As part of West Virginia UniversityLibraries’Art in the Libraries series of exhibits of personal collections, Frankie Tack, Clinical Associate Professor in Counseling and Well-Being, shares a selection of the most common tool in the world, the hammer, in a display at Evansdale Library.
Tack’s collection of over 100 hammers ranges from a pre-colonial Native American hammer stone to hammers used by jewelers, cobblers, coopers, clockmakers, blacksmiths, masons, shipwrights, farriers, and even cigar smokers and, of course, an array of standard claw hammers from the 19th century to present.
The collection began when Tack came into possession of her father-in-law’s tools after his death. He was a farmer and a loom fixer in textiles when we still had those plants in the U.S. The collection, she soon found, also included his father’s tools.
The Art in the Libraries Committee and Dean of Libraries Karen Diaz selected Lilly Adkins, a junior double majoring in painting and sculpture, and Kieah Hamric, a sophomore majoring in graphic design, to receive the 2022 Dean of Libraries’ Student Arts Award.
Lilly Adkins
Adkins won for her work titled “Detroit Fox Theater 1934 to 2022.” This mixed media painting compares the same area, nearly 100 years apart, emerging from times of turmoil.
A Sensory Safe Space opened this semester on the Downtown Library’s first floor. The space is comprised of low-lighting, soft seating, plants, and wall-hangings meant to soften the space. Additionally, users can check out noise-cancelling headphones and personal white noise machines. The space is not reservable and is open to students, faculty and staff.
The project is the result of planning and work by the Downtown Library Access Services Team for the Libraries’ Development Day. A huge thank you goes to team members Hilary Fredette, Andrea McDaniel, Hattie Murphy, Savannah Owens, Sam Rahall, and James Shaver.
In conjunction with its “Indigenous Appalachia” exhibit, WVU Libraries welcomes everyone to attend a virtual panel with five artists featured in the exhibit Friday, Jan. 27, at noon.
“Indigenous Appalachia,” currently on display in the Downtown Library, is designed to increase awareness of the contributions of Indigenous Appalachians to the region’s shared history and present while also recognizing continuing injustices faced by Indigenous people.
The panel will include Nadema Agard (Cherokee/Powhatan), painting; Connor Alexander (Cherokee) game design; Erin Lee Antonak (Oneida), sculpture/drawing; April Branham (Monacan), painting/photography; and Ethan Brown (Pamunkey) gourd design/painting. The event will be moderated by Sally Brown, WVU Libraries exhibits coordinator and the exhibit’s lead curator.
Evansdale Library Director Martha Yancey (second from the left) poses with Meshea Poore, vice president and chief diversity officer for the WVU Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion; Amena Anderson, assistant director of the WVU ADVANCE Center; Karen Diaz, dean of WVU Libraries; and Maryann Reed, WVU provost.
Yancey has worked for WVU Libraries since 1996. She is also the Access, User Services, and Resource Sharing Librarian, and the subject liaison for African American Children’s Literature, Children’s Literature, Counseling, and Education. She is the Chair of the Open Educational Resources Committee and was instrumental in the creation of the WVU Libraries Diversity Residency Program. She is a former President of the Western Pennsylvania & West Virginia Chapter of the Association of College and Research Libraries and the West Virginia Library Association. In 2014, her research was published in the Journal of Information Literacy.
Though Yancey initially planned to become a public librarian, she worked as a school media specialist and teacher before her career as an academic librarian at WVU. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, gardening, and collecting dishware. Her collection has previously been on display at Evansdale Library.
The West Virginia Humanities Council has awarded a nearly $20,000 grant to West Virginia UniversityLibraries to create a digital collection of West Virginia folk music recorded by Louis Watson Chappell between 1937-1947. The project will last from May 2023 to May 2024.
The Chappell Collection at the West Virginia and Regional History Center is the most comprehensive state-wide collection of folk music field recordings in the United States. Between 1937 and 1947, WVU professor Louis Chappell visited every county in the state and made more than two thousand audio recordings of songs and instrumental tunes at a pivotal point near the beginning of the history of the field recording of folk music.
Get into the holiday spirit by exploring WVU Libraries’ two exhibits focused on “The Nightmare Before Christmas.”
Tim Burton’s cult classic film, originally premiered in 1993, has grown in popularity with its whimsical style and tribute to Halloween and Christmas. The movie also has a special connection to all Mountaineers through WVU alumnus Chris Sarandon, known for his role as the speaking voice of Jack Skellington.
WVU Libraries graduate assistant Makenzie Hudson has curated two exhibits dedicated to Sarandon and the many film artifacts he donated to the West Virginia and Regional History Center.
“Sustainable Fashion Design Exploration: Transformation to Zero-Waste,” an exhibit curated by Colleen Moretz, associate professor of Fashion, Dress & Merchandising in the Davis College, and the 2022 winner of the Art in the Libraries Faculty Exhibit Award, is on display in the Downtown Library, Room 1020.
The exhibit includes Moretz’s work alongside zero-waste designs by students in her Fashion Design Management 350 course.
“Sustainability has been at the center of my scholarship across the apparel and textile disciplines,” Moretz said. “Focusing my creative design scholarship on sustainability generates awareness of sustainable issues within the apparel industry to hopefully encourage change in fashion practices. This concentration on sustainability has been an evolution of investigating sustainable design processes through the exploration of transformation, aesthetics, zero waste, and up-cycling.”
The Arts in the Libraries Committee will host a program with Moretz and her students on March 1, 2023, at 4 p.m. in Room 1020. The exhibit will remain on display through May 2023.
WVU Libraries is encouraging students to donate their old textbooks to WVU Libraries to help grow the Shining Minds Textbook Loan Program. Started in 2021 with the goal of providing students a no-cost textbook option, the program is supported by donations from students who have finished with their textbooks and want to help other students.
These donated textbooks are listed in the Libraries’ catalog and shelved together on the 2nd floor of the Downtown Library. Books added to the Libraries’ Shining Minds Collection are available for semester loan.
Donations to the Shining Minds Textbooks Loan Program are accepted throughout the year at any Service Desk. Donated textbooks should not be more than 10 years old. Instructor copies are not eligible. Contact Hilary Fredette, hilary.fredette@mail.wvu.edu, to donate.
The WVU Libraries’ Art in the Libraries committee wants to know your library hacks. They have issued a call for submission for an exhibit titled “Hacking the Library,” which will display at the Downtown Library throughout the 2023-2024 academic year.
“The hacker ethos in the positive sense is about the ability to deconstruct and reconstruct information systems. We invite you to highlight the intersecting values that shape our libraries through your own lens reflecting on how you library,” WVU Libraries Exhibits Coordinator Sally Brown said.
Evansdale Library’s new Digital Photography Studio is now open in Room G19. The studio is available for students, faculty and staff to take professional studio-quality photos. Individuals or groups can shoot group, portrait, portfolio documenting photography, product photography, and video.
The photography studio can be reserved through the Libraries’ study room reservation system for sessions of up to four hours. Equipment is available to checkout at the public services desk located on the main floor of the library or you can bring personal equipment to use. Learn more by watching this video.
Written by Luke Masa, WVU History Doctoral student & National Digital Newspaper Grant Assistant
In July 1900, just after the Randolph Enterprise newspaper moved from Beverly to Elkins, its newly minted editor C.P. Darlington got into an argument with a man named Woodward Hutton. Hutton was the son of a Colonel, and nearby Huttonsville was named for his ancestor John. And despite being four years out from William Jennings Bryan’s loss to William McKinley, Darlington and Hutton were said to have been vigorously debating the question of “free silver” – that is, should U.S. currency be backed solely by gold, or should silver be exchangeable as well? Darlington, a Democrat like Bryan, was for free silver, Hutton, a Republican, against. While it is unclear precisely what each said to the other, the argument ended when Darlington shot Hutton, who later died from the wound.
Violent incidents such as this one were far from unheard of among the men who edited and managed West Virginia’s newspapers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In writing title essays for the National Digital Newspaper Program’s website Chronicling America, I have come across numerous examples of scuffles, scrapes, jabs, and barbs which transcended the page and moved into the realm of physical altercation. For instance, Martinsburg’s F. Vernon Aler, an acerbic corporate lawyer and amateur historian, tried his hand at the printing business twice, once in the late 1880s and again in the early 1890s. His first attempt, the Martinsburg Gazette, folded shortly after he was arrested following a fist fight with another young man on the city’s streets. And he left his other paper, the World, after exchanging blows with the President of the local National Bank.
Some twenty-odd years later, with the martial fervor of World War I in full swing, the associate editor of the Randolph Review, Leslie Harding, was shot at through the window of his home. Though unscathed, he immediately blamed “a socialist or some other German sympathizer”, as apparently, he thought his patriotic invective sufficiently notable to warrant such an attempt.
Earlier that decade, during the Paint Creek-Cabin Creek strike of 1912-1913, the Pocahontas Times called for anyone caught “tear[ing] down the flag” to be “[shot]…on the spot.” As the above anecdotes attest, rhetoric of this sort was not always merely rhetorical. This was a period of great upheaval throughout the state, and not just for industrial workers. Unfortunately for a certain subsection of the professional class, the pen was not always mightier than the sword. Or gun, for that matter.
“Indigenous Appalachia” is an exhibit designed to increase awareness of the contributions of Indigenous Appalachians to the region’s shared history and present while also recognizing continuing injustices faced by Indigenous people.
“The Humanities Center is excited and humbled to sponsor this event,” Humanities Center Director Renée Nicholson said. “It brings together the Art in the Libraries program, the Native American Studies program, and a tremendous group of artist and scholars, two of which will visit our campus for the opening.”
Remarks by Dean of Libraries Karen Diaz at the Neal Museum of the Health Sciences dedication on October 28.
President Biden recently issued an Executive Order on Promoting the Arts, the Humanities, and Museum and Library Services. In it he articulates this inspiring statement on these institutions: “The arts, the humanities, and museum and library services are essential to the well-being, health, vitality, and democracy of our Nation. They inspire us; provide livelihoods; sustain, anchor, and bring cohesion within diverse communities across our Nation; stimulate creativity and innovation; help us understand and communicate our values as a people; compel us to wrestle with our history and enable us to imagine our future; invigorate and strengthen our democracy; and point the way toward progress.”
I know that here at WVU, our library archivists are the collectors and stewards of the materials that mark our past. Without these touchstones of reality – of life as it truly was – we forget what was, and in fact are left to invent in our minds what never was. But it is through the interaction with these materials that we learn from and are inspired by them.
The reading features three women writers, all graduates of WVU.
“Hosting women writers from across two of our graduate programs is a particular pleasure,” Humanities Center Director Renée Nicholson said. “Celebrating talent that comes from our university’s programs can serve as an additional way to inspire future writers currently studying at WVU.”
Abstract painting by John Gritts. It is currently on display in the National Museum of the American Indian, Smithsonian Institution.
West Virginia University’sDowntown Library is hosting “Indigenous Appalachia,” an exhibit designed to increase awareness of the contributions of Indigenous Appalachians to the region’s shared history and present while also recognizing continuing injustices faced by Indigenous people.
“Most Americans do not know about Indigenous culture, from history to today, but they are a large part of America’s fabric. Invisibility is a modern form of bias,” WVU Libraries Exhibits Coordinator Sally Brown said. “With this exhibit, we hope to both acknowledge the contradictions in the Indigenous histories of our areas and in our collections, and highlight Indigenous stories, perspectives and successes, all curated in collaboration with Indigenous advisement.”
Dr. Jessie Wilkerson, an associate professor in WVU’s Department of History, and graduate student Emily Walter will discuss the oral history project and what they have learned talking to women miners from the region.
The Women Miners Oral History Project aims to collect and preserve the life histories of women in the Appalachian region who entered the mines as protected workers in the late 1970s after decades of exclusion.
The WVU Humanities Center is pleased to present “An Evening with Matthew Salesses” on Thursday, November 3, at 7 p.m. via Zoom. Salesses will read from his work and discuss contemporary Asian American literature, his innovative approaches to writing workshops and other topics. This reading and discussion is a Campus Read tie-in event.
“We are excited to continue the conversation about Asian American writing with this event,” WVU Humanities Center Director Renée Nicholson said. “Our Campus Read, “Interior Chinatown,” brought up some important issues around the Asian American experience. By bringing in Matthew Salesses, we not only further that discussion, but we also have the opportunity to see how writing spaces can be re-imagined to reduce bias.”
As part of its mission, the Art in the Libraries Committee wants to highlight the art and scholarship of WVU faculty, staff and graduate students. The Committee invites current WVU faculty/staff and graduate students to submit ideas for consideration for an exhibit to visually showcase their scholarship in new and experimental ways.
These can present a visual evolution of their work, visualize their research and influences, or answer a research question. Faculty/staff and graduate student proposals should be based on their academic or creative research and lend themselves to visual interpretation with Library consultation.
“The goals of these awards are to provide a multidisciplinary platform for deeper learning, foster intellectual discourse and discussion and demonstrate the breadth of WVU’s creative and innovative activity,” Libraries Exhibit Coordinator Sally Brown said.
You voted, and the two winning sticker designs from the WVU Art in the Libraries contest are available at the Downtown, Evansdale and Health Sciences libraries’ access services desks.
The call now is for photographs of your laptop sticker art. We love roaming the Library spaces and seeing all of the individualized, unique stickers that adorn your laptops, and we’d like to make it into an exhibition, online and in print.
All we need is your name, contact information, and a jpg (you can be in the photo or just the laptop) with an optional short 1-3 sentences about how your stickers reflect you/your identity/passions, etc. The deadline is Oct. 31. Get your free WVU Libraries sticker at any of the campus Libraries. Any questions or to submit via email: contact Sally Brown, sally.brown1@mail.wvu.edu. Submission does not guarantee display. Those selected for display will be contacted in November.
