WVU Libraries

Blog post by Michael Ridderbusch, Associate Curator for Archives and Manuscripts, WVRHC

A recent gift to the History Center includes negatives featuring Mountaineer Field in the 1920s, among other material. Shot by local photographer Scott Gibson, they afford a glimpse of the stadium and field in their earliest days. Before discussing them, however, a review of some of the history of WVU football and the stadium will help to contextualize and enhance our appreciation of these photographs.

Today the Mountaineers are a popular team, having achieved much success in recent times under coach Nehlen and in the years following. They were also a big deal in the 1920s. The 1922 team under coach Clarence Spears were unbeaten, the first and only WVU football team to achieve such a record. The Mountaineers then made their first appearance in a bowl game against Gonzaga in the East-West Bowl, while also stopping in Hollywood to have their picture taken with child star Jackie Coogan. A Charlie Chaplin discovery, Coogan posed front and center with the team.  The resulting autographed photo is in the collection of the History Center.

The success of the Mountaineer team gained the positive attention of the administration of West Virginia University, who then initiated the construction of the first iteration of Mountaineer Field, which was completed in time for the 1924 season.

Some of the subject matter in the negatives just recently acquired from the studio of Scott Gibson include the stadium not long after its completion. Apart from mostly Monticola yearbooks and a few scrapbooks, the 1920s at West Virginia University are not as well documented by photography as in later years, so the acquisition of these images is a welcome addition to our collections. We will feature three of them here.

One of the images shows what appears to be a football game in progress, or perhaps a practice session, we don’t know since identification is lacking. Although the number of spectators is low in this photo, we do know that the Mountaineers could draw crowds of up to 10 to 20 thousand in that era, based on newspaper reports.

The other two photos to be featured here show what appear to be college aged students posing among the stadium benches. They could be young family members, perhaps with friends, of the photographer Scott Gibson. We don’t know. We do know, however, that the negatives for these photos date from ca. 1926, since they are clearly related to other negatives in the collection documenting a 1926 parade in Morgantown. The cloche hats, a virtual fashion necessity of the 1920s and early 30s, clinch this analysis. These images show a casual and candid side of WVU students that’s missing from photos typically seen in Monticola yearbooks.

Wikipedia articles consulted:

“1922 West Virginia Mountaineers football team”

“West Virginia Mountaineers football”

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For other History Center blog posts related to new acquisitions, see:

Collection Highlight: A Souvenir of the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition

Sampling a New Collection: Historical Postcards of Railroad Depots

Sampling a New Collection: More Historical Postcards from the Edward Utz Collection

Blog post by Angela Spatafore, Program Assistant, WVRHC

I love cicadas. In fact, you can probably say it is an obsession at this point. If you visit my house or take a ride in my car, you will undoubtedly be reminded of this obsession by the cicada taxidermy on my bedroom walls to the plush cicada on my dashboard to the various art pieces I’ve collected. So naturally when I was hired at the West Virginia & Regional History Center, one of my first questions was what the Center had about cicadas in its collections. In the spirit of Brood X’s emergence later this year, let’s look at some of what I could find.

With six broods of periodical cicadas covering almost the entire state, West Virginia certainly has its fair share of history with the cicadas. Every seventeen years like clockwork once the ground warms to 64° F eight inches underground, the cicadas begin to emerge, and given their predictability, newspapers publish articles warning and educating those within range of the incoming invasions.

One of my favorite newspaper articles comes from the Ceredo Advance in May 1911. In the article, the author, John E. Watkins, describes the oncoming emergence of not just one but two broods, one of the 17-year broods and one of the 13-year broods. He remarks on how he and everyone living in his time would never witness both broods emerge simultaneously again. While this emergence occurred mostly in New Jersey, it was interesting to see how the news made its way to West Virginia. After all, there’s nothing like a cicada to get you to brood about your mortality.

Growing up, no one I knew called them cicadas. Until my obsession took over and I began pouring through book after book, I, like everyone I knew, called them locusts. After paging through newspapers from as far back as 1834 to today, apparently the term “locust” never quite went out of style. Nearly every article includes some statement explaining the difference between a locust and a cicada to the reader, but why the confusion in the first place?

Apparently the massive scale of a cicada emergence was reminiscent of the biblical swarms of locust to the settlers who witnessed the event. This anecdote was included in The Periodical Cicada of West Virginia by the entomologist William E. Rumsey, a publication I found interesting not only for its scientific content but also its discussion of regional folklore related to the insect, and while I was unable to find any photographs of past invasions in my search of the Center’s OnView collection, I was able to find a photograph of Rumsey. While obviously not a cicada himself, it was nice to put a face to the man whose words I read as I put together this post.

With that said, love them or hate them, cicadas are a part of West Virginia history, and for those of you with ties to the Eastern Panhandle or any of other fourteen states covered by Brood X, be prepared. The cicadas are coming.

Blog post by Christina White, undergraduate researcher at WVU

This is the fourth post in White’s series on race, justice, and social change through cookbooks, featuring the following books from the Ebersole collection: Mammy Pleasant’s Cookbook, A Date with a Dish, A Good Heart and a Light Hand, and The Jemima Code.

Freda de Knight authored the next featured cookbook, A Date with a Dish, but it would be better described as a midnight phone conversation with a friend who knows more than you.

She published this guide in 1948, but her culinary journey began at age 5 when she, like many girls at the time, helped her mother pack lunch for her siblings and prepare family meals.

Freda didn’t hide from challenges facing Black cooks. This was the first cookbook I read that outright rejected the status quo, calling for “a non-regional cook book that would contain recipes, menus, and cooking hints from and by Negros all over America.” Here, there are hundreds of those recipes with anecdotes from the cooks themselves. I have no choice other than sharing one recipe by a West Virginia resident and baker, Ruth Jackson!

I tried to find more information about Ruth, like her bakery’s name, city of residence, or even a photo. I had no success, although a more intensive search might work out. Either way, her memory lives on in A Date with a Dish.

When I think of West Virginia in the 1940’s, I never thought I’d hear about it from the perspective of a Black, female baker. It is truly awesome that Freda takes a moment to celebrate other women of color, whose recipes and ideas were generally shut off from popular cookbooks or publications. Wouldn’t it be great if they read about female entrepreneurs like Ruth Jackson in West Virginia history classes? The recipe is there, tucked away on a shelf in the West Virginia & Regional History Center. If you take away anything from this blog, don’t be afraid to fill a void in a story you care about.

WVU Libraries did not let March winter storm Thor set us back permanently on the Wikipedia Initiative. Though we had to cancel part two of the program planned for March 5, we came back strong on April 30 with an online webinar called “Tackling the Gender Gap in Wikipedia.” Over 100 online and in person registrants joined Cindy Liberatore and Carroll Wilkinson for the session featuring Jami Mathewson of the Wiki Education Foundation and Dr. Adeline Koh of Stockton University.

In addition to a thorough overview of the Wikipedia’s gender gap problem, ideas for teaching with Wikipedia, assignment examples, links to resources for instructors, and many useful techniques for effective instruction were provided.

People who missed the class may now view the recording on YouTube at this address:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KqhcNwWy-H4

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.

Read the rest of this entry »

Students will find scholarly research and industry news relating to all areas of hospitality and tourism in a new database, Hospitality and Tourism Complete, now available on the popular EBSCOhost platform. The Libraries added the resource to support the Hospitality and Tourism Management major, offered for the first time this fall by the College of Business and Economics.

The collection contains more than 828,000 sources, with full text for more than 480 publications, including periodicals, company & country reports, and books. For more information or to access Hospitality and Tourism Complete, visit the databases page on the Libraries web site.

The Libraries recently acquired a new collection of digitized newspapers to support research. Proquest Historical Black Newspapers offers outstanding primary source documents for the study of African-American history, politics, and culture.

The collection contains full text of 9 important African-American newspapers: Chicago Defender, The Baltimore Afro-American, New York Amsterdam News,Pittsburgh Courier, Los Angeles Sentinel, Atlanta Daily World, The Norfolk Journal and Guide, The Philadelphia Tribune, and Cleveland Call and Post. Dates of coverage vary by newspaper, but taken together the collection covers from 1893 to 2005.

The 9 newspapers may be searched as a group through a listing on the Library web site at: Proquest Historical Newspapers – Black Newspapers. They may be cross-searched with other Proquest databases, such as the historical New York Times, as well.

For more information or questions contact http://answers.lib.wvu.edu/ or Penny Pugh at ppugh@wvu.edu.

This summer, the Libraries are partnering with the WVU Center for Service and Learning and Milan Puskar Health Right to offer ULIB 200, a summer service class on grantseeking for non-profits. Students will learn grantseeking research while they prepare a fundraising plan to help Health Right purchase technology.

ULIB 200 will not only give students hands-on experience with non-profit fundraising, but also teach them how to identify funding sources for non-profit organizations using specialized databases and how to prepare a professional research portfolio. The course will be offered May 19 through June 26.

For more information, visit the course webpage https://www.libraries.wvu.edu/instruction/classes/ulib200 or contact Social Sciences Research Librarian Alyssa Wright at Alyssa.wright@mail.wvu.edu.

Students and faculty have month-long access to an award-winning new database, SAGE Research Methods. Try it for free and tell the Libraries how you would use it to support your own research projects or teaching.

SAGE Research Methods contains content from journals, books, and reference sources, including The Little Green Books. Researchers can explore methods concepts to help design research projects, understand particular methods, identify a new method, conduct research, and write up findings. Since SAGE Research Methods focuses on methodology rather than disciplines, it will be useful across many fields of study, including the social sciences, business, and health sciences.

To access SAGE Research Methods visit the listing on the library web site.

To learn more, sign up for an online training session. Heather Dray, a trainer from SAGE will conduct a webinar on Monday, April 14th, from 10-11 AM. Contact Penny Pugh, ppugh@wvu.edu, to register for the training.

Now you can easily read and follow favorite scholarly journals from your iPad or Android tablet.

The WVU Libraries are providing access to journals from many major publishers in a format specially designed for tablets, through the BrowZine app.

BrowZine allows you to save journals to a bookshelf, browse tables of contents, download articles and set up alerts when new articles are published.

It is easy to get started. Download the free app from http://thirdiron.com/download/, launch the app, and select West Virginia University from the list of schools. Login with your WVU MyID credentials and begin browsing.

Join Jo Brown, Research Librarian and Appalachian Bibliographer, for a screening of The Last Mountain, a moving and controversial documentary about the battle to save Coal River Mountain. The film will be shown at 1:30 PM on Wednesday, November 6th, in the Mountainlair Gluck Theatre, as part of Mountaineer Week. The Last Mountain takes an unflinching look at the practice of mountaintop removal mining and the environmental, health, social, and economic effects of the using coal to meet America’s energy needs. A discussion will follow the screening.

The Libraries are sponsoring a trial of BrowZine, the new iPad and Adroid application that allows you to browse, read, and monitor scholarly journals right on your iPad or Android tablet!

To get started, just search for BrowZine in your app store, download the free app, and select West Virginia University from the list of schools. BrowZine will be available for testing until October 31st.

Do you like BrowZine? Please send feedback to penny.pugh@mail.wvu.edu.

The Libraries offer a variety of services designed for phones and tablets. Here are three things to try right now.

Read an e-book. Download one of 90,000 e-books from ebrary. Apps are available for Android and iOS devices. Details at ebrary.

Find research articles for a paper or project. EBSCOhost and Web of Science mobile editions are mobilized at m.lib.wvu.edu/databases.

Get answers. Text your library questions to 304-220-0919 and get real-time answers.

With support from generous donors, the Libraries have acquired The Civil War: Antebellum Period to Reconstruction, a unique resource for researching and teaching this critical period of 19th-century American history. The new digital collection features more than 150 newspapers from all regions of the United States—plus approximately 50,000 government documents and 4,000 rare broadsides and pieces of ephemera. Together, this diverse collection of primary materials provides remarkable local and national coverage of American culture, politics and society from 1840 through 1877—a tumultuous time that redefined a nation. Connect to the collection at The Civil War. For more information, contact Penny Pugh: ppugh@wvu.edu.

The Downtown Campus Library of West Virginia University will host a free workshop on grant seeking for nonprofit organizations from 9:30am to noon on April 13th.

The session will highlight the electronic and print resources available for free use at the Downtown Campus Library, which recently became a Cooperating Collection of the Foundation Center. Established in 1956, the Foundation Center is the nation’s leading authority on organized philanthropy, serving grantseekers, grantmakers, researchers, policymakers, the media, and the general public. In its new role, the Library serves as a hub for the Foundation Center’s resources, making them available to nonprofits and social service agencies, as well as the University community.

The workshop, led by Kief Schladweiler, Coordinator of Cooperating Collections with the Foundation Center (www.foundationcenter.org), will provide an introduction to the world of foundation fundraising. It will detail the grant-seeking process, the world of grantmakers, and available tools and resources. It will include instruction on the Foundation Center’s comprehensive online database, Foundation Directory Online Professional. Participants will learn how to create customized searches to develop targeted lists of foundations that match an organization’s funding needs.

To register, contact Penny Pugh at ppugh@wvu.edu (304-293-0334) or Alyssa Wright at Alyssa.wright@mail.wvu.edu (304-293-0337).
For more information, visit http://libguides.wvu.edu/grants.

Celebrate your freedom to read during Banned Books Week. On Wednesday, October 3rd, at 6:30 PM, Dr. Elizabeth Dooley will read from The Color Purple as part of the campus events for Banned Books Week. The Read-In will be held in the Wise Library Robinson Reading Room.

Banned Books Week is an annual event, sponsored by the American Library Association to draw attention to the problem of censorship. Each year hundreds of books are challenged by groups that want the books removed from schools and libraries. Books that have been challenged in the past include such classics as The Grapes of Wrath, Catch 22, and Lord of the Flies.

To learn more, visit the Downtown Campus Library to see an exhibit featuring some of the classic titles that have been targeted by would-be censors.

Learn the basics of two library citation managers, EndNote Web and RefWorks, at a workshop offered in two locations. The first session will be held in the Downtown Campus Library (Room 136) on Tuesday, September 25, from 4:00-5:30 p.m. The session will be repeated on Thursday, September 27th, at the Evansdale Library in the electronic classroom (Rm 130) from 4:00-5:30 p.m. Advance registration is suggested, but not required. Please email: Jenny.Douglas@mail.wvu.edu.

Wanted: WVU students who love movies and like online courses

We have the class for you.

Film and Media Literacy (ULIB300 CRN52267)

The course is an eCampus course and does not meet in a classroom. Students watch films independently in the private viewing rooms in the Media Services Department of the Downtown Campus Library, online, or at home.

Here are some quotes from students that took the course:

“This was also one of my first web classes and I felt it was better than other web classes I have taken this semester.”

“I really enjoyed this course and would like to take more classes like this.”

“This was my favorite class throughout all of college.”

In this class, you will choose four of eight genres to study. The choices are: Blaxploitation, Slasher, Gangster, Westerns, Dark Comedy, the Films of Quentin Tarantino, Graphic Novel Adaptations, and World Cinema. You will then select two of the fours genres to focus further on and watch five more films that capture the development of those genres. Finally, you will research and choose a film from lists in your selected genres to critique for your final assignment. You will also study media literacy, film criticism and vocabulary, and film databases.

For more information and a complete film list visit the course web page at http://www.libraries.wvu.edu/instruction/film/.

Two Honors graduates have been named Robert F. Munn Undergraduate Library Scholars. Alexandra Day Coffman and Chelsea Richmond received the award at a ceremony in the Charles C. Wise Library during Commencement Weekend.

“Both of these young women wrote tremendous theses. Their work demonstrates and showcases the great research being done by undergraduates at West Virginia University,” said Keith Garbutt, Dean of the Honors College. “We are pleased these students are being recognized for their scholarship and hard work.”
The WVU Libraries and the Honors College established the Robert F. Munn Undergraduate Library Scholars Award in 2009 to honor Dr. Robert F. Munn, Dean of Library Services from 1957-1986.

The award goes to one or more graduating Honors students for outstanding humanities or social sciences research that is done in the WVU Libraries and results in an exceptional thesis. Writing a thesis is a graduation requirement for Honors students. Along with receiving a $1,000 award, the scholar’s name is added to a plaque in the Downtown Campus Library.

Coffman is the daughter of Bert and Suzanne Coffman of Grafton. Her experience with the West Virginia 4-H program led her to focus her research on the tradition and history of the organization. Her thesis, “The Life and Influence of William H. Kendrick: A Short Biography of ‘Teepi’ Kendrick,” discusses the impact Kendrick has had on the West Virginia 4-H program.

Coffman spent a lot of time digging into the archives of the Libraries’ West Virginia and Regional History Collection. She was excited to learn that her writing was being recognized and that a topic not often examined was selected as a winning thesis.

“My research was about William H Kendrick and his influence on the West Virginia 4-H program. It covered his entire life, but focused on when he became state 4-H leader and eventually founded the first state 4-H camp in the nation at Jackson’s Mill,” Coffman said.

Graduating in December 2010, Coffman has already begun pursuing a dual master’s in history and international studies through the Atlantis Program, a collaborative transatlantic master’s program. She will study in Europe during the 2011-12 academic year.

Richmond is the daughter of Michael Richmond of Lewisburg and Heather Bandy of Ronceverte. As a history and political science double major, Richmond focused her research on a topic that reflects her passion for both subject areas. Her thesis, “Tito’s Yugoslavia: America’s Cold War Weapon,” examines the relationship between Cold War era United States and Yugoslavia and how lessons learned from this interaction could be used in today’s foreign policy.

Richmond enjoyed the research experience and was thrilled to learn that she had won the award.

“It’s so easy to avoid libraries and archival research today, with the Internet and electronic resources, but to do so would be missing out on one of the most important and constructive experiences an undergraduate can have,” she said. “Going to the WVU Libraries, researching books, and burying myself in the archives and stacks is one of the most rewarding academic experiences I have had, and I honestly don’t think my paper would be anywhere as complete or historically accurate if I had conducted my research elsewhere, or in a different way.”

Richmond plans to study law at Washington and Lee University this fall and wants to return to her home state to practice.

“We were impressed with the great work by Alexandra and Chelsea,” said Myra Lowe, Associate Dean of Libraries. “Their efforts honor Dr. Munn’s legacy of supporting research.”

Munn began his career at WVU as a librarian in 1952 and advanced to head the Library in 1957. Over the next three decades, he directed the expansion of the Library from a modest centralized facility into a campus-wide system of Libraries with holdings in excess of a million volumes. During that time, he also served as provost under three presidents.

A scholar and author of numerous articles and several books relating to various topics including West Virginia, Appalachia and the coal industry, Munn was dedicated to promoting scholarship and literature especially regarding West Virginia-related subjects. In 1981, he founded the WVU Press as a vehicle to publish manuscripts of merit chiefly of state and regional interest.

His contributions went beyond WVU. Munn had an international reputation in the field of librarianship, served on boards of several leading foundations, and assisted in the establishment of libraries in developing countries around the world.

To prepare for the campus-wide changes in identity management that will occur over the summer, the Libraries have changed the password for access to electronic resources. Beginning on May 13, access from off-campus locations will use the WVU Master ID username and password for logon.

Changing to Master ID for library authentication is an important step in reducing the number of passwords needed for access to campus resources.  Library resources available by Master ID password include databases, e-journals and e-books. Materials on e-Reserve (electronic reserve) and library computers will also use Master ID as the method of login. Instruction and links to help are included on the logon screens. 

WVU students, faculty, and staff may activate their WVU Master ID online at http://oit.wvu.edu/masterid.  Those who need to reset their passwords can phone the OIT Help Desk at 304-293-4444.

Library help is available online at http://libraries.wvu.edu/ask or by phone at 304-293-3640.