Collins Library Links: Book Collecting Contest

Posted on May 14, 2019 by jmkyoung

2013_CollinsLibraryLink

Book Collecting Contest
What better way to end the year with a celebration of student scholarship,
reading, and supporting a new generation of book collectors.

We recognize The Book Club of Washington for their support of Puget Sound students. The aim of the competition was to encourage full-time students at University of Puget Sound to read for enjoyment and to develop personal libraries throughout their lives, to appreciate the special qualities of printed or illustrated works, and to read, research, and preserve the collected works for pleasure and scholarship.

The award was sponsored by the Book Club of Washington, a nonprofit organization of book lovers and collectors who has a special interest in collecting and preserving printed materials.  It is a goal of the club to support a new generation of collectors with awards and recognition of their collecting accomplishments.  The club held its annual awards reception on April 25th, where the University of Puget Sound and all student participants were recognized for their achievement.

Winners from Puget Sound are able to enter the National Collegiate Book Collecting contest which is supported by The Antiquarian Booksellers’ Association of America (ABAA), the Fellowship of American Bibliophilic Societies (FABS), the Grolier Club, and the Center for the Book and the Rare Books and Special Collections Division (the Library of Congress) have jointly assumed leadership of the National Collegiate Book Collecting Contest, with major and exclusive support for the Kislak Prize from the Jay I. Kislak Foundation.

Thanks are extended to everyone who assisted with this event and special thanks to Andrea Klyn, Social Sciences Librarian/Electronic Resources Coordinator, for serving as a judge.

Congratulations to Tanner Abernathy, Cassandra Childs, and
Nicholas Duke-Bruechert, winners of the 2019 Book Collecting Contest

 

Collins Choice Award
Tanner Abernathy
“Tolkien’s Arda: Accessible Mythology & Moral Hermeneutics in Fantasy”

The Collins Choice Award recognizes a student whose collection illustrates the hallmarks of a liberal arts education.  The collector in this case categorized their collection into three broad categories, tales, compendiums and supplements, and images, and then clearly articulated how each ‘artifact’ fit into the category while also exploring their larger meaning and connections to each other.  They cited additional sources used, and visually presented their collection in a cohesive, well thought out manner, clearly articulating their rationale for including each item in the collection, and how it related to the collection and theme as a whole.  They also collected various types of materials including dictionaries, atlases, coloring books, games, films and primary texts, all of which specifically addressed the subject of the collection in their own unique way.  Throughout this collection, it is clear that the collector has a strong passion and interest in the world and works of Tolkien, and the love of the collection is clear in the intentional way that the material is presented.

Best Essay
Cassandra Childs
“Collecting Tolkien: Treasuring the Pioneer of Fantasy”

In the chosen essay, the author provides us with a glimpse of how an early exposure to Tolkien literature led to an academic pursuit of the fantasy genre.  This is a great example of how a collector can take a group of fairly standard books and make them into something special by exploring and explaining a personal connection.  Learning more about Tolkien himself is explained in the clearly synthesized and well represented annotated bibliography.  A great deal of time and effort clearly went into the essay and annotations, and the writer’s interest in fantasy literature as explored in this essay made this a wonderful pleasure to read.

1st Place/Single Collector Award
Nicholas Duke-Bruechert
“Lifelong Failure”

The first place, or single collector, award acknowledges the combination of an excellent, integrated and comprehensive essay, a well annotated bibliography, collection images, and a thoughtful wish list.  The “Incomplete Collection” of Superhero comic books is a creative way to explore failure.  Here the collector has taken something we all face in our daily lives, and through his essay and descriptive bibliography explained how Superheros survived failure.  The collection essay captures the initial efforts of the collector, particularly his draw to The Amazing Spider-Man issue #96.  The name of the collection leaves plenty of room for the Collector to expand on the “failure” theme, as well as others that can be drawn from comic books.

This collection successfully uses comic books to explore a timeless theme — failure and how to learn from experience.  The collector has done an especially good job of articulating the importance of the collection to him, discussing how it relates to his own struggles and work ethic.  It is great that he managed to collect older comics as far back as the 1960s.  The essay and item captions are extremely well written — philosophical but still accessible to non-experts.

Need Information? Don’t forget the Collins Memorial Library – Library Guides
Questions? Contact your liaison librarian
Comments: Contact Jane Carlin, library director
Remember – Your best search engine is a librarian!

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Tiny Pricks Project: Tweets, Textiles, and Trump, November 1, 2019, 4:00–5:30pm, Archives Seminar Room, 2nd Floor Collins Library

Posted on May 13, 2019 by jmkyoung

Image courtesy of http://www.textilemonth.nyc/2017
-events/2018/9/20/tiny-pricks-tweets-textiles-and-trump

As of October 14th, registration for this event has reached the maximum capacity. We appreciate your interest and remind you that the exhibition of Weymar’s work will be on display in the Collins Library until December 12, 2019.
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Artist Diana Weymar is the founder of Tiny Pricks Project, a project in which participants stitch quotes by Trump into antique or inherited textiles to create a material record of his presidency. Pieces are donated to a travelling collection that has been exhibited around the country. The methodology of the project is based on social media sharing, participatory political protest, and craftivism.

Diana Weymar pictured with a textile from Interwoven Stories. http://themakehouse.ca/2015/10/diana-weymar-clothing-art/

There are over 700 in the collection but it would be impossible to have them all there and some might be on loan somewhere else. They take up a massive amount of space at this point. To view pieces created to date, please follow the series on Diana Weymar. Tiny Pricks counterbalances the impermanence of Twitter, social media, and Trump’s overall approach to politics. Weymar, who lives in British Columbia,  is also the founder of Interwoven Stories, a collection of stitched pages that focus on personal narratives and stories.

The project is open for public participation until Trump is out of office and that the series can be followed on IG @tinypricksproject.

Diana is making a return visit to Puget Sound as she also was a visiting artist two years ago and contributed to the project Refashioning Identity, in which members of the Puget Sound community contributed stitched pages.  Pages from Tiny Pricks, Interwoven Stories and Refashioning Identify on display in the Collins Library in conjunction with the All Stitched Up exhibit.  Weymar served as one of the jurors of the exhibit.

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Lecture: A Mind at Work: May Morris and Subversive Stitching, September 14, 2019, 1:30-3:00pm, Collins Library Room 053 (lower level)

Posted on May 13, 2019 by jmkyoung

In this presentation, Dr. Wager will explore the work of May Morris (1862-1938), an accomplished designer, embroiderer, public speaker, writer, educator, advocate for social causes, and founder of the Women’s Guild of Arts. Morris’s legacy is tied to her father, William Morris, and his role as the leader of the British Arts and Crafts movement. Recent scholarship and exhibitions have excavated Morris’s embroidery designs, objects, writings, and her influence on artistic communities. This talk will focus on the objects of her creation, and how her works fits into a broader nineteenth-century history of stitching and revolutionary action.

Book cover for Embroidery and Lace,
May Morris, c. 1888-91

Anna Wager is the Clarence A. Davis Visual Arts Curator at Hobart & William Smith Colleges in Geneva, NY. She directs the exhibition spaces on campus and manages the permanent collection. She also teaches courses related to cataloging, curatorial writing, exhibition design, and the history of museums, through the lens of 19th- and early 20th-century English and American art and material culture. She holds a PhD in art history from the University of Washington, and is a member of the William Morris Society board.

This event is sponsored by the Collins Library, the William Morris Society in the United States and Puget Sound Book Artists.

Due to limited seating, we are asking you to register for this lecture.  Please click on this link and follow the registration process:  https://pugetsoundbookartists.wildapricot.org/event-3503998/Registration

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Ada Hoch-Schneider Wins Library Art Award 2019

Posted on May 13, 2019 by jmkyoung

Each year the Collins Memorial Library sponsors an award for a graduating Art major.  The monetary award is $250 and the honor of displaying their art work in a prominent spot in the library for a term of one year.  The winning art work is selected from a preview of the senior show by a Library panel.

Collins Library is pleased to bestow the 2019 Senior Art Award to Ada Hoch-Schneider for her sculpture “Lobus.”

Ada’s work focuses on the importance of sustainability in design, and acknowledges everything has a monetary and environmental cost. The selection committee chose this work because of the artist’s statement regarding her thoughtful use of recycled materials and her concern about contributing to the garage on earth. Out of discarded fabrics and single use items, Ada has pieced together an object that resembles a fluffy cloud. The sculpture “Lobus” evokes a sense of lightness, reminds us of childhoods spent outdoors, and suggests a positive approach to waste use is possible.  Her whimsical cloud skillfully crafted out of discarded materials invites us to look at a different end for fabric and other resource waste.

We are proud to have “Lobus” grace the Learning Commons area of the Collins Library so Ada’s artistic talents and important message can enrich our local community.

Congratulations Ada!

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Artist Statement

I find myself unable to separate waste and my artistic practice. Waste has often been a point of contention in my work and life in general as I feel the need to know exactly how to work material, mould it, manipulate it, and struggle to justify my use of it as a resource. Unable to remove the monetary and environmental cost from my mind, room for exploration and margin of error dwindles. Every part of my work must be worth the resources and space it inhabits or else I have failed, contributing to the overflow of garbage we leave on this planet. I am invariably present in the work; my own worth invested in it, leaves me with little in the way of rational reasoning to pursue artistic expression at all.

Working with fabric waste I am able to set aside parts of my ego and my own insufficiencies. Making becomes a practice. Sewing becomes a self-examination. Through piecing together each cut edge, puckered seam and twisted contour, I test my limits of craft, colour, shape and line recovering my love for art and creation in a medium I have known so well.  These leftover scraps are discarded silhouettes produced by an industry focused on the expression of self and individuality, but what it leaves behind is, in part, more informative then the products designed.  The material allows me to recall my love of fashion and sewing without my practice taking a backseat to the investment of resources. The only goal being the work itself and giving three dimensional form to something that often remains invisible.

– Ada Hoch-Schneider

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Imagine seeing all the possible versions of yourself…

Posted on May 13, 2019 by jmkyoung

In the quiet haven of Clearing, Oregon, four neighbors find their lives upended when they begin to see themselves in parallel realities. Ginny, a devoted surgeon, has a baffling vision of a beautiful co-worker in her bed and begins to doubt her marriage. Ginny’s husband, Mark, sees a vision that suggests impending devastation and grows increasingly paranoid, threatening the safety of his wife and son. Samara, a young woman desperately mourning the recent death of her mother whose father seems to be coping with ease, witnesses an apparition of her mother healthy and vibrant and wonders about the secrets her parents may have kept from her. Cass, a brilliant scholar struggling with the demands of new motherhood, catches a glimpse of herself pregnant again, just as she’s on the brink of returning to the project that could define her career. At first the visions are relatively nonthreatening, but they grow increasingly disturbing and frightening. When a natural disaster threatens, it becomes apparent that the visions were not what they first seemed and that the town will never be the same.

Check it out in the Popular Reading Collection!

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From the Archives & Special Collections: Pre-Graduation Reflection

Posted on April 30, 2019 by jmkyoung

The A&SC staff: Adriana Flores ’13, Archivist and Special
Collections Librarian; Mali Matthews ’22, Laura Edgar,
Assistant Archivist; Julia Masur ’19, and Laure Mounts ’20.

Hi! My name is Julia Masur and I’m the Peer Research Specialist in the Archives & Special Collections. Since I graduate in less than three weeks, I’m closing out my time in the A&SC by reflecting on my work here over the past two years.

As a history major, getting to witness firsthand the work that goes into preserving and organizing primary source documents gave me an even greater appreciation for that work. While historians and archivists engage with historical material in different ways, the work of historians would be so much more difficult without professional archivists who are dedicated to preserving history. Through my outreach to student clubs and organizations, I’ve helped the A&SC to accession materials that will hopefully help future historians and researchers learn about student life at Puget Sound.

I’ve also gotten to incorporate my work in the A&SC into my classwork. For an education studies class that I took last fall, we had to plan a lesson and teach it to the rest of the class. My partner and I decided to do our lesson on Japanese-American incarceration during World War II. Since I had just curated an exhibit for the A&SC on that subject, I knew about all the documents that we have in our collection that related to the subject. We were able to incorporate some of those documents into the lesson, which allowed us to center the lesson around the experiences of Japanese-Americans in the area, including students at Puget Sound, which made the lesson feel more relevant to the lives of those we were teaching.

On a more topical note, working in the A&SC means that I’ve learned a lot of random facts about the university that most students don’t know. For example, did you know that Puget Sound used to own a ski lodge on Mount Rainier, or that we could have been the Clamdiggers or the Sky Pilots instead of the Loggers?

Overall, working in the A&SC has been an incredibly valuable co-curricular experience for me. I’m so grateful to the rest of the A&SC staff for making this such an interesting and fun environment to learn and work in, and I’m excited to take the skills and knowledge I’ve gained here and apply it to future careers.

The Archives & Special Collections is open Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM or by appointment.

By Julia Masur

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An exploration of what it means to be a modern woman

Posted on April 29, 2019 by jmkyoung

Queenie Jenkins is a 25-year-old Jamaican British woman living in London, linking two cultures and fitting neatly into either. She works at a national newspaper, where she’s constantly forced to compare herself to her white middle class peers. After a messy break up with her long-term white boyfriend, Queenie seeks comfort in all the wrong places, which includes several hazardous men who do a good job of occupying brain space and a bad job of affirming self-worth. As Queenie moves from one questionable decision to another, she finds herself wondering, “What are you doing? Why are you doing it? Who do you want to be?”—all of the questions today’s woman must face in a world trying to answer them for her.

Check this and more out in the Popular Reading Collection!

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From the Archives: Congratulations 2019 Puget Sound Graduates!!

Posted on April 29, 2019 by jmkyoung

Academic Procession to Memorial Fieldhouse, Class of 1949

You made it!
What an outstanding achievement! Your success is well deserved and all of your hard work certainly does not go unnoticed by your fellow Loggers. Now is the time to take all of what you’ve learned here at the University and use that knowledge to spread your wings and make your dreams a reality. You are all such unique, talented, intelligent individuals, and you have support from all of us here at Puget Sound. Good luck with all of your future endeavors as you enter the next exciting chapter of your lives. You rock Class of 2019!!
And remember… once a Logger, always a Logger! Hack hack, chop chop!

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From the Archives & Special Collections: Documenting the Student Experience at Puget Sound

Posted on April 24, 2019 by jmkyoung

It’s always a good time to donate materials to the Archives & Special Collections, but as we get to the end of the school year, we want to encourage student organizations to start going through everything they’ve produced in the past year and think about transferring documents to the A&SC. Donating items to the A&SC helps us document student life, ensures that your materials will be preserved according to professional standards, and contributes to a historical record that will be of use to students and other researchers in the years to come.

Some examples of things to save from student organizations include meeting minutes, scrapbooks, event descriptions, budgets, event flyers, programs, and other media. We’re also interested in items that document individual students’ experiences, like diaries, journals, or correspondence from your time here; photographs of you and your classmates volunteering, engaging with the Tacoma/campus community, attending official or unofficial student events, and participating in the performing arts; or any other items that you think uniquely document your Puget Sound experience. While this list is by no means exhaustive, there are some items that we do not collect or already have in abundance, such as yearbooks, newspapers, clothing, and awards. It is important to note that once materials are transferred to the A&SC, they cannot leave the Archives, so make sure that you keep anything that you need on a regular basis.

If you’re interested in transferring materials to the A&SC, contact Archivist and Special Collections Librarian Adriana Flores at aflores@pugetsound.edu .

The Archives & Special Collections is open Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday from 11:00 AM to 3:00 PM or by appointment.

By Julia Masur

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Imagine you could hide the darkest, most horrifying secret. Forever.

Posted on April 23, 2019 by jmkyoung

Young Emmett Farmer is working in the fields when a strange letter arrives summoning him away from his family. He is to begin an apprenticeship as a Bookbinder—a vocation arousing fear, superstition, and prejudice amongst his small community.  Bookbinding is a sacred art, Seredith informs her new apprentice, that he is a binder born. Under the old woman’s watchful eye, Emmett learns to hand-craft the elegant leather-bound volumes. With each binding they will capture something unique and extraordinary: a memory. If there’s something you want to forget, a binder can help. But while Seredith is an artisan, there are other bookbinders, greedy and amoral tradesman who use their talents for dark ends. Just as Emmett begins to settle into his new circumstances, he makes an astonishing discovery: one of the books has his name on it. Soon, everything he thought he understood about his life will be dramatically rewritten.

Check it out in the Popular Reading Collection!

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