“We’re so
excited that our inaugural OER grant program is off to a great start with the
potential of saving WVU students nearly $50,000,” said Martha Yancey, chair of
the grants committee. “This first cohort of grant recipients will provide good
models for other faculty to learn from and consider during next year’s grant
process. We hope to continue building momentum toward even bigger savings in
the future.”
The aim
of the grants is to encourage development of alternatives to high-cost textbooks,
lower the cost of college attendance for students, and support faculty who wish
to implement new pedagogical models for classroom instruction. Awardees agree
to use their open textbooks in courses to be taught in fall 2019 or spring
2020, and then submit a course review/report.
Blog post by Michael Ridderbusch, Associate Curator, WVRHC.
Recently, while working the reference desk in the Manuscripts Room at the History Center, I browsed the papers of West Virginia Governor Ephraim Morgan (1921-1925) that had been retrieved for a researcher and discovered a couple items of historical interest. While the era of the early 1920s was a time in which Governor Ephraim’s attention was focused on the conflict between labor and management in the coal industry, a conflict known as the “mine wars,” it was also a time of prohibition in America, so it wasn’t surprising to discover letters in the collection related to its enforcement.
West Virginia UniversityLibraries’ Teaching and Learning
Committee has selected Hannah Coffey and Kelsey R. Eackles as 2019 Robert
F. Munn Undergraduate Library scholars.
“All of us at WVU Libraries are pleased to name
Hannah Coffey and Kelsey Eackles as Munn Scholars,” Dean of Libraries Karen
Diaz said. “Both exceeded expectations with their remarkable efforts in
researching their topics and then writing their impressive works of
scholarship.”
During the Permian Period,
acidic, salty lakes and groundwaters existed in Kansas. Remnants of these
extreme environments have been preserved as rocks and include red muds,
blue gypsum, and clear halite, along with entrapped microcapsules of Permian
water, atmosphere, and microorganisms.
WVU geology
professor Kathleen Benison’s
photographs of these rocks serve as both scientific evidence and aesthetic
objects.
“REMIX the
WVRHC Archives,” an exhibition and online project by the Art in the
Libraries program, encourages people to use the West Virginia & Regional History Center’s
online resources to design unique artistic works, such as collages, memes, GIFs,
creative writing, redaction poetry and other agglomerations.
“While
archives are used for research, they can also inspire contemporary thought,
perspective and fun, which is the aim of this curated project,” said Sally
Deskins, exhibits coordinator for WVU Libraries.
Kelly
Diamond, head of West Virginia University Libraries’ Office of Curriculum and
Instructional Support, has been selected as a 2019 Fellow for the Institute for
Emerging Leadership in Online Learning (IELOL). In its 11th year,
the IELOL Institute selects its Fellows from an international pool of
candidates through a competitive application process.
The
five-month Institute incorporates online learning with a week-long onsite
immersive experience. The cohort of IELOL Fellows investigate personal, local,
and global leadership challenges in online learning through individual, group,
and team projects. Participants apply their new knowledge, experience, and
connections to online learning projects at their home institutions. The IELOL
Institute begins this July and will culminate with the IELOL Masters Class at
the Online Learning Consortium annual conference in November.
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
April 29th, 2019
Blog post by Lori Hostuttler, Assistant Director, WVRHC.
In 2018, the WVU Humanities Center funded a project to explore the memories of the Scott’s Run community through oral history and photography. For the project, grant team members chose a set of historical images of the Scott’s Run area from the West Virginia & Regional History Center’s online photographs database, West Virginia History OnView. Over a series of interviews with community members who gather every Saturday at the Scott’s Run Museum, team members recorded residents’ memories and observations derived from viewing the selected photographs.
If you were a student at West
Virginia University sometime during the past four decades, you probably
benefited from Carroll Wilkinson’s work at WVU Libraries.
Did you ever check out a book
at the Charles C. Wise, Jr. Library or the Downtown Campus Library? Did you log
into eReserves to retrieve required course materials? Are you a student-veteran
studying for final exams in one of the Libraries’ two Study Bunkers?
After 41 years of service to
WVU, Wilkinson officially retired April 15.
“Carroll Wilkinson has been a
valued librarian at WVU for 41 years,” Dean of Libraries Karen Diaz said. “She’s
seen many changes within the profession and on campus and has herself been a
change agent in helping move the libraries ever forward. Her insights,
experience, and wisdom have been incredibly valuable to me during my interim
term as Dean, and into my permanent role. I’ll miss her very much, but can
think of no one more deserving of a rich and healthy retirement!”
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
April 15th, 2019
Blog post by Jessica Eichlin, Reference Supervisor, WVRHC.
Lucy
Shuttlesworth, a twenty year old West Virginia University student, recorded the
1918 flu epidemic in her diary, writing that “the Spanish influ[enza] is
spreading like mad, 150 of the boys have it, (the Delt house has been taken
over as a hospital) ten girls at the hall and five of our kids at the house”
have it. The particularly deadly strain
of Spanish influenza initially appeared in August 1918, but the first mention
of the fall epidemic did not appear in a local Morgantown newspaper until
September 11, 1918. By September
twenty-fifth, an unidentified Associated Press author states that “Spanish
influenza has spread over the country so rapidly that officials of the public
health service, the war and navy departments and the Red Cross conferred today
on measures to help local communities in combating the disease,” which had
spread to twenty-six states. By October
first, the number of cases nationwide reached 88,000, and the Spanish flu
finally arrived in Morgantown.
WVU Libraries and the Morgantown Public Library will jointly hold events on Friday, April 12, in conjunction with Food Justice Day, to celebrate the opening of the Morgantown Seed Preservation Library.
The Downtown Campus Library will
host a panel session on seed sovereignty and seed/food justice from 1:30-3 p.m.
in the Milano Reading Room. Barbara Hengemihle, associate university librarian,
will open the session, and the moderator will be Mehmet Oztan, a WVU service assistant
professor of geography who created the Morgantown Seed Preservation Library in
collaboration with the Morgantown Public Library, WVU Libraries and the Food
Justice Lab at WVU.
The
Awards Committee of the West Virginia University Library Faculty Assembly has
selected Alyssa Wright, social sciences librarian, as the Outstanding Librarian
for 2019.
The
award, presented triennially, recognizes a faculty librarian who has made
exceptional contributions toward the delivery, development, or expansion of
library services or special programs for the constituencies of WVU.
“Alyssa
is a creative and dedicated librarian, and we are honored to present her with
the Outstanding Librarian Award this year,” said Anna Crawford, chair of the
Library Faculty Assembly Awards Committee. “The impact Alyssa has made with the
social science students and faculty she works with is apparent and highly
valued. And her work combining information literacy with community engagement
is just one example of the kind of innovative services she provides.”
Rather
than simply trying to define trauma, a group of undergraduate honors students created
works of art that illustrate and narrate trauma. Their exhibit, “Understanding
Trauma through Art and Literature,” will remain on display at the West Virginia
University Health Sciences Library through May 20.
“In
healthcare, practitioners are often tasked with working with those in acute
distress, which we might generally describe as traumatic. Understanding trauma,
then, is an important aspect of the human condition that relates to medicine,”
said Renée Nicholson, an assistant professor of multidisciplinary
studies.
This blog post, written by Libby Coyner, Archivist and Assistant Librarian at Elon University’s Carol Grotnes Belk Library, was originally posted on November 30, 2018 at https://www.librarylibby.com/single-post/2018/11/30/Clover-Lick-Homecoming. You can see additional photos relevant to the post at that site.
*The
text here is from a talk I gave as part of Elon University’s Numen Lumen weekly
storytelling event.
It’s November 2018, Thanksgiving, and I’m making my way to West
Virginia, 14 miles past the Virginia border into to a place that no longer
supports a store, post office, or gas station. No cellphone service. My pal
from graduate school, now working as a librarian in Spartanburg, South
Carolina, has agreed to come along for the ride. We prepare for three days with
24 degree weather and no running water.
We are making our way to the little turn in the road where my
father was born, which has been all but abandoned for about thirty years now,
save a few old houses that get dusted off and used during hunting season.
Clover Lick, unincorporated, a sign reads, sits along the Greenbrier River, and
declined around the same time that the train stopped coming. Today, Clover Lick
is mostly in a state of neglect. My cousin maintains one of the
houses, always dubbed “Cold Comfort Farm” in our family, and this is where
we will stay.
Are you preparing to start a new research project? Are you
exploring publishing options for your latest article?
In addition to connecting you with needed resources, West Virginia UniversityLibraries’
librarians and staff can support users with a high level of knowledge and
expertise at many points in the research life-cycle.
Last fall, WVU Libraries launched the Research
Commons, a suite of services to foster interdisciplinary connections
and support graduate student and faculty research needs.
In
conjunction with West Virginia University’s inaugural Research Week,
WVU Libraries will offer multiple workshops to help
students and faculty take full advantage of Scopus,
a popular scholarly search tool.
Currently
the largest curated abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature,
Scopus includes the fields of science, technology, medicine, social sciences,
and arts and humanities. It can be accessed on the Libraries website.
Sessions
are scheduled at all three Morgantown campus. On each day there will be an
overview session that includes lunch.
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
March 26th, 2019
Blog post by Jane Metters LaBarbara, Assistant Curator, WVRHC
Earlier this week, I attended the Seventh Annual History Roundtable, organized by the Morgantown Historic Landmarks Commission. About half of the meeting was devoted to reports about the recent Sabraton Neighborhood Survey. (FYI, the Historic Landmark Commission’s archive is at the Aull Center, if you want to see their work in full.) Despite living in the Sabraton area, I realized how little I knew about Sabraton. I learned that Sabraton was named after the first wife of Hon. George C. Sturgiss (1842-1925), Sabra. In one resource, her name was reported as Sabra Chadwick, but I think her maiden name was actually Sabra Jane Vance. In this post I briefly explore the name of Sabraton as well as what remains of Sabra’s life story.
Wherever
you travel this summer, as long as you have Internet access, you can take ULIB300:
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.
This
3-credit course fulfills GEC 5 and 7, and GEF 6. 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.
A
native of Moundsville, W.Va., Arch A. Moore Jr. served in
the European theatre during World War II before enrolling at West Virginia
University as a political science major in 1946. He later earned his law degree
from WVU College of Law. In 1949, Moore married Shelley Riley, a fellow WVU
student, and they had three children together, Arch A. (Kim) Moore III, Shelley
Wellons, and Lucy St. Clair. Daughter Shelley served in the U.S. House of
Representatives (2001-2014) and the U.S Senate (2015-present).
In
1952, Moore began his political career in the West Virginia House of Delegates,
and in 1956 he was elected to the First District congressional seat. He went on
to serve six terms in the U.S. House of Representatives (1957-1969) winning as
a Republican in a predominantly Democratic state. He is the only person to
serve three terms as Governor of West Virginia (1969-1977, 1985-1989).
Posted by Jane Metters LaBarbara.
March 12th, 2019
Blog post by Michael Ridderbusch, Associate Curator, WVRHC.
The James Edwin Green photography collection of over
500 glass plate negatives at the History Center contains a variety of images
that document life in western Pennsylvania and Pleasants County, West
Virginia. This blog will sample images
that are seasonal, relating to the theme of springtime and warmer weather.
The first image shows the photographer, James Edwin
Green (1878-1952) with his family at Orchard View Farm:
James Edwin Green (1878-1952) and family at Orchard View Farm, Pleasants County, West Virginia, ca. 1905-1910. (From collection A&M 3460, James Edwin Green, Photographer, Glass Plate Negatives and Other Material.)
