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Paul E. Fallon, an architect from Massachusetts who specializes in healthcare design, gave a presentation on his architectural design experience in Haiti, an earthquake-prone country in Central America, to an audience mostly of WKU students of architecture at Barnes & Noble on February 19, 2015. The presentation was part of the WKU Libraries’ “Far Away Places” speaker series.

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Courtesy of WKU Archives.

The career of Dr. Lowell H. Harrison, faculty emeritus, Department of History, WKU, is being celebrated with an exhibit which opened on Wednesday, February 3, 2015, in the Harrison-Baird Reading Room of Library Special Collections at the Kentucky Building. Utilizing artifacts, photographs, and manuscripts, the case highlights his national reputation as a scholar, educator, WKU faculty member, and public speaker.
On Monday, February 9th at 3:30 p.m., a portrait of Dr. Harrison will be unveiled which will hang permanently in the Harrison-Baird Reading Room. Artist Nancy Disher Baird, faculty emeritus, Department of Library Special Collections, will make brief remarks. The public is invited to celebrate with us.
The case exhibit will close on February 11, 2015.

Mary Ellen Miller, an English professor of WKU, talked about the life and literary talent of her late husband, Jim Wayne Miller, a renowned writer and pioneer of Appalachian Studies and a distinguished and revered teacher that she and Morris Allen Grubbs have written about in the book Every Leaf a Mirror: A Jim Wayne Miller Reader. The event took place in the Kentucky Museum on the evening of February 12, 2015.

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Glasgow High School was recognized on Monday, December 15 for the first School Library Grant sponsored by the Friends of WKU Libraries. WKU Libraries is offering this new grant to middle or high schools in the region with several different purposes, including improving collections or technology, for professional development funds, to improve students’ research skills, and to offer reading enrichment opportunities.

Kelly Van Zant is the library media specialist at Glasgow High School who wrote the winning application. Library Advisory Council Chair Pat Porter Miller, Library Advisory Council member Joann Jones, Glasgow High Principal Keith Hale, and WKU Libraries Marketing Coordinator Jennifer Wilson surprised Zant with the winning award on Monday by bringing in a giant check to make the announcement.

“The selection committee was impressed with the scope of the proposal which will affect so many students for countless years to come,” said Jones, selection committee member.

According to Zant, the library staff and teachers collaborated to develop a list of current nonfiction titles that will “specifically target the biography section of the library collection based on the needs of AP students; however, all students and teachers will benefit from the additional titles which will be accessible to all in the library.”

WKU is celebrating the International Year of Ecuador during the 2014-2015 academic year. All types of events including film presentations, lectures, exhibits, and foodways demonstrations have been planned across campus. Interestingly in researching for an exhibit titled “Ecuador in Library Special Collections” at the Kentucky Building, curators found several letters written by the U.S. consul to Ecuador and his wife, Edward Rumsey Wing and Louise (Green) Wing. They both write back to her Kentucky parents telling them about their exciting adventures, longing for home, intellectual pursuits, family affairs, and adjustment to a new culture. Wing served in Quito from 1870 to 1874.

In late-September 1870, Rumsey (as he was called) wrote to his in-laws about an earthquake that he and Louise experienced in Quito.  With the skill of a poet, Wing described the event:  “It was ten o’clock and Louise had gone to sleep on a sofa over a ‘Cornhill Magazine’ whilst I was lying on the bed reading a law book and deeply interested, which I presume kept me from fully appreciating the situation at the first shiver of the earth I could still hear voices in the street and and then a heavy heel went clanging by over the resonating sidewalk.  The white light of the moonlight enwrapped the houses and the hills and silvery kiss of our windows.  All at once there was a sudden silence that I now remember first attracted my attention, & the very night seemed to hold its breath as if waiting, listening, terror-stricken at the coming shock.  The next moment it struck me that the bed curtains were stirred as if by a strong wind.    Still I did not think of the dreaded ‘temblor’ until in a flash I heard groans, screams and prayers issuing from every direction – our own servants rushing across the courtyard with loud outcries for ‘El Senor Ministre’ – and the bed trembled as if in the grasp of some fierce giant.”

“I recall then the queer jingle of the windows,” Wing continued, “and their latches, & springing up felt the room with its ‘six foot’ walls reeling like a beaten ship at sea.  Glancing from the window at the moonlit street I could see many people on their knees & many prostrate on their faces. praying most fervently, whilst loud above all other sounds. I could distinctly catch the cry of ‘El Temblor, el Temblor.’”

After a contemplative night, Wing summarized his reaction to the event:  “The most disagreeable thing in connection with an earthquake like a battle is really ‘after it is over.’  Then one begins to realize what an infinitesimal atom he is, and not only himself but all men and all nations and all the ambitions of life and all the absorbing interests which we so untiringly & eagerly pursue, – in the face of these tremendous convulsions.  These terrible forces of nature, these awful agencies, so bitterly dreaded and so little understood, & of their supreme ruler and controller…Why should helpless man be thus made  the unwilling sport of misfortune – or of superior power & wisdom & goodness?”

These ruminations continue to arise after each natural disaster.  Some things do not change, even in this rapidly evolving world.

The Kentucky Library Research Collections recently added a piece of ephemera which reflects the historic diversity of tobacco customers. Louisville, Kentucky, in particular, was settled by significant numbers of immigrants from northern and western Europe in the decades prior to the Civil War. Five brothers from Canton Berne, Switzerland immigrated to Louisville as boys and learned the trade of manufacturing plug tobacco by working in local factories. In 1866, they began a small factory known as the Five Brothers Tobacco works. As the company grew to become the largest tobacco factory in Louisville and achieved the rank of fifth in importance in the United States, it was renamed J. Finzer and Brothers. By 1887, it employed up to twelve traveling salesmen, who were responsible for making its trade in the Eastern states greater than any other tobacco factory in the West.
Previously the Kentucky Library Research Collections included a February 1886 issue of Retail Tobacconist, J. Finzer and Brothers’ trade paper. Now we are pleased to add an advertising card printed in English, German and Italian marketing Wild Rose Cut Plug Tobacco. This acquisition demonstrates our commitment to building an International collection which reflects the diverse communities that have long made up Kentucky.