WVU Libraries

Blog post by Stewart Plein, Rare Book Librarian.

In 1948, Biology professor Earl L. Core had the foresight to envision a place where students in the biology and botany departments could do field research  He envisioned students and faculty engaging in botanical research right in the heart of the city.  After a discussion with then WVU president Irwin Stewart, ninety one lush acres of undeveloped woodland, rising at its base from the banks of the Monongahela River to its height bordering Monongahela Boulevard, were set aside to preserve and to study the distinctive biodiversity within this realm of river bottom and ridge line.  The Arboretum was born.  Read the rest of this entry »

Blog post by Michael Ridderbusch, Associate Curator, WVRHC.

The West Virginia and Regional History Center recently acquired a collection of photographs shot by West Virginian Marshall L. Williamson, a member of the US Navy Medical Corps assigned to the 57th Naval Construction Battalion.  Trained in Gulfport, Mississippi in February of 1943, they were deployed in March and April to Espiritu Santo, the largest island in the New Hebrides.  This island served as the location for a supply and support base during WWII, but it’s also the fabled island featured in James Michener’s Tales of the South Pacific, which was later memorialized in the Rogers and Hammerstein musical, South Pacific.  On evidence of these photographs, Williamson took an active interest in the sights around him when based at Espiritu Santo, including not only scenes of his life as a naval medic, but also of the native people and landscape, some of which we include in this blog.  Read the rest of this entry »

By Beth Royall, Creative Arts Librarian, Evansdale Library

Evansdale Library welcomes an exhibit of altered and manipulated books created by students in Assistant Professor Dylan Collins’s Art 212, a multimedia course in the School of Art and Design.

For this project, students focused on altering or manipulating a book or series of books in order to create new meaning from an existing text. Some of these artworks take pleasure in animating the timeless stories contained within the pages of a beloved tome, while other pieces use books as building blocks that can be shaped to fit a student’s conceptual idea.

In all cases, students paid careful attention to the way their artworks were made, focusing on issues of craft, technique, and material. The exhibit is located on the main and 2^nd floors, and will be up through May 10^th.

National Student Employee Appreciation Week runs April 13-19, and the Libraries are helping to celebrate.  The Libraries currently employ 72 students to work on all three campuses—Downtown, Evansdale, and Health Sciences. Our student workers have a variety of job duties, including answering questions, checking out materials, processing books, and more.  Student workers are vital to make the Libraries run as smoothly as possible for WVU faculty, staff, and students.

Myra Lowe, Associate Dean of Libraries; Dr. Jon Cawthorne, Dean of Libraries; Judith Meyers, Research Services Graduate Assistant; Nick Marabeti, Multimedia Services Student Worker; Cassie Semler, Access Services Student Worker.

The University is honoring student employees with a celebration on Tuesday, April 14 in the Mountaineer Ballroom.  In addition to activities and refreshments, President Gee will be giving an award to the Student Employee of the Year.  Two students who work in the WVU Libraries, Nathan Snedden and Jazz Delos Santos, are among the five finalists for the award.

More information about campus events for National Student Employee Appreciation Week are available on the Office of Student Employment website.

Participate in a 24-hour race to write, shoot, edit and post a video and win fabulous prizes! The contest will be held from 5 p.m. Friday to 5 p.m. Saturday. Teams of up to four undergraduate or graduate students will compete for two prizes of $400 in Amazon gift cards each—Judge’s Choice and People’s Choice.  Use equipment and software available at the Downtown Campus Library’s Multimedia Services Department in this race to create a 3-minute video. Only the first 10 teams to sign up will be eligible. The winning films will be selected at our video screening on April 12. For more information and to register, please visit: https://lib.wvu.edu/services/multimedia/insomnia/

Guest blog post by Brandi Oswald, Graduate Student Assistant, WVRHC.

This week marks the 150^th anniversary of the end of the American Civil War in Virginia. This blog post focuses on West Virginians present at the war’s end, at both the evacuation of Richmond, the Confederate capital, and the surrender at Appomattox Court House.  Read the rest of this entry »

Blog post by Lori Hostuttler, Digital Projects and Outreach Archivist, WVRHC.

The WV & Regional History Center is truly filled with treasures – one of my favorites happens to be the Lucy Washington Cookbook, A&M 3212.  Lucy Washington’s grandfather was a nephew of President George Washington.  She lived in Jefferson County, West Virginia, where many Washington family members held land and built homes.  In 1840, Lucy married John Packett.  Their home, Locust Hill, was located near Charles Town.  

By Abby Freeland, WVU Press

West Virginia University Press has published Uncle Abner: Master of Mysteries by Melville Davisson Post, the fifth volume in its West Virginia Classic Series.

First published in 1918, Uncle Abner: Master of Mysteries is an anthology of detective stories written by Melville Davisson Post. The popular stories within this collection were serialized in national magazines such as the Saturday Evening Post in the early twentieth century.

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West Virginia University Libraries has been granted membership in the Greater Western Library Alliance, expanding the reach of both organizations and giving researchers easier access to a multitude of resources.

“Being a member of the Alliance will immediately benefit WVU faculty and students by giving them access to a wider array of special collections and resources,” Provost Joyce McConnell said. “It also will open the door to many more projects and partnerships with other member institutions.”

Membership in the Alliance, approved at the organization’s spring membership meeting earlier this month, will bring faster access to research collections complementing the WVU Libraries’ own collections. Read the rest of this entry »

Submitted by Carroll Wetzel Wilkinson, Director of Library Strategic Initiatives, WVU Libraries

The first public program in the Talking Publicly series sponsored by the University Libraries (in partnership with the Reed College of Media) was launched on March 4, 2015 at 7:30pm at Ming Hsieh Hall on the Downtown Campus of West Virginia University.

Winter storm Thor prevented delivery of both parts of the two part program on the gender gap in Wikipedia. The Thursday morning workshop on writing for Wikipedia will be rescheduled at another time. In spite of the dreadful weather, we were successful with part 1 which was the panel discussion “Where Are All the Women?” on Wednesday March 4 at 7:30pm.  Maryanne Reed, Dean of the Reed College of Media, opened the program and Jon Cawthorne, Dean of the WVU Libraries, moderated.

Maryanne Reed, Dean of the Reed College of Media, introduces the program.

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Blog post by Michael Ridderbusch, Associate Curator, WVRHC.

On the 18th of December, 1930, a photographer from the studio of Gravely and Moore appeared at the offices of the West Virginia Department of Health in Charleston, West Virginia to document their workplace.  The resulting photos, some of which are presented here, can be viewed and understood in any number of ways.  For this blog, however, we’ll chose to view them through the lens of technology, thereby throwing into relief the advantages of the modern office that we all enjoy today.   Read the rest of this entry »

Participate in a twenty-four hour race to write, shoot, edit and post a video and win fabulous prizes! The contest will be held from Friday April 10, 2015 to Saturday, April 11, 2015 at 5:00 p.m. Teams of up to four undergraduate or graduate students will compete for two prizes of $400 in Amazon gift cards each—Judge’s Choice and People’s Choice.  Use equipment and software available at the Downtown Campus Library’s Multimedia Services Department in this race to create a 3 minute video.  Only the first 10 teams to sign up will be eligible.  The winning films will be selected at our video screening on April 12. For more information and to register, please visit: https://lib.wvu.edu/services/multimedia/insomnia/

Guest blog post by Zachery Cowsert, graduate student assistant, WVRHC.

The night before the Fourth of July, 1861, a dozen Union soldiers (self -described “disciples of Faust”) broke into the offices of the Virginia Republican—a decidedly secessionist organ—and appropriated the newspaper’s office for their own use.  The next morning, the first issues of the American Union hit the streets of Martinsburg, Virginia (now West Virginia).  The newspaper—composed and printed entirely by Union soldiers—enjoyed a brief existence in Martinsburg; today, the newspapers’ pages are housed in the West Virginia and Regional History Center, and they offer a glimpse into soldier life and patriotism early in the Civil War.[i]   Read the rest of this entry »

Blog post by Jane Metters LaBarbara, Assistant Curator, WVRHC.

On March 2, the National Education Association celebrates Read Across America, “an annual reading motivation and awareness program that calls for every child in every community to celebrate reading”—March 2 also happens to be the birthday of beloved author Dr. Seuss (Theodor Seuss Geisel).  Since WVU has a commitment to lifelong learning, I thought today’s blog post would be a good place to celebrate lifelong reading.  I asked my coworkers in the WVRHC to share with our readers a book that they love, think is noteworthy, or that taught them something interesting.  Ten of them came up with a wide range of favorites; their choices and explanations are below.

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Guest blog post by Brandi Oswald, Graduate Student Assistant, WVRHC.

Author and humorist Mark Twain is best known for his famous books such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, and many others. However, Twain also created other books, much less famous today than those he authored, but popular in their heyday in the late 1870s and 1880s.

Label on pastedown endpaper (inside the front cover) of one of the WVRHC’s Twain scrapbooks

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Blog post by Lori Hostuttler, Digital Projects and Outreach Archivist, WVRHC.

Since we celebrated President’s Day this week, I thought I would highlight a few of the items at the West Virginia & Regional History Center that are connected to George Washington and Abraham Lincoln, two of our most beloved and admired presidents.   Read the rest of this entry »

The West Virginia University Libraries have redesigned their website to make it easier to use from wherever someone connects.

“More and more people are using mobile devices, and our mobile site was out of date,” said Tim Broadwater, web designer for the WVU Libraries. “We wanted to create something with responsive design so people can use our resources on whatever device they have.”

Responsive design involves creating one website that can adapt its layout to conform to the viewing environment.

“It doesn’t matter if users are on a desktop with 1,900 pixels of resolution, a tablet with 768 pixels, or an iPhone with 320 pixels, they’ll get a comparable experience that’s customized for that device,” Broadwater said. Read the rest of this entry »

WVU Today

Wikipedia is one of the most commonly referenced encyclopedias in the world – more than 450 million people visit the website each month. Unlike other encyclopedias, Wikipedia’s content is written by volunteer editors from around the world. However, the site faces a serious gender gap that can influence that content.

Some Wikipedia visitors may be surprised to learn that nearly 90 percent of the site’s volunteer editors are male. The editors also tend to be mostly white and college educated. As a result, users are more likely to find more information about men and male-related topics than they are about women and female-related topics.

On March 4-5, the West Virginia University Reed College of Media and the WVU Libraries will co-sponsor a panel discussion and faculty workshop addressing the gender gap. Read the rest of this entry »

Blog post by Michael Ridderbusch, Associate Curator, WVRHC.

Sometimes the cataloging of archival collections yields discoveries that document an interesting moment in history.  The Gravely and Moore archive is such a collection, its photographs capturing much of the history of Charleston, West Virginia.

Without knowing it, Gravely and Moore documented the beginning of a culinary empire in the Mountain State — the drive-in known as “Parkette,” which opened in 1947 in Charleston, West Virginia.  After successfully spreading across the state, it then franchised the name Shoney’s in 1953 and spread across the nation.  According to a 2012 article in the magazine West Virginia Living, the chain’s success peaked in the late 1990s, with 1,400 Shoney’s restaurants and 400 Captain D’s restaurants.  Read the rest of this entry »

Blog post by Stewart Plein, Rare Book Librarian.

The humble groundhog.  Few animals have had such an interesting history.  The lowly critter has been the subject of both good and bad intentions.  On the plus side, the groundhog was painted by Audubon, starred in a Hollywood blockbuster movie, and revered as a weather prognosticator.  However, the flip side of the equation sees the groundhog vilified as a garden thief as well as a tasty addition to a hunter’s stew.  Read the rest of this entry »