WVU Libraries

WVU Libraries’ Arts in the Libraries committee presented the 2020-21 Faculty/Staff Exhibit Award to Nancy Caronia, a teaching assistant professor in the Eberly College of Arts and Sciences Department of English, for her proposal to visually showcase her scholarship, “Dime Novels: Racialization and Erasure,” in a new and experimental way.

While working on an interdisciplinary volume exploring how the American dime novel genre assisted in spreading discriminatory notions of Italian immigrants in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Caronia found, “…Dime novels reinforce racist and ethnic stereotypes not only of Italian immigrants, but also indigenous, black, and Chinese individuals and communities.”

Blog post by Linda Blake, University Librarian Emerita

Like me, I imagine many of you feel gratitude that the COVID-19 virus wreaked havoc on our county during the spring months rather than during the bleak winter months.  Of course, I am grateful for so much more including remaining healthy, being able to continue to work, having plenty of food and other essentials, and continuing to stay in touch with friends and family electronically. One thing I am particularly grateful for is the ability to get outside as the miracle of spring comes to the green spaces in Morgantown.  Since confinement, I have hiked in the West Virginia Botanic Garden, the Hemlock Trail in Chestnut Ridge Park, and WVU’s Core Arboretum where currently the ephemeral spring wild flowers are showing their full beauty  Not only does the physical exercise reinvigorate me, but the woods are calming and affirm that life continues to go on in so many forms in the woods. 

To inspire you to get outside to our parks,  I have selected some historical photographs of city and state parks from the West Virginia and Regional History Collection’s OnView where over fifty thousand digitized photographs await your exploration.  If you have completed all the jigsaw puzzles in your house and find yourself restless, get outside or visit us virtually. Have some fun by searching old pictures of West Virginia parks or other subjects such as families, communities, and industries. 

Let’s start with a few idyllic city parks from around the state.  Maybe our readers will help us date the photos or let us know if these parks still exits.

If you live near one of West Virginia’s extraordinary state parks, then you are lucky to have that resource for escaping the confines of quarantine and the stay-at-home order.   For many of us in the Morgantown area the respite from everyday stress often begins at Coopers Rock State Forest. 

The West Virginia Regional History Collection maintains the records for theCoopers Rock Foundation as well as information on the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) which built much of the early infrastructure in state parks.  Information on the CCC’s role in building and enhancing state parks can be researched in the collection titled West Virginia State Parks, National Register Forms. The cabins and other CCC projects can still be seen at Watoga State Park and other parks.

I am including a few more historical photographs of our state parks from West Virginia History On View.  West Virginia maintains nearly forty state parks and forests so I hope that you will take advantage of this resource while maintaining the recommended six-feet of social distancing.

Covid-19 has created an extraordinary opportunity for us to think about what is important and to strip away parts of our lives which no longer seem important.  Getting outside to the woods has continued to be important to me.  I hope you have found what brings you relief and are safe, healthy, and hopeful.  I leave you with this beauty, the soon to be blooming resilient and beautiful state flower, rhododendron.

For more in depth information on the parks mentioned here, do advanced research on the West Virginia and Regional History Center’s resources, and we look forward to seeing you when our doors open again. 

This summer, sit back, relax, and watch some movies with us while earning credits. Check out ULIB 300 – Film and Media Literacy. In this 12-week online course, students will watch the films of Quentin Tarantino, including “Inglourious Basterds,” “Kill Bill,” “Pulp Fiction,” “Reservoirs Dogs,” “Hateful Eight,” and “Jackie Brown,” and discuss how they relate to other films in their genre, criticism, marketing, film vocabulary, and media literacy.

To register in STAR, use the Class Schedule Search and set Subject to “Library Instruction.” Learn more at the Libraries website or contact the instructor, Matt Steele, at matthew.steele1@mail.wvu.edu or 304-293-4240.

Through WVU Libraries’ partnership with HathiTrust, students and faculty now have digital access to copyrighted books on a temporary basis. This means that any books available in WVU’s print collections that are also available through HathiTrust will be available online, greatly expanding digital access to our own materials.

By Nathan Kosmicki, WVRHC Graduate Assistant

2020 marks the 100th anniversary of both Prohibition and Women’s Suffrage. These two events are indicative of ambitious efforts and tumultuous times for the United States. These events and anxieties were felt even in Morgantown. One group in Morgantown had a strong advocacy for both causes, The Women’s Christian Temperance Union. The WCTU was a national organization founded on the principles of the abstention and ultimate prohibition of alcohol and women’s suffrage. The group started in a small town outside of Cincinnati in 1873 and grew to full national recognition by 1919 and the ratification of the 18th Amendment. A local chapter of the WCTU was established in Morgantown in 1884 at the Methodist Episcopal Church later called Phillips Hall. Elizabeth J. Moore was elected president and vice presidents from each parish in Morgantown were elected.

Blog post by Lori Hostuttler, Assistant Director, WVRHC

Every year as Easter approaches, if you are lucky, you might catch the scent of baking bread and fragrant anise wafting in the air in my hometown of Clarksburg, West Virginia.  Easter bread, sweet and flavored with anise seed, is a holiday ritual in the Italian-American community here.  With roots stretching back to Calabria, making Easter bread is a foodways tradition that now thrives in North Central West Virginia.

Dear Students,

Welcome “back”! As you know, courses are online—and so is the library! We hope your transition to online coursework goes as smoothly as possible, and here are some ways we’re working to help make that happen:

LibGuide

We have put together a LibGuide with information related to online classes, accessing library materials, and more here: https://libguides.wvu.edu/instruction_support. We recommend bookmarking it for quick reference. Library fines are being waived, so don’t worry if your materials are overdue!

Research Assistance

As always, we are glad to help at any stage of the research process. We offer assistance through a variety of channels, including chat, email, and audio- or video-conferencing.

You can find the relevant librarian for your subject here: https://directory.lib.wvu.edu/liaisons

Blog post by Stewart Plein, Assistant Curator for WV Books & Printed Resources & Rare Book Librarian

If you’re working from home like I am, you might be looking for a fun activity that is both peaceful and distracts you from all the chaos surrounding the COVID-19 outbreak. 

Need to take a break from answering emails? Searching for professional development activities? All the latest news reports?  Here’s an activity that both the children and adults in your household will enjoy – coloring!

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

In light of the current turbulence of COVID-19, I thought we could all use something nice and light to enjoy on the blog.  Below I am sharing a small sampling of postcards from our new (currently in-process) Hatfield family collection.

In case you, too, crave certainty and resolution, I wanted to end the post with the ceremonial peace treaty style document signed by members of both families in 2003, declaring that they had put the feud far behind them and embraced unity. Also included is the governor’s declaration of June 14, 2003 as Hatfield-McCoy Reconciliation Day.

West Virginia University Libraries has postponed “A Mountaineer Named Sherlock,” a Sherlock Holmes symposium scheduled for March 20-21, due to the suspension of in-person classes and other events on the WVU campus. 

Blog post by Lori Hostuttler, Assistant Director, WVRHC

On March 10, 1920, West Virginia Senators voted to approved the 19^th Amendment to the Constitution which extended the right to vote to women.  Taking this action made West Virginia number thirty-four of the thirty-six states needed for ratification. 

Blog post by Michael Ridderbusch, Associate Curator, WVRHC.

Recently, I was a passenger on Amtrak’s Empire Builder line, an experience which afforded me opportunities to get off the train and explore a few passenger depots in out-of-the-way places.  Many of the depot buildings I visited had historical interest.  This isn’t surprising.  Since train travel is an experience older than that of traveling by cars and planes we expect to see an antique infrastructure that will evoke a sense of times past, even while engaging with the immediate journey at hand.

Blog post by Stewart Plein, Assistant Curator for WV Books & Printed Resources & Rare Book Librarian

A new book on our shelves, The Jemima Code: Two Centuries of African American Cookbooks, by Toni Tipton-Martin, documents more than 150 black cookbooks published in America.  The cookbooks range from a rare 1827 house servant’s manual, the first book published by an African American in the trade, to modern classics by authors like Edna Lewis.  Each book is listed chronologically and illustrated with their covers.  Recipes are also included. According to the listing on Amazon, this book “offers important firsthand evidence that African Americans cooked creative masterpieces from meager provisions, educated young chefs, operated food businesses, and nourished the African American community through the long struggle for human rights.”

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

Today, I finally found the content that established the predecessor to the WVRHC, called the Division of Documents.  Much of the story of the evolution of the Center, from the days when the Library was collecting historical material piecemeal through to the days of the well-established West Virginia and Regional History Collection, appears in Dr. John Cuthbert’s article, “West Virginia Collection Holds Keys to the State’s History,” West Virginia University Alumni Magazine, vol. 23, no. 3, Fall 2000, pp. 36-39. The name was updated to West Virginia and Regional History Center in 2013. 

Since we are updating some of our documentation, I have been searching for the often-mentioned WVU Board of Governors’ establishment of the Division of Documents in 1933, as well as the mention of the Division of Documents as an official repository of state documents in the Acts of Legislature the following year.

Blog post by Michael Ridderbusch, Associate Curator, WVRHC.

Recently, when reviewing the content of a new collection at the History Center, I discovered a souvenir of the World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, a photograph of the world’s first Ferris Wheel that is more than 125 years old.  Mounted on a card of four by seven inches, it was likely sold to tourists of the Exposition, of which there were 27 million, or more that 1/3 of the population of the United States at that time.

Blog post by Stewart Plein, Assistant Curator for WV Books & Printed Resources & Rare Book Librarian

Garden catalogs usually begin to arrive in my mailbox during January’s cold and dreary days. I love sitting down with a catalog and turning the pages filled with colorful photographs of flowering seeds, plants and vegetables.  Flipping through these pages and admiring the photos always makes me want to order more seeds and plants than I could ever use or could possibly plant in my yard. 

Blog post by Linda Blake, University Librarian Emerita

George H. Breiding, 1917-2007, spread the news regarding the importance and impact of nature and its conservation.  While a naturalist at Oglebay Park in Wheeling, 1950-1963, where he was born, he wrote a nature column for the Wheeling Intelligencer, did radio interviews, and taught youth about the natural world.  He was an agent for WVU’s Extension Services, 1963-1979, and also wrote widely for various popular magazines including Wild Wonderful West Virginia and Bird Watcher’s Digest.  As I said, he spread the word at every opportunity.

By Lara Farina

English professor and recipient of the WVU Libraries’ 2019 Faculty Exhibit Award

Farina’s recent research focuses on the botanic world in pre-modern medicine, philosophy, art, and literature, specifically that of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. Her exhibit, “Big Green Data: Herbals, Science, and Art,” is currently on display at the Evansdale Library through May.

Archival research is always full of surprises, and sometimes these surprises are more worthy of study than the research we plan in advance. This was certainly true of my visits to British and American libraries for the purpose of looking at medieval herbals first-hand. Herbals are pharmacopeia, lists of medicinal plants. Before the sixteenth century, they circulated as manuscript codices — hand-written and often copiously illustrated books. I intended to read these works for information about how physicians and pharmacists used sensory practices to identify and discuss botanic life. But description of plants’ smell, feel, taste, and even visual appearance was disappointingly minimal in these voluminous works of botanic science.

Blog post by Lori Hostuttler, Assistant Director, WVRHC

About this time one hundred years ago, WVU students returned to Morgantown to begin a new semester of classes.  The collections at the West Virginia & Regional History Center allow us a glimpse of student and University life back then.  The Athenaeum student newspaper describes student experiences, happenings on campus, and the important topics of the day. 

West Virginia University Libraries’ new exhibit marks the 55^th anniversary of the passage of a landmark piece of civil rights legislation. “For the Dignity of Man and the Destiny of Democracy: The Voting Rights Act of 1965” is on display now through the end of 2020 in the Downtown Campus Library’s Rockefeller Gallery.

Enacted 150 years ago in 1870, the Fifteenth Amendment established that the right to vote could not be denied on the basis of race. Yet African Americans, particularly those residing in southern states, continued to face significant obstacles to voting. These included bureaucratic restrictions, such as poll taxes and literacy tests, as well as intimidation and physical violence.