The Boogy Man (Examinations, 1913)

from the archives...


“The Ditty Book, with Cosmos Cartoons and Original Verses” by Don Chilcote ’16 and “Buddy” Burrows ’14, pages 39-40.

~Sara, Archives Assistant

Finals Time Stress Break: Massages at the library!

Back due to popular demand, the library will once again be sponsoring massages for students to help them de-stress in the time leading up to final exams.  Massages will be FREE to any current Coe College student that signs up, though we do have a limited number of massages available.  Students from LaJames will be providing chair massages in the Perrine Gallery from 10:30 AM-4:00 PM on Friday, April 27th.  As stated, the massages will be free of cost to current Coe students and last for 10 minutes.  Students need to arrive at the library and check in with the masseurs 5 minutes prior to their massage, or the time slot will be made available to any student that was unable to schedule a massage at another time.  We will also have a limited amount of table massages available, also for 10 minutes, in the library classroom.  Sign-ups will begin tomorrow, April 24th, at 8:30 AM in the reference department office and will go on until all slots are taken.  If you have any questions, please inquire with Katelyn or Harlene in the reference office.  Good luck during finals week, everyone!

Common Hour Follow-up

Thanks to everyone that attended the library-hosted Common Hour last Friday, 4/13/2012.  Those who attended had the chance to check out the Writing Center's new digs in the lower level of Gage, while listening to the library staff speak on topics covered at the 2012 Library Technology Conference and how those issues impact Coe.  There are a few points that we wanted to follow up on, for those whom are interested.  We spoke a great deal on institutional repositories and digital commons, and Macalester, the conference's host, has a great one.  Many of the presentations from the conference have made their data available online, at Digital Commons @ Macalester.  Jill Jack, the library's director, attended a presentation that showed a correlation between library usage and student success and retention, that she spoke on last Friday; those interested in viewing that presentation's data can check it out here. There are some interesting things coming up on the horizon for libraries and institutions in higher education, and we thank all of the members of the Coe community that came out last Friday to hear about some of the thoughts that we have on those issues.

-Katelyn, Head of Reference

The InternATIONal Rag (week before examination, 1913)

from the archives...


"The Ditty Book, with Cosmos Cartoons and Original Verses" by Don Chilcote '16 and "Buddy" Burrows '14, Pages 37-38.

~Sara, Archives Assistant

Celebrate Earth Day with these titles!

Earth day is April 22nd, and the Audiovisual Department has got you covered with a great display of films to help you celebrate and contemplate. Here are three titles that will help get you in the spirit:

The 11th Hour (2008), narrated by Leonardo DiCaprio, outlines the damage already done to the environment, while providing hope for the future in the form of ‘green’ technology. Showing images of collapsing glaciers and floods, the program offers solace from such experts as Steven Hawking and sustainable-design experts.

Agnés Varda, a French documentary filmmaker, travels her native country documenting the actions of gleaners in The Gleaners and I (2000). These gleaners are essentially modern-day scavengers, who search for food and other discarded products in dumpsters and refuse containers. Varda highlights their disregard for wastefulness and consumerism.

Andy Goldsworthy’s Rivers and Tides (2004) is a documentary about Scottish artist Andy Goldsworthy, who works exclusively with materials from nature. He builds ephemeral sculptures from such materials as branches, ice, and loose rock, and installs them within their original environment. His sculptures eventually become part of the landscape, where they become overgrown by plants or washed over by rising tides.

--Laura, Head of AV

Bert H. Baily Museum, Coe College, Iowa (1885-2004)

From the Archives…

Did you know Coe had a museum?  When Coe College was incorporated in 1881 is was common for college’s to have their own museums.  In fact it was a point of prestige for a college to have a museum, which is why the Coe College Museum was begun in 1885, three years after Coe instituted a library and five years before it had a student newspaper.  Part of the museum was still used by students as late as 2004 when art classes used the preserved birds as drawing subjects.

Today the space has been turned into much-needed classrooms, but pieces of the museum’s history still occasionally show up in the archives.  With the cleaning out of Peterson hall, in advance of its renovation this summer, a box of museum correspondence and notes was discovered by Harlo Hadow (Heins-Johnson Professor of Biology) and brought to the archives.  The identification cards on the right are part of this recent accession to the museum’s recorded history.

~Sara, Archives Assistant

Mauricio Lasansky, 1914—2012

Mauricio Lasansky, an Argentinian-born artist who established the printmaking workshop at the University of Iowa, passed away last Monday at the age of 97. Lasansky was a very prolific Iowa artist, and Stewart Memorial Library at Coe is lucky enough to have two of his etchings. “Mr. President: Study of Lincoln” and “Einstein” are two of the over 180 works of art hanging in the library. They hang just behind the Reference Desk, keeping a wise watch over the students at the computers.

To find out more information about the artwork in this library, click here.

 

--Laura, Head of Audiovisual

Public vs. Academic Libraries

Did you know that a mile and a half from Coe College, in down town Cedar Rapids, you will find the Cedar Rapids Public Library (CRPL)?  Why is this important to know when the Stewart Memorial Library (SML) is in the center of campus?

Public and Academic libraries serve different purposes and hold different collections. For example, if you're doing a paper on architecture in Chicago you will find thirteen books on the subject in SML's catalog and one in CRPL's catalog. If you want to take a trip to see architecture in Chicago you will find zero guidebooks to Chicago in SML's catalog and twenty-five in CRPL's catalog. Public libraries contain introductory and popular materials on a wide range of subjects, while academic libraries contain in-depth materials in the disciplines covered by the institution.

For fun lets look at some other comparisons:

There are two copies of "Hunger Games" (a young adult book that has a movie version in theaters right now) in the SML catalog (one is currently lost). There are 79 copies of the book "Hunger Games" in CRPL's catalog. There are also spin-offs such as: 'the official illustrated movie companion', 'the hunger games cookbook', and 'the stars of the hunger games' available at CRPL.

SML has 562 'physics' titles including: "Introduction to University Physics", "The physicists : the history of a scientific community in modern America", and "mathematics and physics for programmers". CRPL has 110 titles including: "The complete idiots guide to physics", "Six roads from Newton: great discoveries in physics" (also owned by SML), and "The manga guide to physics".

Under the subject heading 'knitting' SML has 1 title "The complete idiots guide to knitting and crocheting" an e-book. CRPL has 518 titles under knitting including: "The principles of knitting: methods and techniques of hand knitting", "Knitting Knee Highs: sock styles from classic to contemporary", and "Things I learned from Knitting: whether I wanted to or not". CRPL's collection also includes knitting fiction and knitting juvenile literature.

There are 134 books under the subject headings for Jane Austen in the SML library catalog.  They include: "Jane Austen and the Morality of conversation", "Character development in Pride and Prejudice and Emma", and "A Jane Austen Encyclopedia".  The CRPL catalog has 85 books under the subject Jane Austen including: "Jane Vows Vengeance: a novel", "Jane Austen: a life revealed", and "Pride and Prejudice and zombies: dreadfully ever after".

Hopefully you know all about the Stewart Memorial Library and how to find and check-out books in its collections (if not please don't hesitate to ask!), so I am going to end with a few notes about the Cedar Rapids Public Library.  The CRPL shares its catalog and collections with the Hiawatha and Marion public libraries.  This means their catalog contains books from all of the libraries.  If the book you want is at the Hiawatha Public Library (or Marion) you can request it to be sent to CRPL for pick up.  To do this you need a library card and pin number which can be obtained at any of the public libraries.  The closest to Coe is at: 221 3rd St. SE.

Till next Thursday
Sara