Lauren Cathey

On January 20, 2015, Lauren Cathey joined the LSU Libraries as the Director of Development, Major Gifts. Lauren comes to LSU from Capital Area United Way (CAUW) in Baton Rouge, where she served as its Director of Major Gifts. Cathey was initially hired by CAUW in 2012 as a Campaign Manager. She managed 160 workforce campaign accounts, and was responsible for $2.3M of the $8.6M campaign. One of Lauren's favorite workforce accounts was LSU. She had the opportunity to work and collaborate with LSU leadership, and grew the LSU-United Way campaign revenue exponentially over the course of two campaigns.

 

In 2013, Cathey was promoted to Director of Major Gifts, overseeing the Alexis de Tocqueville Society, individuals who contribute a minimum of $10,000 annually to Capital Area United Way. She increased the Tocqueville Society membership 46% over the course of two annual campaigns, raising more than $760,000 in 2014.

 

Cathey attributes her passion for fundraising to her upbringing. She grew up in a philanthropic household, volunteering and fundraising for various non-profits and causes, including: Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, Meals on Wheels, St. Vincent de Paul, Humane Society, United Way, St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, Miss America Organization and Children's Miracle Network.

 

Cathey is excited to work as the LSU Libraries' director of development. Her duties will include the research, cultivation, solicitation, recognition and stewardship of current and potential major donors. Additionally, she will help create and implement a strategic plan for fund development, recruit and help manage an Advisory Council, and work with the Friends of the Libraries. She hopes that through collaboration and best practices, she, with help from the faculty and staff, can bring the LSU Libraries funding priorities and aspirations to the forefront.

 

Originally from Monroe, Louisiana, Cathey graduated from Louisiana Tech University with a B.A. in Psychology. Her professional and social affiliations include the Association of Fundraising Professionals - Baton Rouge chapter, the BR Development Fellows Program - 2014-15 class, Junior League of Baton Rouge - Fest for All committee co-chair, and Forum 35 - Public Education Program committee.

 

 

Aaron Richardson

On January 5, 2015, Aaron Richardson joined the LSU Libraries as University Archivist. Richardson comes to LSU from Atlanta, GA, where he served as Southeast Regional Archivist for the National Park Service. An NARA-certified Records Manager, Richardson helped implement the Legacy Preservation Initiative-the National Park Service digital records management program. As a faculty member at the University of West Georgia, he created and directed the Public History program's 'NPS Archival Internship Program' which provides professional archival training and processing experience to graduate students.

 

While Richardson is a native of northern California, he has a long family history in the state of Louisiana. He received his initial archival training at the California State Archives. At California State University, Sacramento he was a Hellenic Studies Research Fellow responsible for Greek-American manuscript collections of the Tsakopoulos Hellenic Collection. Prior to entering the archival profession, he taught college-level courses in Humanities, Critical Thinking, and Ethics. He holds advanced degrees in Interdisciplinary Humanities, History, and Information Science. Richardson''s research interests include the history of library science, social epistemology, the National Parks in the Caribbean, and 20th century Greek-America.

 

Richardson looks forward to making connections across campus and across the state as part of his role as University Archivist.

 

    

The $500 scholarship, which will be awarded twice a year, was established in the fall of 2014 by means of a gift from the Zamin family. They wished to recognize a student worker employed in the Circulation Services unit who demonstrates the same professional work ethic and love of LSU Libraries as did their father.  

 

Zamin was a career officer of the Pakistan army beginning in World War II. He fought many battles with courage and success, rising to the rank of lieutenant general. After retirement, he was appointed as a Pakistani ambassador to four countries. Upon his retirement, he moved to Baton Rouge, where began yet another career at Middleton Library, where he worked for fourteen years. During that time, he was appreciated for his wisdom by library staff and student workers alike.  

 

LSU Libraries is pleased to recognize Rachel Shirley as the first recipient of the General Syed Ali Zamin Memorial Scholarship. Shirley is a sophomore majoring in Theatre with a concentration in film. She has been a student worker in Circulation Services since she started classes at LSU in 2013. "I'm really honored to have won," she says, "It means a lot to me that my supervisors felt me worthy of this award and I hope to continue to show the qualities associated with this scholarship."  

 

The LSU Libraries held the first of a series of programs at St. James Place Retirement Community on January 8, 2015. Jessica Lacher-Feldman and Cristina Caminita discussed the Smith-Lever exhibit in Special Collections, which celebrates the 100-year anniversary of the Smith-Lever Act and the establishment of the Louisiana Cooperative Extension Service.  

 

During the event, attendees shared their experiences growing up in rural Louisiana and their involvement with Cooperative Extension and with LSU's College of Agriculture. On January 10, residents visited the exhibit in Hill Memorial Library.

 

The Libraries plans to share its treasures and dynamic programs with this community regularly.

From Eugène Grasset, La plante et ses applications ornementales (1897).

Join the LSU Libraries' Special Collections on February 3, 2:00 to 3:30 or February 4, 12:00 to 1:30, at Hill Memorial Library for its second Afternoon in the Archives, an informal series of showcases designed to teach participants about its exciting historical collections. The upcoming event will feature a selection of important and colorful rare books by key figures of the Arts & Crafts and Art Nouveau movements. Enthusiasts and students of printmaking, poetry, architecture, or advertising are all sure to find something intriguing.

The nineteenth century produced the wonders of the Industrial Revolution, but also ugly urban landscapes and soulless mechanization. By the end of the century, designers such as William Morris, Eugene Grasset, and Alphonse Mucha were going "back to nature" and creating elegant handcrafted books, artwork, and other decorative objects that wove naturalism with whimsy and brought the beauty of natural forms back into people's homes.

Library staff will be available to talk about the collections, and how they can be part of one's teaching, learning, and research.

For more information, contact Michael Taylor at mltaylor@lsu.edu or 225-578-6547.

The LSU Libraries T. Harry Williams Center for Oral History has received a grant for over $217,000 from the Imperial Calcasieu Museum (Lake Charles, LA) as part of a larger grant from the Sasol energy and chemicals company. Headed by The Imperial Calcasieu Museum, in partnership with the Williams Center and local writer/journalist Bill Shearman, the project's goal is to document, archive, and make available the written and oral history of the people and community of Mossville, Louisiana. Complete written and oral histories, copies of photographs, and artifacts will be collected and made available for public viewing in the Museum. The oral history component of the project, under the direction of the Williams Center's director, Jennifer A. Cramer, includes collections of recorded interviews from Mossville community residents to help preserve the culture and history of this community currently at the crossroads of major changes. The Center will archive these oral histories and make them available to the public.  Master copies will be preserved by LSU Libraries, and copies of the collections will be made available at the Imperial Calcasieu Museum, the Rigmaiden Recreation Center, and McNeese State University, and accessible through the Louisiana Digital Library.

   

On January 23 and 24, two "Oral History Days" hosted by the Williams Center and the museum, kicked off the project. A number of community members participated by sharing photos and memorabilia, and more than 20 residents recorded their stories with Williams Center staff, who were on-site to conduct brief interviews that will serve as starting points for more in-depth interviews at a later date. Participants received copies of the recordings that day, and the masters will be archived with LSU Libraries Special Collections, with copies being made available to partnering institutions. Oral History Day participants included members from the Dotson, Lemelle, Gardner, Lee, Payne, Braxton, Banks, and Ambrose families, and many of these names are recognizable as the names of the founders of this predominantly African-American community.

 

In the early 1800s the Rigmaiden, Moss, LeDoux, Vincent, Braxton, Towners, Lyons, and Perkins families settled in the Southwest Louisiana area then known as "Shoate's Prairie." In 1916, Shoate's Prairie was re-named Mossville after James Moss, a descendant of the original settlers. Many Mossville residents today are descendants of those original families, yet they have been largely absent from any written or oral records. Current and former Mossville residents are invited to participate in interviews and provide photographs or memorabilia to capture the history and culture of life in Mossville.

   

"This project is very valuable and special to the Mossville community," said Butch Lemelle, Mossville resident and project steering committee member. "Mossville is one of the oldest communities in Southwest Louisiana, and it is important to us that our history and culture are remembered and celebrated."

 

The project is expected to be completed and made available to the public by 2017. Transcripts, research and photographs will be displayed for the general public at the Imperial Calcasieu Museum, the McNeese Archives, and LSU Libraries Special Collections. Audio, video and images will be available on the Louisiana Digital Library. 

 

There are, in the world of special collections and archives, opportunities of a lifetime. Often it is for unique material such as a diary or a group of letters, where there is, by definition, just one copy. There are times when published materials can be just as rare. In November of 2014, LSU Libraries Special Collections learned that a very rare map was coming to auction. This map, an 1855 plan of the city of Baton Rouge, was only the second known copy to survive. The other, which is held in private hands, is not available for public use or research. Though the Hill Memorial Library has had a facsimile copy of this map, the opportunity to acquire an original did not seem to be possible because it was not known to exist.

 

Through careful planning, discussion, and advocacy, and with generous gifts from Friends of LSU Libraries, David and Lubna Culbert, Anne West, and A.E. Probst, Jessica Lacher-Feldman traveled to New Orleans to the auction house to bid on the map. The trip was a success with LSU Libraries the winning bidder.

 

Little is known about the map, though it is believed by some that it was designed by French-born Louisianian Marie Adrien Persac (1823-1873), a painter, inventor, teacher, photographer, and lithographer. Persac is thought to have designed the map itself as well as the vignette in the bottom left of the map. It was published and printed by the firm of Michael Gill in New York. It is a business map of the city of Baton Rouge, and features a business directory along the right side of the map. It is also color coded, with public buildings indicated in black, and private buildings made of brick are crossed twice and wood frame structures crossed once. The large oval in the upper right side, was at this time a race track, and appears some distance from the heart of the city. This area is today known as the Garden District. The bottom left, directly to the right of the Persac Vignette of the Mississippi River shows the Pentagon Barracks, which later became part of what would be later known as Louisiana State University.

 

Persac's name is probably most recognized in connection with his most widely reproduced work, the impressive five-foot-long Norman's Chart of the Lower Mississippi River, which was printed in 1858. LSU Libraries Special Collections has two copies of the Norman's Chart.  

One of Louisiana's strongest traditions is its love of politics. Always colorful, often controversial, the state's political heritage is a rich one.

Perhaps no one enjoyed, understood, and engaged with Louisiana politics as much as longtime political writer John Maginnis, who passed away in May of last year. Jackie Drinkwater Maginnis, his widow, recently donated his papers to LSU Libraries Special Collections.

 

Maginnis authored definitive works on late 20th-century Louisiana politics, including The Last Hayride, about Edwin Edwards's 1983 gubernatorial campaign, and Cross to Bear, a chronicle of the infamous gubernatorial race of 1991 between Edwards and David Duke. He also published Gris Gris magazine, The Baton Rouge Enterprise and later Louisiana Political Review, which became LaPolitics Weekly.     

The donation included Maginnis's research files on Louisiana governors and on topics such as the legislature, ethics, the oil and gas industry, and the media; his newspaper columns; photographs used as illustrations in his books; and back issues of many of his publications.

 

"John Maginnis has been called the dean of Louisiana politics, so we are honored to provide a home for his papers," said Curator of Manuscripts Tara Z. Laver. "Special Collections has extensive holdings of political collections, including, among others, the papers of Louisiana senators Russell Long, J. Bennett Johnston, and John Breaux, but we are looking to build on existing strengths to add materials that reflect the political discourse in and about the state. Mr. Maginnis's papers certainly help us do that." 

Given the Louisiana and Lower Mississippi Valley Collections' (LLMVC) focus on Louisiana, it is not surprising that one of the strengths of our manuscript holdings is family, business, and personal papers that happen to be in French. Scholars from across campus and around the world come to conduct research in them on a wide range of topics, including linguistics, Creole culture, literature, geography, sociology, religion, and all categories of history.

One such collection, the Doussan Family Papers, has recently been digitized and published in the Louisiana Digital Library, adding to the body of French-language documents freely available online from our holdings.

 

The Doussans, émigré French family, settled in East and West Baton Rouge Parish, La., in the wake of Napoleon's downfall.  Comprising pieces of correspondence, financial papers, and personal papers of family members, the collection, which dates from 1827-1872, reflects the Doussans's planting operations in West Baton Rouge Parish, financial and legal transactions in Louisiana and France, family activities, interests, and concerns, and the experience of French émigrés in Louisiana as they encountered Anglo-American culture and society. Correspondence includes letters to and from friends and family in France.

 

"The Doussan papers provide excellent documentation of how connected to France French émigrés to Louisiana remained," said Curator of Manuscripts Tara Laver. "By digitizing the collection and placing it online, we are making more French-language primary sources readily accessible for linguistic and historical analysis."

 

For additional information, contact Laver at 225-578-6546 or tzachar@lsu.edu. 

 

 

Fall 2014 was a record-breaking semester for Special Collections instructional services, with more than 1200 students visiting the library as part of 40 class sessions that incorporated activities involving rare books and manuscripts.

 

"Word is definitely getting out about the exciting services we offer," said Michael Taylor, rare book curator for the LSU Libraries. "Digital resources are terrific, but something really special happens when students get to touch books and manuscripts from hundreds of years ago. Apart from the 'wow factor,' by working with primary sources students are developing useful skills like learning to evaluate and synthesize historical information and interpret objects from different time periods and cultures. They also learn about the research process and pick up critical-thinking skills that they'll be able to use long after they leave LSU. We're at the heart of the university's mission."

 

Students from a wide range of departments visited, including English, History, Art History, Music, Mass Communication, and Architecture. Two Interior Design classes found inspiration for their own work by viewing original examples of historical illustration and graphic design, while students in a music history course experienced first-hand what it would have been like to read music in the Middle Ages. A group of freshmen in English 1001 worked with an archival collection related to several generations of an African-American family from Baton Rouge, learning not only about how historians gather information and tell a story, but also how our view of history depends on who is writing it.

 

Three separate courses on Shakespeare got a new perspective on his influence by examining editions of his work from long ago, including the Second Folio edition of his plays, published in 1632. English professor Chris Barrett, who taught one of the Shakespeare classes, says she designs her courses around visits to Special Collections. "My students are always astonished by the library's treasures, and the experts there make these materials accessible and engaging. Visiting Hill Memorial is a must for any class!"

 

The library's Lecture Hall can accommodate about 60 students. For smaller seminars, the McIlhenny Room is available. As for how to structure class visits, Jessica Lacher-Feldman, Head of Special Collections, comments that the possibilities are endless. "We can introduce our collections. We can talk about how to do archival research. We can work with instructors to design hands-on exercises that help students encounter their course material in a new way. Facilitating teaching and learning is one of our top priorities, and we're thrilled that so many people are becoming more aware of our world-class resources."

 

For information on how to arrange a class visit to Special Collections, please call or email us, or visit the Special Collections education resources webpage on the LSU Libraries website.