Author Archives: Sandy McAllister

Ruth Hines Temple

The life and career of Ruth Hines Temple, long-time Head of the Art Department at Western Kentucky University, is documented in a new website created and maintained by the Kentucky Library & Museum.  Born in Warren County in 1899, Temple lived to be 101.  At an early age, she exhibited a penchant for art.  After graduation from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, she taught for one year at Leitchfield, Kentucky.  Afterwards, she worked in her father’s store, the Busy Bee at 136 Main Street in Bowling Green, and did freelance graphic work. 

After her father died in 1929, Temple and her mother operated the family store for five years prior to selling it as the Great Depression deepened.  With money from the sale, Ruth completed her Master’s degree at Peabody College in Nashville.  She also spent a summer at the Chicago Academy of Fine Art and traveled throughout the American South on a fellowship from Peabody.

Don’t let the clouds keep you away from our Noon concert today at Java City.  St. Louis based singer/songwriter Kevin Renick will entertain with his moving, authentic style.  He turned his personal experience of job loss into a song that became the title track for the movie “Up in the Air.”

TopSCHOLAR, WKU Libraries’ research and creative activity database, ranks in the top 5% of universities worldwide according to CSIC, a public research body in Spain. Rankings are based on size, visibility and rich files. TopSCHOLAR is ranked 185th out of 3026 among US institutions. According to Library Technical Services Department head, Connie Foster, the ranking indicates the “TopSCHOLAR is not only digitally competitive with other United States universities but with universities from all over the world.

Enjoy the Show

       The Kentucky Library & Museum is currently displaying materials that document the history of Bowling Green theater in an exhibit titled “Enjoy the Show,” which ends February 14, 2011.   Nineteenth century items are rare, but the exhibit does include an March 1833 hand scribed broadside advertising the Bowling Green Thespian Society’s production of the melodrama, “Luke the Labourer; or, The Lost Son.”  Tickets to this amateur production cost twenty-five cents.  Other items from the 1800s include illustrations of Bowling Green’s opera house, programs, an elaborate paper puppet stage, as well as photographs of costumed actors.

       Theater in Bowling Green blossomed in 1932 with the incorporation of the Bowling Green Players Guild. Items on display from this early amateur group include playbills, programs, the organization’s constitution and a membership card, as well as sketches for set designs and costumes.  Items from later theater groups, such as the Alley Theater, Public Theater of Kentucky, Fountain Square Players and Bowling Green Community Players are included.

      The exhibit emphasizes dramatic productions at Western Kentucky University.  One case features memorabilia from the Western Players and another focuses on longtime WKU theater professor, playwright, and director, Russell H. Miller (1905-1968).  Two costumes from the WKU Department of Theater and Dance highlight the exhibit.  The more elaborate ensemble is a shepherdess costume from “Bastein and Bastienne,” a Mozart opera performed last spring. The other is a simple, but symbolic, green dress used in “The House of Bernarda Alba” in 2009.  The Kentucky Library & Museum thanks Shura Pollatsek, Department of Theater and Dance, for assisting with the costumes.

Though it may seem quiet in the WKU libraries now that most of the students are gone for the summer, exciting work is still going on.  As evidence, TopSCHOLAR® the University-wide, centralized digital repository dedicated to scholarly research, creative activity and other full-text learning resources that merit enduring and archival value and permanent access crossed a significant milestone.  As of June 1st, 2010, there had been 100,247 full text downloads  from the site.  There are over 3,000 items housed there.  WKU faculty, staff, and faculty-sponsored students are encouraged to publish in TopSCHOLAR®.