USF Book Club June Selection

May 15th, 2013 by David Ferguson No comments »

The next book the Book Club will be discussing is:

“The Plague of Doves,” by Louise Erdrich.  We will meet on June 14th at noon in room 209 (if room unavailable, other location tbd) of the Gleeson Library.  If you are unable to obtain a copy from the Gleeson Library, you may request it from Link+ or get it at SFPL. (San Francisco Public Library also has digital copies available for your E-book reader.)

The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation. The descendants of Ojibwe and white intermarry, their lives intertwine; only the youngest generation, of 2013_6_plagueofdovesmixed blood, remains unaware of the role the past continues to play in their lives. Evelina Harp is a witty, ambitious young girl, part Ojibwe, part white, who is prone to falling hopelessly in love. Mooshum, Evelina’s grandfather, is a seductive storyteller, a repository of family and tribal history with an all-too-intimate knowledge of the violent past. Nobody understands the weight of historical injustice better than Judge Antone Bazil Coutts, a thoughtful mixed blood who witnesses the lives of those who appear before him, and whose own love life reflects the entire history of the territory. In distinct and winning voices, Erdrich’s narrators unravel the stories of different generations and families in this corner of North Dakota. Bound by love, torn by history, the two communities’ collective stories finally come together in a wrenching truth revealed in the novel’s final pages. (summary)


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ALA WWI Poster on a Postcard

May 13th, 2013 by Larry T. Nix No comments »
Enlarged detail from postcard
 
One of the most impressive World War I posters is one that promotes the American Library Association's participation in the United War Work Campaign which took place the week of November 11, 1918. The poster was designed by the prominent illustrator John E. Sheridan. I'm fortunate to own one of the posters which is shown below. Recently I came across a Real Photo Postcard (shown above) which included one of the posters being used for what it was intended - helping to raise money for books for soldiers and sailors. The postcard appears to show some kind of rally or parade. The most prominent aspect of the postcard is the depiction of of a man in uniform on a donkey. I surmise that it was intended to ridicule German soldiers. There are a number of young boys around the man on the donkey who appear to be amused. Even though the United War Work Campaign opened on the same date of the Allied victory it was still a huge success. The goal was to raise a total of $170 million and it raised $35 million more than that. ALA received $3.8 million as its share.

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Reserve Book Notice Sells for $54,625

May 11th, 2013 by Larry T. Nix No comments »

During World War I the cost of sending a government issued postal card in the U.S. was increased from one cent to two cents to help pay for the war effort. After the war the cost was lowered back to one cent. During the war the two cent Grant postal card which was intended for international mail destinations was frequently used for domestic mail. The postmaster of Long Beach, CA wrongly overprinted the Grant international postal cards at the reduced one cent rate for domestic mail after the war. He inadvertently created a philatelic rarity. Only three to four of these miss-marked cards are known to exist. Two of those were mailed by the Long Beach Public Library in 1921to notify patrons that reserve books were waiting for them.  At a philatelic auction conducted by Robert A. Siegel Auction Galleries on March 21 in New York one of the Long Beach Public Library reserve book notices sold for $54,625. A preliminary value for the postal card was set at $100,000 by Siegel which means that the buyer got a real bargain. I previously wrote about these rare postal cards in a post on January 30, 2011. In that post I reported on the second of the two Long Beach Public Library postal cards which sold for $95,000 in 2010. In that post I also noted that I actually had the chance to buy one of the postal cards for $30,000.  I still don't understand why my wife wouldn't let me do it. The auction catalog for the Siegel auction on March 21, 2013 can be found HERE (large pdf file). The listing for the for the Long Beach Public Library postal card in on page 72.

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Time for a study break? Get lost in the Rare Book Room.

May 8th, 2013 by unboundusfca No comments »

Editor’s note: Gleeson Gleanings welcomes guest blogger Katelyn Frager, Museum Studies student.

Need a break from finals week? Come check out the Museum Studies class’ final project – the newest exhibition in USF’s Rare Book Room. “Unbind” with our student-curated exhibition, Unbound: Moving Through Time, Memory & Place in Modern Book Arts. This special exhibition is on display until June 14th, 2013, in the Donohue Rare Book Room on study break post 2the third floor of Gleeson Library. Students curated the collection in a way that focuses on a journey of time, memory and place in modern book arts. Highlighting three “worlds” – Worlds Near & Far, Poetic and Literary Worlds, and Imagined Worlds – the exhibition progresses from existing places and historical moments to more abstracted, mythic evocations.

This project gave 20 Art History/Arts Management students (including me!) the chance to get hands-on experience in curating and designing an exhibition from start to finish. With the assistance of the Donohue Rare Book Room’s curator John Hawk, our Museum Studies Professor Kate Lusheck, and Design Professors Scott Murray and Stuart McKee, study break postwe worked on all aspects of the exhibition—curating the display, developing the exhibition theme and curatorial sub-themes, creating the exhibition labels and wall panels, and designing and conceptualizing the public relations materials (print and online). By splitting into two teams – the curatorial team and the design/public relations team – we spent the semester selecting works to display, researching and writing about the objects in the exhibition, photographing them, and designing PR materials, in just a matter of months! (The typical planning window of many museum exhibitions is a few years.)

Join us on May 9th from 12pm to 2:30pm in the Donohue Rare Book Room for our free,Dons! post public exhibition reception, with gallery talks by the student curators.  Bring your smartphones and tablets too. Our exhibition labels will be available using QR codes.

So come take a mental break from your textbooks to get lost in the beauty and meaning of these often-overlooked books! We hope to see you there.

Check us out on Tumblr too! 
http://unboundusfca.tumblr.com/

– Katelyn Frager, Junior Museum Studies student, Art History/Arts Management Major


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Postal Items from a German WWII POW Camp

May 5th, 2013 by Larry T. Nix No comments »

Woldenberg Oflag IIC was a German World War II prisoner of war camp for Polish officers. The Articles of the Geneva Convention entitled POWs to the right of self-government which led to the development of postal services and library services in some POW camps including Woldenberg. As part of the postal services at Woldenberg, the prisoners developed their own postage stamps and postmarks. A special postmark (shown above) was designed for DNI KSIAZKI or Book Week which took place August 29 to September 4, 1943 to celebrate the 400th anniversary of the printing of the first Polish book.  An exhibit at the camp library was also organized by the the Council for the Camp's Library for Cultural Instructions to celebrate the occasion.  The postmark and stamp above are on part of an envelope given to me by friend and fellow bibliophilatelist Jerzy Duda of Krakow Poland. It was Jerzy who also made me aware of the story behind the items on the envelope. Roman Sobus is an expert on the postal history of Woldenberg Oflag IIC and has developed a philatelic exhibit on this topic. Ironically,
as Sobus points out in the introduction to his exhibit, the postage stamps and special postmarks that were created by the Polish prisoners of war "are most often of a strong cultural or religious nature, depicting events or persons from Poland's history, and its battles for independence, a fact seemingly lost on the prisoners' captors." I also have in my collection a postal card sent by the camp library to one of the prisoners (shown below). For more on these and other similar postal items click here.

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