WKU Libraries blog

Lynwood Montell spoke at the KY Library & Museum on the evening of October 29 about his newest book, Tales from Kentucky Funeral Homes. An author of numerous Kentucky-related books and former faculty at WKU, Montell made his first appearance in WKU Libraries Kentucky Live! series. His tales of ghost stories in Kentucky and Tennessee are legendary, and his Halloween readings have been popular for many years.

Montell, a native of Rock Bridge in Monroe County, founded the Folk Studies Program at WKU in 1972 and taught several generations of students there between 1969 and 1999. He’s the author of 22 books with such enticing titles as: Ghosts Along the Cumberland; Killings: Folk Justice in the Upper South; and Haunted Houses and Family Ghosts of Kentucky.

In his newest book he recounts stories of unusual items in caskets, mournful pretenders, long-winded preachers, and even pallbearers falling into graves. They all serve to demonstrate the pivotal role played by morticians in Kentucky life and culture.

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Professor Debbie Kreitzer from the Department of Georgraphy and Geology is the first speaker in the tenth series of talks on “Far away Places with Strange Sounding Names” sponsored by the friends of WKU Libraries and the Kentucky Museum. Debbie teaches classes on World Regional Geography, the Georgraphy of North America and Geographic Information Systems. She led a Study Abroad group to Slovenia in 2007 and made a return visit in 2008. This event was held at Barnes and Noble on Thursday September 17th at 7:00 p.m.

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Mr. Guillerman spoke as part of our Kentucky Live series on Thursday, October 15th at Barnes & Noble on Campbell Lane.

Michael D. Guillerman worked for the Peabody Coal Company from 1974 to 1991. Over his long career, his jobs included belt shoveler, timberman, shooter, drill and shuttle car operator, rock duster, and finally section foreman. Now retired, he lives with his wife Marie in Union county, Kentucky.

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On the evening of April 16 at Barnes & Noble Booksellers, WKU Libraries’ Far Away Places Series featured Dr. Michael Trapasso from the Department of Geography and Geology at WKU. Trapasso provided a unique and fascinating look at retracing the “Viking Voyages.” Many WKU faculty and students as well as local community members attended the lecture.

Since earning a PhD in climatology Michael has taught a variety of classes at WKU, served as Director of the College Heights Weather Station and hosted “Up in the Air” Thursday mornings on WKYU-FM. He’s one of Western’s most traveled scholars having set foot on every continent and dipped his body in every ocean. His “Viking Mission’ began with a trip to Norway in 1999 where he began to research their ships and their voyages. He continued in 2003 with a visit to Iceland which was originally settled and populated by Vikings. In 2004 he returned for a second visit and traveled to Greenland. Late that summer, Trapasso visited Newfoundland where the Vikings established their first village on North American soil. Mission accomplished!

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WKU Libraries and Glasgow Community celebrated the 20th anniversary of the Glasgow Campus Library on April 15, 2009. Dr. Mike Binder, Dean of University, welcomed the audience and introduced the speakers. Dr. Juanita Bayless, Glasgow Campus Director; Dr. Brian Coutts, Head of Department of Libraries; Monica Conrad, President of Glasgow Business & Professional Women’s Club; Georgia Beth Albany, Past President of Glasgow Business & Professional Women’s Club; and Kath Pennavaria, Glasgow Library Coordinator took the floor. President at the celebration were Mayor of Glasgow City, faculty and staff from the Main Library and the Glasgow Library, as well as Glasgow Campus students.

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Author Georgia Green Stamper spoke about her book in the “Kentucky Live Series” on Thursday, April 9, 2009 at Barnes & Noble.

Her writing has garnered a host of awards and literary medallions from groups such as Lincoln Memorial University’s Mountain Heritage Literary Festival, the Carnegie Center, and the Kentucky Arts Foundation. In 2008 her first book of essays You Can Go Anywhere from the Crossroads of the World was published by Wind Publications. A reviewer from the Courier Journal called It “elegant in its simplicity—as well as simply elegant.” Elisabeth Knight, reviewing it for the Daily News commented “without her deft touch with the pen and her thought provoking and decisive verbal portraits, much of what she records might be lost in another generation.”

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A native of Owen County in North Central Kentucky Georgia grew up on a tobacco farm on Eagle Creek not far from Corinth. She writes that the building of US Highway 25 in the 1920s though Corinth caused a population boom sending the towns numbers soaring to 265. After graduating from Transylvania University she taught English and theater and coached speech. She and her husband, an executive with Ashland Inc. lived in Ashland and raised three daughters.

When the last of her three daughters had graduated from college in 1999 she turned her attentions to writing. Her essays have been published in literary anthologies like New Growth (Jesse Stuart Foundation); Tobacco (Wind Publications); Daughters of the Land (Texas Tech University Press) and the Journal of Kentucky Studies.

In 2004 she began writing a bi-weekly column, Georgia on My Mind, for the Owenton News Herald. Her most recent story quite fittingly coming during “March Madness and the Sweet Sixteen Basketball Tournaments” describes the Corinth High School (student body 74) boys basketball team which won the Kentucky State Championship in April 1930 and played in the National Interscholastic Basketball Tournament in Chicago. Their coach was Ted Hornback who would later be Athletic Director at WKU.

In 2006 she became a regular commentator for NPR member station WUKY in Lexington, Kentucky which has broadcast more than 60 of her commentaries including memorable ones on the “perils of dieting” which tells how a childhood incident of making “manure pies” prepared her to do battle with Atkins, South Beach and Weight Watchers. Her five grandchildren provide fodder for other tales.

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A crowd of 80 administrators, faculty, students and community members met in Helm Library Room 100 to celebrate WKU’s 75th Anniversary of the Federal Depository Library Program. Dr. Mike Binder, Dean of University Libraries, welcomed the group and gave a brief history. Provost Dr. Barbara Burch introduced US Congressman Brett Guthrie who gave brief remarks regarding the importance of our US Government collection. Rosemary Meszaros, the Depository Librarian, thanked committee members and turned the talk over to Dr. Edward Yager from the Political Science Department. Tours of the Depository and Refreshments were offered upon the conclusion of the program.

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WKU Libraries presented Joseph Trafton, Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at WKU, who spoke on “The Dead Sea Scrolls” as part of the “Far Away Places Series” at Barnes & Noble Bookstore (1680 Campbell Lane) on the evening of March 19th, 2009.

The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in eleven caves along the northwest shore of the Dead Sea between the years 1947 and 1956. The area is 13 miles east of Jerusalem and is 1300 feet below sea level. The mostly fragmented texts, are numbered according to the cave that they came out of. They have been called the greatest manuscript discovery of modern times.

Trafton, who has a M.T.S. and Th.M. from the Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a PhD from Duke, was first introduced to the Dead Sea Scrolls during his masters work in a course on the Jewish setting of the New Testament. He continued studying about the scrolls at Duke. When his adviser moved to the Princeton Theological Seminary, Joe was invited to be part of an international team of scholars assembled to edit and translate the scrolls called the Princeton Theological Seminary Dead Sea Scrolls Project. He was assigned five fragmentary scrolls, the first of which was published in 2002. As part of his research he has traveled to Israel and visited Qumran, the archaeological site connected with the scrolls. At WKU he teaches an undergraduate course on the Dead Sea Scrolls.

In addition to this work on the “scrolls” Joe is the author of two books, The Syriac Version of the Psalms of Solomon published by the Society of Biblical Literature, and Reading Revelation: A Literary and Theological Commentary published in the “Reading the New Testament Series” by Smyth & Helwys in 2005. One reviewer called it “a balanced approach to Revelation that makes good use of contemporary scholarship.”

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On March 5th, 2009, WKU Libraries’ “Kentucky Live!” series presented “Jefferson Bass and The Body Farm Novels.” Jefferson Bass is the writing team of Dr. Bill Bass and Jon Jefferson. Dr. Bass, a world-renowned forensic anthropologist, founded the University of Tennessee’s Anthropology Research Facility—“The Body Farm”—a quarter-century ago. He is the author and coauthor of more than two hundred scientific publications, as well as a critically acclaimed memoir about his career, Death’s Acre. Dr. Bass is also a dedicated teacher, honored as National Professor of the Year by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education. Jefferson is a veteran journalist, writer, and documentary filmmaker. His writings have been published in the New York Times, Newsweek, USA Today, and Popular Science, and broadcast on National Public Radio. The coauthor of Death’s Acre, he is also the writer and producer of two highly rated National Geographic documentaries about the Body Farm.

Unfortunately Dr. Bass had to miss the presentation due to his illness. After Jon Jefferson’s talk, he signed their books for the enthusiastic audience.

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On February 19, 2009, WKU Libraries’ Far Away Places Series featured Doug McElroy , a Professor of Biology at WKU, who talked about the Galapagos Island.

His articles have appeared in the Journal of Wildlife Management, the Encyclopedia of Genetics and many others. He’s taken students to E. Africa to study African Game Species. Most recently in June of 2007 he led a combined student/alumni study abroad group to the Galapagos for a course entitled “Biology in a Social Context: Galapagos and Ecuador.” In addition to examining biodiversity “hotspots” they discussed “ecotourism, bioprospecting and the property rights of indigenous peoples.”

It’s very timely presentation since this year is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin, who became one of the island’s most celebrated visitors when he reached there on the HMS Beagle on September 15, 1835.

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