and DIY culture
* radio's development into a consumer product
* radio and advertising
* radio and war
* the current state of KUSF
* Trout Gulch
* How-to Homestead
* Professor Kaiser's lecture about film and memory
* mainstream films construction of historical worlds
* early television sponsorship
* quiz shows
* the economics of reality tv
* threats and challenges to television
* the basic strategies of Disney, News Corp, and Google
* Professor Silver's lecture on Bob Dylan.

Also, review notes from class discussions of popular music projects and student media fasts.

Friendly reminder: consider studying and discussing this material with a classmate or small group.

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Houston’s Carnegie Libraries

October 27th, 2011 by Larry T. Nix No comments »

The postcard of the Carnegie Library at McKinney and Travis Sts. in Houston, TX shown above was the first stimulus for my closer look at Houston's Carnegie library buildings. The message on the postcard reads: "This is one of the prettiest library buildings I have ever seen." It was mailed on January 24, 1906. A second stimulus was the receipt of a complimentary copy of the publication 100 Years - 100 Stories: Houston Public Library 1904-2004 by Betty Trapp Chapman (Houston Public Library, 2004). Included among the stories was not only the story about the Carnegie library building on the postcard, but also the story of the Colored Carnegie Library in Houston. Also, earlier this month there was a post on the Little Known Black Librarian Facts blog about the Colored Carnegie Library in Houston. The story of the Carnegie library buildings themselves is fairly straightforward. Two separate entities apply for Carnegie grants. They receive the grants and the buildings are built, and then both buildings are later demolished. A much more complicated story however revolves around racial social injustice and library use in the South. For this story, we are fortunate to have the results of the excellent research conducted by Cheryl Knott Malone. Her article "Autonomy and Accommodation: Houston's Colored Carnegie Library, 1907-1922" is available online. Also online is her article "Unannounced and Unexpected: the Desegregation of Houston Public Library in the Early 1950s". The Colored Carnegie Library Association, a separate legal organization, operated the Colored Carnegie Library which was dedicated on April 11, 1913 until 1921 when it became a branch of the Houston Public Library. The building was razed in 1962 to make way for a highway expansion. It was at this point that the limited desegregation of the Houston Public Library which began in the early 1950s became official desegregation. Read Malone's articles for a detailed account. "One of the prettiest library buildings I have ever seen" was dedicated on March 2, 1904. A new building replacing the Carnegie building was dedicated in 1926. The Houston Public Library in a tribute to Carnegie and perhaps as a result of being a little ashamed at having abandoned his beautiful building named one of its branch libraries after him. The library also named one its branch libraries after W.L.D. Johnson, one of the founders of the Colored Carnegie Library Association.

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Dabney’s Circulating Library, Salem, MA

October 23rd, 2011 by Larry T. Nix No comments »

I recently acquired a bookplate for Dabney's Circulating Library of Salem, Massachusetts. The library was located in the Salem Bookstore from 1789 to 1819. Circulating libraries were "for profit" rental libraries that existed in the United States from 1762 until late in the 19th century. The text on the bookplate uses the long s which looks like an f so it is probably from the eighteenth century. The heavily promotional text on the bookplate is indicative of the commercial nature of these libraries. The primary authority on circulating libraries in the United States is David Kaser's A Book For A Sixpence: The Circulating Library in America (Beta Phi Mu, 1980). Kaser developed a "Checklist of American Commercial Enterprises, 1762-1890" which included 439 circulating libraries. According to Kaser's checklist, Dabney's Circulating Library issued catalogs in 1791, 1794, and 1801. Jeffrey Croteau has conducted recent research on circulating libraries especially those that operated in Brooklyn, NY. He has expanded and continues to expand Kaser's checklist with his "American Circulating Libraries Not in Kaser". Circulating libraries in England preceded those in the United States. I wrote a previous post about Mudie's Select Library in London, the largest of these English circulating libraries. I also wrote an earlier post about circulating library trade cards and a post about a humorous circulating library postcard.

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World’s Largest Collection of Overdue Notices on Postal Cards?

October 22nd, 2011 by Larry T. Nix No comments »

The United States Post Office Department introduced postal cards with pre-printed postage in the United States in 1873. Libraries were quick to take advantage of postal cards and used them for a multitude of purposes. One of the most common purposes especially for public libraries was to notify library users of overdue books and other library materials. Postal cards are generally ephemeral in nature and overdue book notices are especially ephemeral. After all, how many people would want to preserve an overdue book notice. In my efforts to collect postal librariana I have managed to accumulate a collection of over a hundred postal cards that have been used as overdue notices. It may well be the largest collection of overdue notices in the world. The impressiveness of that accomplishment is somewhat tempered by the fact that almost half of them were sent to a single address in Dubuque, Iowa. The dates of the overdue notices in my collection go from 1873 to the 1980s. This post includes a few overdue notices from my collection. More are shown on a page at my Library History Buff website. I have a previous blog posts on the oldest overdue notice in my collection and the second oldest.