Finals week!  The surge of students hunting for quiet corners to study or spaces for group work brings a renewed urgency to plan for improvement to the Libraries' facilities.  And the planning process begins next week.  On Monday, December 16, we will welcome David Moore and colleagues from McMillan Pazdan Smith Architecture, who will help us create a "Roadmap to the Future" for our facilities. 

Throughout the week, they will document the work and public spaces in Middleton and Hill Memorial libraries and meet with staff to learn about their functional work needs now and in the future.  During January, February, and March, the consulting team will return multiple times to meet with other stakeholders for whom the Libraries are - or will be - a vital place.

By the end of this fiscal year, we will have an analysis of existing conditions and facilities; a master plan, drawings, diagrams with proposed solution(s); and a phasing plan for accomplishing needed changes. We are excited to begin this journey into the future of the Libraries. Kudos and thanks to Academic Affairs and Facility Services for their support in this endeavor.

Meanwhile, in the season of giving, we have a wonderful gift to celebrate. Tom Taylor, a long-time friend and supporter of the Libraries, has donated a wonderful selection of books relating to ornithology and scientific exploration from the 18th through the 20th centuries.  Read more about this, below.  We are most grateful to Mr. Taylor for this wonderful gift.

Another donor, Dr. Trenton L. James, was recently featured in the LSU Foundation's Cornerstone issue on philanthropy at LSU. Dr. James has generously donated family papers to the LSU Libraries that will help researchers studying the history Louisiana's sugar industry, as well as funds that will help accomplish the Libraries' mission. In the interview, he spoke eloquently of the important role librarians play in preserving and organizing information. Thank you, Dr. James, for your kind words and generosity!

And thanks to all who have given so generously to the Libraries this year, including the Friends of the Libraries, whose Book Bazaar added $67,000 to our endowment this year. We appreciate your support and hope your generosity will inspire others.

Best wishes from the Libraries for happy holidays, safe travels, and a prosperous new year!

Elaine Smyth

Louisiana State University, by Barry Cowan

During this special event, Cowan will offer a short talk about the book and share images and anecdotes. Copies of the book will be on sale, and Barry will sign copies for visitors. A reception will follow the talk. "I hope the book will provide not only entertainment, but also the opportunity for people to learn about LSU's long and colorful history in an interesting and accessible way," Cowan said. "The book is certainly meant to educate, but it is also my hope that the photographs therein will bring back fond memories and allow people to reminisce about their times at LSU."

The newest addition to Arcadia Publishing's Campus History Series, Louisiana State University features a foreword by former LSU System President and Chancellor William L. Jenkins. The 128-page, soft-cover book boasts more than two hundred vintage images of the LSU campus throughout its history. For the book, Cowan selected images from the LSU Archives and the Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley collections in the LSU Libraries' Special Collections at Hill Memorial Library.

Highlights of the book include displays of rarely seen images, mostly from the collections in the LSU Libraries' Special Collections in Hill Memorial Library; highlights of the four campuses since LSU's inception in 1860; how the university had mandatory ROTC until 1969; and how the baseball team - not the football team - was the first to wear the school's signature purple and gold in 1893.

The book is a perfect holiday gift for LSU fans or friends, young and old, and is an informative and interesting look at the long and fascinating history of Louisiana State University.   

The event also marks the closing of the Saturday Night in Tiger Stadium exhibition in Lecture Hall, which Cowan co-curated, which ends on December 23, 2013.

Ample parking is available behind Hill Memorial Library for the event. For more information contact us at 225-578-6544 or via email at jlacherfeldman@lsu.edu.

LSU Libraries' Special Collections was recently awarded a grant for $210,000 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to digitize more than 100,000 pages of Louisiana newspapers published from 1836 through 1922. Written by Digital Services Librarian and Digitizing Louisiana Newspaper Project (DLNP) Project Director Gina Costello and DNLP Project Manager Laura Charney, this marks LSU Libraries' third grant award since 2009 for participation in the National Digital Newspaper Program (NDNP). To date, more than 212,000 culturally and historically significant Louisiana newspaper pages have been contributed to the Library of Congress's Chronicling America database.

Laura Charney reviews newspaper microfilm for the project

By the end of 2015, approximately 327,000 pages from 133 newspapers, including twenty-five French-language newspapers representing thirty-two of the sixty-four Louisiana parishes will be freely available on Chronicling America. All newspaper titles were preliminarily selected by an Advisory Board of teachers, journalists, genealogists, librarians, and historians.

The Digitizing Louisiana Newspapers Project site offers a complete listing of the digitized newspapers by title and parish, contextual historical essays for individual newspapers, and a hyper-linked Louisiana map that provides a visual representation of the geographic coverage of selected newspapers.

RARE BOOKS ON SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION DONATED TO LSU LIBRARIES

Taylor's gift adds to the library's already extensive collection of books about ornithology, botany, and scientific exploration. Among the volumes donated are several works with illustrations by John Gould and John Gerrard Keulemans, two important 19th-century wildlife illustrators. Many of the books are travel narratives written by naturalists, such as Prince Maximilian of Wied-Neuwied, whose rare Voyage au Brésil contains numerous illustrations of the native customs and natural environment of Brazil.

Works by women naturalists include A-Birding on a Bronco by Florence Merriam, an early advocate for bird conservation. The oldest book in the collection, William Dampier's A New Voyage Round the World, dates from 1703 and contains a map showing the coast of Australia before it had been fully surveyed. Another highlight is a paper, published in 1863 by the English paleontologist Richard Owen, on the first fossil specimen ever discovered of Archaeopteryx, a prehistoric bird thought to be a link between dinosaurs and modern birds.

"This donation is an important addition to our rich holdings in natural history," said Jessica Lacher-Feldman, Head of Special Collections. "As well as strengthening our collections, the books reflect the library's mission to preserve rare and unique materials and make them available to students, scholars, and the general public."

Tom Taylor, third from left, attends Audubon Day

Taylor has a long relationship with the LSU Libraries. In addition to the current donation, he has donated approximately fifty other books to the university over the years, ranging from natural history books to examples of fine printing and book design. In 2011, he authored a scholarly catalog of rare bird books held by the LSU Libraries. Titled Aves: A Survey of the Literature of Neotropical Ornithology, it was published in conjunction with an exhibition held in Hill Memorial Library. The text has also been made available online. "Aves was a wonderful collaboration," said Elaine Smyth, Interim Dean of Libraries. "Tom Taylor has been so generous to the Libraries over the years, giving of his time and expertise, as well as wonderful books. We are grateful for his help and ongoing support."

The donated books are currently being cataloged and will soon be available to the public as part of the E. A. McIlhenny Natural History Collection. For more information, please contact the library at (225) 578-6544 or by email at special@lsu.edu.

CREATED EQUAL: AMERICA'S CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE

LSU Libraries has been awarded a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, and Bridging Cultures, to show four films chronicling the history of the civil rights movement as part of the program, Created Equal: America's Civil Rights Struggle.  The powerful documentaries, The Abolitionists, Slavery by Another Name, Freedom Riders, and The Loving Story, include dramatic scenes of incidents in the 150-year effort to achieve equal rights for all.  Freedom Riders received an Emmy in 2012, and The Loving Story and The Abolitionists were nominated for Emmys in 2013. 

The LSU Libraries will show the films between January 20, 2014 and February 28, 2014.  In conjunction with the showings, the Libraries will host discussions on the issues raised by the films, which will focus in part on Baton Rouge's history during the civil rights struggle of the twentieth century.  Related exhibitions and other events are also planned.   

Read more about the program at http://createdequal.blogs.lib.lsu.edu 

Organizations and individuals who would like to collaborate with the Libraries can contact Hrycaj at phryca1@lsu.edu or at 225-578-2629.

DO NOT TEAR UP MY EARTH

"I wasn't quite hysterical. I think the first thing I was called is a meddlesome housewife, and I kind of liked it because that's what I was. I was a housewife, I had a baby on my hip and I was certainly going to meddle if they were going to meddle with me which is, you know, trying to convince me that garbage in my drinking water was good for me," Mary Tutweiler, from New Iberia, Louisiana, answers Peggy Frankland in their oral history interview in 2000. Tutweiler, who ultimately prevented the creation of a commercial solid waste landfill in her parish, is one of the women interviewed for a project documenting women's involvement in Louisiana's grassroots environmental movement. 

Beginning in 1999, Jennifer A. Cramer, Director of the LSU Libraries T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History (THWCOH), partnered with Calcasieu Parish resident and author Peggy Frankland, the project director, to create this oral history collection. Frankland, an environmental activist since 1982, ultimately envisioned gathering enough stories to write a book on the subject, while LSU Libraries' goal was to create a unique collection documenting a previously underrepresented community of grassroots organizers and ensuring that the collection would be preserved and available to researchers.  

The University Press of Mississippi published Women Pioneers of the Louisiana Environmental Movement (2013), a book based on these oral histories, by Peggy Frankland with Susan Tucker, curator of books and records at the Newcomb College Center for Research on Women at Tulane University. The book provides insights on the roots of this important social movement amidst Louisiana's growing oil boom and explores the dynamics among gender, race, religion, human rights, health care, politics, science, economics, and industry.

All of the oral histories used in the book are housed with The T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History, a division of LSU Libraries Special Collections. For more information, please contact the Center's director, Jennifer A. Cramer.