Monthly Archives: October 2015

Lyons and Epperson honored for inaugural WKU Libraries Open Access Hall of Fame

Dr. Scott Lyons and Ann Epperson are the inaugural inductees into the WKU Libraries Open Access Hall of Fame. “We want to acknowledge both faculty and students who have enhanced the works in TopSCHOLAR®, the Research and Creative Activity Database of WKU,” said Deana Groves, Department Head of Library Technical Services at WKU. “Dr. Lyons’ and Ann Epperson’s scholarly achievements have drawn thousands of researchers from around the world with downloads through this quality open access platform.”

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Dr. Scott Lyons, director of WKU School of Kinesiology, Recreation, & Sport, has exemplified the spirit of Open Access through his founding and editorship of the International Journal of Exercise Science (IJES), which debuted on TopSCHOLAR® in 2007. With over 345,000 downloads, this quarterly journal is dedicated to the dissemination of undergraduate and graduate research in the areas of Exercise Science, Exercise Physiology, Human Performance, Kinesiology, and related disciplines. It benefits not only WKU student researchers by providing a peer-reviewed journal, but is discoverable globally through the TopSCHOLAR® platform. Dr. Lyons completed his Ph.D. in Exercise Physiology from the University of Alabama in 2003 and joined the faculty of WKU in 2004.epperson2

Ann Epperson is being honored in the Student Research category for her thesis Internet GIS as a Historic Place-Making Tool for Mammoth Cave National Park. Her advisors were Dr. Katie Algeo, Dr. Jun Yan, Dr. Fred Siewers and Dr. Kevin Cary. This project laid the groundwork for an Internet-delivered Public Participation Geographic Information System to facilitate exploration and discovery of the past communities of the Mammoth Cave Park area. Epperson’s thesis was completed in fulfillment of requirements for a Master of Science degree in Geography and Geology in December 2010. It has been downloaded nearly 15,000 times since it was posted to TopSCHOLAR®.

The inaugural Hall of Fame inductees will be honored at a reception on Thursday, October 22 in Helm Library, Room 100 at 2pm. Everyone is invited to attend. For more information about TopSCHOLAR® go to http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/

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Filed under Events, Latest News, New Stuff, People

Fortress Bowling Green

When Union troops arrived in Bowling Green, Kentucky in February, 1862 after a 5-month-long Confederate occupation, they found a town stripped of its timber, livestock and foodstuffs, its railroad depot set afire, its Barren River bridges destroyed, its secessionist sympathizers in flight, and its Northern sympathizers relieved but still apprehensive at the sight of another occupying force.

Bowling Green defenses, 1863

Bowling Green defenses, 1863

Despite the destruction, the troops also found a daunting array of Confederate fortifications.  Bowling Green, at the confluence of road, rail and river routes into the South, was considered a prize by both sides, and the defenses constructed during their occupation had emboldened the Confederates.  We “are too well fixed for the Yankees to come here,” Tennessee volunteer James McWhirter boasted to his sister.  “If they ever come we will give them a genteel whipping.”

The Confederates, nevertheless, had evacuated without a major clash ever taking place, a stroke of luck that left the Union forces relieved.  “I don’t think it would pay them to attack this place from the looks of the forts around here,” Erasmus Shull wrote his aunt.  Lieutenant Colonel George Jouett was similarly impressed, calling Bowling Green a “city of fortifications.”  The College Hill fort was “an almost unapproachable fortress,” he wrote his mother, and Baker Hill is “quite as strong and perfect.”  Ohio infantryman George Jarvis notified his family of “a glorious but bloodless victory” that “gives us possession of one of the strongholds of this state.”

Accounts of the war came to describe fortified Bowling Green as the “Gibraltar of Kentucky.”  Two of the above letters, however, confirm that this was a contemporary characterization, even if the correspondents were a little unsure of their spelling.  George Jouett found Bowling Green a “Gibralter which could not be taken by assault,” and George Jarvis agreed that “in fact it is the Gibralter of Kentucky.”  Only lack of supplies, illness, and setbacks elsewhere (losses at Mill Springs and Fort Henry, and pressure at Fort Donelson) had convinced the Confederates to withdraw before a serious test of its defenses.

These letters about Bowling Green’s Civil War fortifications are part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives collections of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections.  Click on the links to access finding aids, and click here to browse a list of our Civil War collections.  For more, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.

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Filed under Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

The Queen with Six Fingers: Anne Boleyn in Fact, Fiction and Fantasy

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Susan Bordo, Otis A. Singletary Professor of Humanities, Dept. of Gender & Women’s Studies, University of Kentucky, spoke about her most recent book The Queen with Six Fingers: Anne Boleyn in Fact, Fiction and Fantasy in the Far Away Places event on Wednesday, October 21, at Barnes & Noble in Bowling Green, KY.

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Filed under Events, Far Away Places, General, Latest News, New Stuff, Stuff, Uncategorized

The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia

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John Hardin, Professor of History at WKU, talked about his recently published work The Kentucky African American Encyclopedia in the WKU Libraries-organized Kentucky Live! event on the evening of October 8 at the Barnes & Noble Bookstore in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

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Filed under Events, General, Kentucky Live, Latest News, Stuff, Uncategorized