Folk Studies Professor Ann Ferrell discussed “Burley: Kentucky Tobacco in a New Century” in our Kentucky Live Series on Thursday, February 13 at Barnes & Noble Bookstore.
Category Archives: Latest News
“Burley: Kentucky Tobacco in a New Century”
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WKU’s research and creative database TopSCHOLAR® hits one million downloads
WKU Libraries’ TopSCHOLAR® research and creative activity database has reached one million full-text article downloads since its launch in May 2007.
“We are very pleased to learn we’ve reached and exceeded the millionth mark,” said Connie Foster, Dean of WKU Libraries. “This milestone signifies the value of WKU’s intellectual capital and global reach.”
The millionth paper, accessed on October 21, 2013, was a masters theses titled “Internet GIS as a Historic Place-Making Tool for Mammoth Cave National Park” by Ann E. Epperson, published December 12, 2010.
TopSCHOLAR showcases accomplishments from all disciplines. Mary Bennett, Director of WKU School of Nursing, uses TopSCHOLAR® for ease of availability. “It’s a great place to post copies of my publications so they can be easily searched and accessed by people from all over the world,” says Bennett. “Often graduate students and international researchers face challenges obtaining full-text access to journals… my research has been translated for use in Spanish language countries, in Sweden and in Belgium.”
John Cipolla, Associate Professor in Music, and Bruce Kessler, Professor and Department Head of Mathematics, both agree that TopSCHOLAR® is a great way to share research activities. “The monthly reports not only help me track readership, but help me stay connected with the interest of my colleagues,” says Cipolla.
In addition to faculty, graduate students have the opportunity to post their works on TopSCHOLAR® . Professor Aaron Hughey, Department of Counseling and Student Affairs, sees the digital repository as a great option to reach an audience that would have not been possible otherwise. “It also serves as a motivational tool for students and helps to insure high quality,” says Hughey. “Knowing their work will be available around the world is a powerful incentive to produce the best research available.”
For more information on TopSCHOLAR®, go to digitalcommons.wku.edu or look for TopSCHOLAR® at wku.edu/library.
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David Bell – Never Come Back
David Bell
WKU’s bestselling author David Bell, an Associate Professor of English, makes a return visit to WKU Libraries Kentucky Live! Southern Culture At Its Best series on Thursday, November 14th at 7:00 p.m. at Barnes & Noble Bookstore, 1680 Campbell Lane. He’ll be talking about the “key elements” in writing a good mystery novel and how they differ from regular fiction and reading from his newest novel. A book signing will follow.
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Samuel Marder, Violinist, Holocaust Survivor, Author to Speak at WKU Libraries Far Away Places series
Samuel Marder, violin virtuoso
WKU Libraries and WKU’s Departments of Music, Sociology and Philosophy & Religion will host presentations Oct. 17-18 by Samuel Marder, professional violinist, author and Holocaust survivor. Marder will discuss his new book Devils Among Angels: A Journey From Paradise And Hell To Life at 7 p.m. Oct. 17 at Barnes & Noble Booksellers, 1680 Campbell Lane. Admission is free, open to the public, and a “swipeable” event for WKU students.
Marder was born in Czernowitz (Chernivtsi) in Romania where he lived with his sister and parents. He began studying the violin at age 6 in 1936. Three years later the Nazis invaded Poland and Romania joined the Axis. At the age of 10 he was living in a concentration camp in Transnistria, Ukraine where he was sharing a tiny room with 50 others, only 12 of whom would survive the ordeal. His father died of typhoid fever.
He, his sister and his mother were liberated after three and a half years’ incarceration eventually making their way to West Germany and then to New York to join his mother’s brother. After graduating from the Manhattan School of Music he became concertmaster and Assistant Conductor of the Leonard Bernstein Gala Orchestra and has since played with many orchestras and been a soloist at Carnegie Hall and Alice Tully Hall. He’s toured though Europe, South America, Israel and Korea and has been playing in the Radio City Christmas Spectacular orchestra since 1968. His arrangement of Canon in D Major by Johan Pachelbel for violin and piano is widely performed around the world.
Samuel Marder, present day
Devils Among Angels is a collection of short stories and poems inspired by memories of Marder’s childhood years before, during and after World War II and the Holocaust. He uses prose and poetry in both fiction and non-fiction to reflect on good and evil in the past and present.
Bryan Carson reviewed his book for the Sunday, October 13, 2013 Daily News.
Far Away Places event flyer
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Marc Murphy
Marc Murphy, Editorial Cartoonist for the Courier-Journal of Louisville, KY
Marc Murphy is a native of Ashland, Kentucky where he grew up in the Appalachian steel and coal country. His father was a native of Prince Edward island, Canada while his mother’s family were of Slovenian heritage. His father was a TV and radio personality and his mother an accordion player. They met while both were performing at a TV station in Charleston, W.V.
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Banned Books Week
Banned Books Week display in the
Commons at Cravens
Banned Books Week is an annual event promoted by the American Library Association (ALA) celebrating the freedom to read. WKU Libraries celebrates 2013 Banned Books Week by encouraging patrons to “Jump on the Banned Wagon!” and read banned or challenged books.
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SOKY Reads “community one read”
Partners of the Southern Kentucky Book Fest featured author Michael Morris’ novel “Man in the Blue Moon” as this year’s SOKY Reads “community one read” novel. Morris interviewed with local radio and television stations and led a group discussion in a Creative Writing class on WKU’s campus. He provided a presentation at the Warren County Public Library Thursday night at 6 pm.
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Michael Cairo
The Gulf: The Bush Presidencies and the Middle East
by Michael Cairo
Transylvania University political scientist Michael Cairo is the opening speaker in this year’s Far Away Places series. He’ll be speaking on Thursday, September 19, 2013 at 7:00 p.m. at Barnes & Noble Bookstore (1680 Campbell Lane) about his new book The Gulf: The Bush Presidencies and the Middle East published recently by the University Press of Kentucky and about recent events in the Middle East. A book signing will follow.
Michael Cairo
Cairo is a native of Clifton Park near Saratoga, New York. Growing up he had ambitions to save the world but shifted these to focus on a career in International Relations. After an MA and PhD in Foreign Affairs from the University of Virginia, he’s taught political science at Virginia Commonwealth University, Southern Illinois University, the University of Kentucky and Georgetown College. In 2010 he joined the faculty of Transylvania University as an Associate Professor.
His interest in the Middle East stems from his interest in building understanding across cultures and he has visited Israel and Palestine most recently in July 2012 and May 2013. His newest project is a second book focusing on U.S.- Israeli Relations.
Far Away Places Event Flyer
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New Faculty Orientation & Information Fair
Faculty Orientation Agenda 2013
The faculty and staff of University Libraries participated in this year’s 2013 New Faculty Orientation on Friday, August 16. Jack Montgomery, John Gottfried, and Jennifer Wilson answered questions at the lunch time Information Fair.
(From Left to Right) John Gottfried, Jennifer Wilson, and Jack Montgomery at the Information Fair.
John Gottfried and Jack Montgomery answering questions from new faculty members.
The afternoon presentation included a welcome from Dean Connie Foster and then presentations on reference services, LibGuides and databases from John 
Gottfried, catalogs and TopScholar from Deana Groves and Research Instruction from Bryan Carson. Jack Montgomery explained collection development and our desire to partner with teaching faculty. He also introduced our new Patron Driven Acquisition program which will launch this fall. A collection of selected resources will be added to our TOPCAT online catalog and become part of our permanent collection the second time they are selected by patrons. Katie King introduced the libraries’ social media (Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Blog and our newest Pinterest). The latter features pages on 
programs and recent library acquisitions. Brian Coutts talked about this year’s Literary Outreach programs including the Faraway Places and Kentucky Live series, the Kentucky Writer’s Conference, the Southern Kentucky Bookfest, One Book One Community reads program and Faraway Flix, a new series of foreign film nights. He also discussed STACKMAP our new newest technical application which allows patrons to click on MAPIT in the public catalog to determine exact locations of circulating materials. Timothy Mullin talked about Library Specials Collections. The New faculty received a copy of the libraries’ Centennial History.
Link to the New Faculty Orientation Powerpoint:
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Charles Smith recently returned from a conference in Bournemouth, England, where he was an invited speaker at the ‘Unremitting Passion for the Beauty and Mystery of the Natural World—Alfred Russel Wallace Centenary’ event held on 7 June at the University of Bournemouth. The sponsoring organizations were the Linnean Society of London, the Society for the History of Natural History, and the University of Bournemouth. Dr. Smith spoke on the subject ‘Wallace on Natural Selection: What Did He Really Have in Mind?’ The following day he and other attendees were bused out to the site of Wallace’s grave, and were entertained by a nature walk nearby.
Dr. Smith speaking at the conference
Dinner after the conference for invited speakers.
Wallace’s gravesite, with marker consisting of a petrified tree trunk.
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