As spring semester draws to a close, we have cause to celebrate.  The Friends of the LSU Libraries annual Book Bazaar was a huge success, netting $75,000.  Book Bazaar volunteer Judy Noland presented the check on Sunday, April 27, during a reception held by the Libraries to thank the volunteers whose hard work made the bazaar so successful. Proceeds from the bazaar go into an endowment that, over the years, has provided more than $1 million in support of library acquisitions and services.  The endowment is currently valued at $2.2 million.  We offer kudos and warmest thanks to the Friends.

This week is Preservation Week, a time during which we campaign to raise awareness about collecting and preservation.  First observed in 2010, the purpose of Preservation Week is to heighten awareness of the need for preservation activities and resources to protect our cultural heritage.  That includes materials held in collections like the LSU Libraries, but also your family heritage and memories.  Several professional and governmental organizations have partnered to provide preservation information for individuals, as well as organizations.  Links to these resources are available at http://www.ala.org/alcts/confevents/preswk.

In the LSU Libraries, we plan emergency response training events each May.  This year, Middleton Library will be site of an "active shooter" emergency response exercise that will provide a major training opportunity for first responders in Baton Rouge. Scheduled for Tuesday, May 20, the exercise will involve LSU faculty, staff and students who volunteer to participate, and Middleton Library will be closed for part of the day.  Please check our website for updates and closure hours. 

On a much more cheerful note, we look forward to attending commencement ceremonies on Thursday, May 15 at the Maravich Assembly Center and offer congratulations to all new graduates! 

Elaine Smyth

Interim Dean

Griffin's publications include a chapter in Handbook of Black Librarianship and journal articles about cataloging, outreach programs in academic libraries, and scholarly resources for African and African American Studies. In addition to LLA, Griffin is a member of the American Library Association (ALA) and two of its divisions: Association of College & Research Libraries and Association for Library Collections & Technical Services. She has served as a representative to North American Serials Interest Group since 2010 and has chaired several ALA interest groups associated with cataloging.

As Dr. Beth Paskoff, Director of Louisiana State University School of Library & Information Science states, "Linda Smith Griffin has been recognized by honor societies, student groups and other organizations for her service. It is time for her to be recognized by her professional colleagues in Louisiana."

Elaine B. Smyth, Interim Dean of LSU Libraries, received the Outstanding Academic Librarian Award at the 2014 Louisiana Library Association Conference on March 26. The award honors an individual who has made an especially significant contribution to further the development of academic librarianship within Louisiana.

Award Committee Chair Melinda Matthews states, "Ms. Smyth was an outstanding librarian in LSU Special Collections for many years. She serves as a model for other librarians; she has made an impact on the profession of librarianship as a whole and within her specialty discipline; she conducts research and shares it through scholarly publications; and she participates actively in professional organizations."

Smyth is the author of two books and numerous scholarly articles about rare books and manuscripts. She is an experienced grant panelist, called on frequently by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Institute for Museum and Library Services. Smyth currently chairs the Louisiana Advisory Council for the State Documents Depository Program, and she is an Executive Board member of the Louisiana Academic Library Network Consortium (LALINC).

Sigrid Kelsey, Director of Library Communications and Publications for LSU Libraries, adds,

"As the Interim Dean of the largest academic library in Louisiana, Ms. Smyth provides leadership throughout the state and is dedicated to making LSU and Louisiana the home of superb academic institutions. Elaine Smyth is indubitably deserving of the public recognition that this award gives her."

LSU Libraries Hosts Viewing of Audubon's Birds of America 

A renowned masterpiece of natural history art, Birds of America records the rich bird and plant life Audubon saw and drew first-hand when he lived in Louisiana in the 1820s. The multi-volume edition is known as the "elephant" folio because of its large size, with each of its 435 pages measuring thirty-nine by twenty-seven inches. Publication took eleven years, from 1827 to 1838. LSU's copy was purchased with a grant from the Crown Zellerbach Foundation in 1964, and it has been shown in various venues over the years.

In 2007, it was determined that LSU's copy could no longer be shown safely due to structural damage to the bindings caused by their large size and other problems with individual plates. In 2008, the Coypu Foundation made a donation of $99,000 to enable conservation of this work by Etherington Conservation Services. Over the course of more than a year, the work was painstakingly completed. The final volume returned to the library on December 28, 2009. Thanks to the Coypu Foundation, one of the Libraries' greatest treasures is now restored to fine condition and can again be shared with our community. 

It is with pleasure that the Hill Memorial Library shares these remarkable volumes with the community. Audubon Day events are free and the public is welcome, but reservations are required and space is limited. Viewings of the folio volumes are scheduled to begin at 10 a.m., 11 a.m., 12 noon, and 1 p.m. Only forty people can be admitted for each showing. Parking is readily accessible in the Indian Mounds lot, directly behind Hill Memorial Library. To request a reservation, visit the Libraries' Special Collections website or call 225-578-6544 during business hours.

In addition to the viewing of Birds of America, this year, visitors will have the opportunity to view the new traveling exhibition that will be of interest to Audubon and bird enthusiasts. Described below, "I Remember: An Art Show of Environmental Significance," is produced by the Coastal Wetlands Planning, Protection and Restoration Act (CWPPRA) Task Force in partnership with LSU Libraries' T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History. The exhibition features oral histories, photographs and original art depicting individuals who work, live, and play in Louisiana's coastal wetlands. Archival materials from LSU Libraries Special Collections complement "I Remember." Artists Lane Lefort (photographer) and Marian Brister Martinez (painter) will be on hand in the exhibit gallery to discuss their work currently on display as part of the "I Remember" exhibition. A representative from Marsh Dog will be available to talk about the company's nutria-based dog food products, and its founding as a creative economic solution to address coastal wetlands loss.

The exhibit features environmental portraits and landscape photographs by Lane Lefort and oil paintings by Marian Brister Martinez, both Louisiana natives whose artistic talents capture the culture and heritage of the communities in coastal Louisiana. The exhibition also features oral histories, allowing visitors to use their smart phones to listen to stories of eleven coastal stewards, and an interactive kiosk with video and audio clips.

"People living in the last century in coastal Louisiana have witnessed ecology and culture on the fault lines of change and by telling their stories, they have much to offer in the way of valuable historical and cultural information that's not found in textbooks," says Jennifer Abraham Cramer, Director of the T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History.   

Shrimp lugger, c. 1920. From the Colonel Joseph S. Tate Photograph Album, Mss. 4963. Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections, LSU Libraries Special Collections.

For more information on CWPPRA, visit LACoast.gov or contact Susan Testroet-Bergeron at BergeronS@usgs.gov or call 337-266-8623.   

Andrew David Lytle, Sr., about 1895

LSU Libraries' Digital Services, under the direction of Gina Costello, collaborated with Photographic Processing Archivist, Mark Martin, to organize, catalog, and digitize approximately eight hundred photographs from numerous separate collections in the LSU Libraries.

Andrew D. Lytle was a Cincinnati native who came to Baton Rouge around 1857. He and his business partners, including his son Howard, spent the next fifty years or so photographing Baton Rouge people, places, and community events. Civil War photographs of naval vessels on the river, federal encampments, soldiers and sailors; the faculty, cadets, student activities, and buildings of Louisiana State University Agricultural and Mechanical College (at its former location); and inmates working at Angola and Hope farms and in Atchafalaya Basin levee camps are among the subjects of the fascinating photographs.

The Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections (LLMVC) in Special Collections focus on the state of Louisiana and the greater region whose culture, economy, politics, settlement, and geography have been defined by the lower Mississippi River. A particular strength of the LLMVC is the papers of families, individuals, and businesses from Natchez and Adams County, Mississippi, and the surrounding counties. The recent acquisition of the Drake-Magruder Family Papers add to LLMVC's already comprehensive and noted body of materials on this area. 

Spanning three generations of two families joined by the marriage of Rev. Benjamin Drake and Susan Magruder, the collection (dated 1810-1958) reflects events and currents of American history such as westward migration and settlement in the "Old Southwest," the Great Awakening, the establishment of plantations, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and changing roles and opportunities for women.

Susan Magruder was the daughter of Captain James T. Magruder, a native of Maryland and one of the first to migrate from that state to the area of Church Hill in Jefferson County, Miss., in the early 1800s. The area became known as "the Maryland Settlement" due to the number of Marylanders who came west in the early 1800s looking for fertile land and fortune and established plantations and businesses. Over the years a complex and interwoven web of relationships formed among these emigrants as they married each other and intermarried with other local families, resulting in a community connected by blood or marriage, if not by nativity, reaching across Jefferson, Adams, and Claiborne counties. Benjamin M. Drake married into this community in 1827 when he wed Susan Magruder.   As a Methodist minister, he was posted to circuits, districts and churches from Vicksburg to Natchez to New Orleans, while the family, which grew to include seven surviving children, had settled at Magnolia Springs Plantation in Jefferson County by 1836.

The bulk of the collection is formed by the correspondence and related papers of Benjamin Drake, Susan Magruder Drake, their families of origin, and their children. Topics include Rev. Drake's ministry and Methodist church business, politics, family news, the education the Drake children (especially the boys' at Centenary College in Jackson, La.), battlefield and home front experiences in the Civil War, and family members professional pursuits after the war. Earlier items in the collection include letters, financial records, and miscellaneous documents of Magruder relatives involved in politics and military matters in territorial Mississippi and Louisiana. Of particular note from this group are two letters (1812) from Allan Magruder, one of Louisiana's first U.S. senators, about the possibility of Mississippi annexing Florida Parishes in connection with Louisiana becoming a state and acceptance of Louisiana's constitution and a letter to Alex Covington from Gen. James Wilkinson, about operations against the Spanish at Mobile (1813).  

Later papers (ca. 1901-1954) are primarily those of Janie Drake Cooper and Claribel Drake, granddaughters of the Drakes who taught at Whitworth College, a girls' school in Mississippi, and later lived on the family plantation Mt. Ararat.

For additional information, contact Curator of Manuscripts Tara Z. Laver, tzachar@lsu.edu.

Data--WikiLeaks, climate change, NSA, satellite pictures of Ukraine--makes the headlines daily. Data, controversial or not, and the tools we use to analyze it, make it possible for us to derive more complete understandings of the world around us, whether from a social or physical perspective. This, in turn, helps drive the production of new knowledge, which is what a research university is all about.

Faculty and students who produce or collect data are well aware of its power and uses, as well as the daunting task of managing the data over time. Managing terabytes to teraflops poses new problems that the university community is only beginning to address.

How well have we planned for the future life of data so that they remain useful over time? Many questions need to be addressed: How will users be able to find the data files easily years down the road? When they find it, will they be able to "read" it?  Or will the software not likely to be around in five or ten years? Is there a migration plan to keep the format of data files usable in the foreseeable future? Are there backups in multiple locations? How will the integrity and authenticity of the files be maintained and verified? Is the organizational scheme and construction of the data well documented so that another user would understand the contents? 

The process of asking and answering questions such as these is called data management. It is, simply put, a way of planning for data from the outset of their production to render them more useful to the producer and to any who might benefit from them, both in the present and for the life of the data.

As faculty and students begin to grapple with the process of data management planning, LSU Libraries can help. This is an integral part of what librarians do. We are specialists at organizing, preserving, and providing efficient discovery and access to information in all of its formats. For more information, contact William Armstrong, Director of the Institutional Repository and Scholarly Communications Librarian; or Gina Costello, Head of Digital Services.  

Michael Taylor, Assistant Curator of Books for the LSU Libraries' Special Collections, came across the materials. He says that an unidentified collector added them to a large set of facsimile reproductions of Revolutionary War manuscripts produced by the American bibliographer B. F. Stevens in the 1890s. The original documents went unnoticed, Taylor believes, because they were interspersed among the 2,107 facsimiles, which were published in 24 volumes as B.F. Stevens's Facsimiles of Manuscripts in European Archives Relating to America, 1773-1783. The collector also added more than four hundred engravings to the volumes, depicting individuals and events associated with the Revolution.

"In the 19th century, people often 'extra-illustrated' books by inserting prints, letters, autographs, newspaper clippings, and anything else that supplemented the text," Taylor says. He adds that the materials are a good example of how people collected "relics" of the Revolution. "Some of the letters are interesting in themselves, but I think they are more interesting as a group. How did the people who fought the Revolutionary War go from being ordinary men and women to national icons? How did America create its own mythology? These materials can help teach students about that process."

Press copy of a document produced for Benjamin Franklin, ca. 1782

Taylor notes that even mundane items in the collection shed light on America's founders. His favorite document is thought to have been made for Benjamin Franklin, probably by one of his secretaries. Known as a press copy, it was a precursor of the photocopy. "The paper is highly absorbent and as thin as tissue paper," Taylor explains. "When it was pressed against a letter that had been dampened, it soaked up some of the ink, producing an exact copy." The technique was invented in England around 1780 by James Watt, who is best known for his work on the steam engine. Franklin, a famous inventor himself, was among the first to use it. The document in LSU's collection (a passage copied out by hand from a contemporary news magazine, the Maryland Gazette) has a watermark indicating that the paper was made by James Watt.

"This is just one example of the many exciting surprises that Special Collections staff and our visiting researchers find almost every day when working with our collections," Jessica Lacher-Feldman, Head of Special Collections, commented. "Whether for teaching, research, student and faculty recruitment, or just personal curiosity, the library is a remarkably rich resource that benefits the university, the broader community, and in fact the world."

The LSU Libraries Special Collections, in Hill Memorial Library, is free and open to the public. For more information, contact the library at (225) 578-6544 or by email at special@lsu.edu.

In support of the burgeoning open access movement to provide free global access to scholarly resources, the LSU Libraries recently initiated participation in two important open access initiatives.

The Sponsoring Consortium for Open Access Publishing in Particle Physics, better known as SCOAP3, is a global partnership providing free access to leading high-energy physics journals, such as Physics Letters B, Nuclear Physics B (Elsevier), and the Journal of High Energy Physics (Springer). LSU Libraries became a financial contributing member January 1, 2014, joining partners from seventeen countries formally participating in the consortium, with eight additional countries completing the final steps to join the consortium.  

Knowledge Unlatched is another open access initiative with about three hundred global libraries participating, including LSU. The libraries pool funds to cover publishers' costs and provide free, global access to twenty-eight humanities and social sciences ebooks. Publishers include Cambridge University Press, De Gruyter, the University of Michigan Press, and ten additional academic presses. Titles are available in PDF format.  

The Open Access Published in European Networks web page serves as the main platform to access the ebooks. The ebooks will be accessible through the LSU Libraries' online catalog, EBSCO's Discovery Service, Google, the HathiTrust, and the British Library.

Zigzag Stemmed Iris

The exhibition offers a glimpse of Stones' working process, from depicting details of plants, to creating finished, scientifically accurate drawings of whole specimens. Almost forty years later, the exhibit also highlights how the collaborative efforts of individuals in East Baton Rouge helped to create an artistic treasure for Louisiana.

Stones established a firm reputation as one of the finest botanical artists of the century, working as the principal contributing artist to Curtis's Botanical Magazine, the longest running botanical periodical in the world, and producing works on private commission.

In conjunction with Stones' exhibition, the LSU Museum of Art and Hilltop Arboretum will present a walking tour to examine plant specimens that inspired the artist's remarkable work. The Museum of Art will organize a special Mother's Day Tea on Sunday, May 11, where participants can enjoy lunch, a tour of the exhibition and a hands-on water coloring activity to bring home. Call 225-389-7206 for more information.

The LSU Museum of Art will also present a series of exciting educational programs including lectures, gallery talks, art making workshops and interactive school tours for all ages, designed to further explore the exhibition. For more information or to schedule a tour, please contact Lucy Perera, LSU Museum of Art coordinator of school and community programs, at lperera@lsu.edu or call 225-389-7207.

The Stones exhibition is sponsored by donations from many Flora of Louisiana supporters, and through the collaborative work of the LSU Libraries, LSU Museum of Art and the Baton Rouge community.

General admission to the LSU Museum of Art is $5 each for adults and children age 13 and over. Admission is free to university faculty, staff, and students with ID, children age 12 and under, and museum members. Hours of operation are Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m., Thursday from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. and Sunday from 1 p.m. to 5 p.m. For more information, visit www.lsumoa.com or call 225-389-7200.