USF Student Creative Activity and Research Day

April 17th, 2013 by Shawn P. Calhoun No comments »

USF’s Creative Activity and Research Day (CARD) is this Friday, April 19th in Fromm Hall. This annual one-day conference celebrates the research, artistic, and creative work of USF undergraduate and graduate students. It is a great way for students to present the results of their hard work and showcase their knowledge outside of the classroom. Student talks start this Friday at 10:00a and can be heard  continuously until 3:00p. The poster sessions begin at 11:00a. The full schedule can be found on the College of Arts and Sciences CARD website.

CARD 2012 Student Research

CARD 2012 Student Research Presentation

One way the Gleeson Library | Geschke Learning Resource Center supports CARD – we archive digital records of many of the student presentations and posters. Anyone can browse the 2012 and 2013 CARD presentations stored in the Gleeson Library Scholarship Repository.

This year will be another great event!  We hope to see you there on Friday and if you’re presenting give us a shout out in the comments section below.


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More On ALA’s 1893 Model Library

April 12th, 2013 by Larry T. Nix No comments »

In response to my previous post about ALA and the 1893 World's Fair, Tom Ray, Collections Management Coordinator of The Library of Virginia, informed me that The Library of Virginia had recently acquired one of the actual books from ALA's model library collection at the Fair. The book that they have is The Colonel's Daughter by Charles King. The really neat thing about the book is that it has an example of the bookplate used for the model collection (shown above). All 5,000 books in the model collection were donated by book publishers. Originally, the U.S. Bureau of Education was going to pay for the collection, but at the last minute couldn't do it. A successful appeal to publishers of the books saved the day. The bookplate in The Colonel's Daughter indicates that it was donated by the J. B. Lippincott Company.  The collection of books was arranged half by the Dewey decimal classification system and half by the Cutter classification system. The bookplate shows that The Colonel's Daughter was classified by the Cutter system with the call number K58c based on the author's last name (King). I wonder what happened to the other 4,999 volumes in the collection. Any thoughts or insights out there?

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ALA and the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago

April 10th, 2013 by Larry T. Nix No comments »
Postcard showing building where ALA exhibit was located
When the members of the American Library Association gather in Chicago on June 27th it will mark the 120th anniversary of ALA's meeting in conjunction with the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. It was one of the most significant annual conferences in ALA's history, and it was the first of many ALA conferences in Chicago. It marked a high point in the prominence of Melvil Dewey in ALA and the library profession. Dewey was serving as President of ALA during the conference and played a major role in the Association's active involvement in the Exposition.  For the Exposition, ALA sponsored an exhibit of a model library with a collection of 5,000 of the "best" books available to libraries. A catalog of this collection was later published by the U.S. Bureau of Education as the Catalog of the A.L.A. Library [Hathi Trust link]. The model library and published catalog were the fulfillment of a Dewey idea that had been proposed in 1876. The U.S. Bureau of Education also published a book of the papers presented for what was described as the "World's Library Congress" [Hathi Trust link]. Although Dewey was a major force behind ALA's involvement in the Exposition of 1893, it was largely due to the efforts of Mary S. Cutler, one of Dewey's subordinates at the New York State Library School, that the model library exhibit was successfully implemented. For more on ALA's model library collection click HERE. Of the 250 people who registered for the ALA conference, 150 were women. Also on display at the conference were examples of all manner of library equipment and supplies. One item was of special interest. It was the "Rudolph Continuous Indexer" a machine that housed an alternative version of a card catalog. See my post on this unusual machine. Check it out yourself at the Newberry Library while in Chicago. The World's Columbian Exposition marked the beginning of the golden age of souvenirs. The "pioneer" picture postcard on the back of a government issued postal card shown above includes an image of the Government Building at the Exposition which housed ALA's exhibit. Another significant exhibit at the Exposition was the Woman's Building Library. For my online exhibit on the history of ALA click HERE. My sources: "Best Foot Forward: Representation of American Librarianship at World's Fairs 1853-1904" by Budd L. Gambee in Library History Seminar No. 3, Proceedings, 1968 (The Journal of Library History, 1968) and Irrepressible Reformer by Wayne A. Wiegand (ALA, 1996). 

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Library Faculty Reading

April 9th, 2013 by John Hawk No comments »

The Gleeson Library is pleased to sponsor a faculty reading on Thursday, April 18 as it welcomes University of San Francisco Professors Kathleen Winter and Brian Dempster (Rhetoric and Language) who will read from their recent works. Kathleen Winter will read from her volume of poetry Nostalgia for the Criminal Past (Elixir Press, 2012). The collection recently won the Antivenom Poetry Award. Professor Dempster will read from his forthcoming volume of poetry, Topaz, as well as Making Home From War: Stories of Japanese American Exile and Resettlement (Heyday Press, 2011). Both works document and consider Japanese American imprisonment experience during World War II and its aftermath in a world that for many had drastically changed in just a few short years.

The program begins at 5:00 on Thursday, April 18 in the Donohue Rare Book Room, located on the third floor of the Gleeson Library. Light refreshments will be served and books will be available for purchase. The program is free and open to the public. All are welcome to attend. For further information, please call (415) 422-2036.

John Hawk
Head Librarian
Special Collections & University Archives


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Posted in Feeds, University of San Francisco

Library Faculty Reading

April 9th, 2013 by John Hawk No comments »

The Gleeson Library is pleased to sponsor a faculty reading on Thursday, April 18 as it welcomes University of San Francisco Professors Kathleen Winter and Brian Dempster (Rhetoric and Language) who will read from their recent works. Kathleen Winter will read from her volume of poetry Nostalgia for the Criminal Past (Elixir Press, 2012). The collection recently won the Antivenom Poetry Award.  Professor Dempster will read from his work Making Home From War: Making Stories of Japanese American Exile and Resettlement (Heyday Press, 2011). The book documents the experiences of twelve Japanese American elders and shares stories about their exodus from concentration camps into a world that in a few short years had drastically changed.

The program begins at 5:00 on Thursday, April 18 in the Donohue Rare Book Room, located on the third floor of the Gleeson Library. Light refreshments will be served and books will be available for purchase. The program is free and open to the public. All are welcome to attend. For further information, please call (415) 422-2036.

John Hawk
Librarian, Special Collections & University Archives


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Posted in Feeds, University of San Francisco

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