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Well-known actor, author, producer, and director, Henry Winkler will headline the 15th annual Southern Kentucky Book Fest scheduled for Saturday, April 20, 2013. Best known for his portrayal of “The Fonz” for 10 seasons on Happy Days (1974-1984), Winkler is one of the most recognized actors in the world. In 2003, he began writing a series of children’s novels with his partner Lin Oliver entitled, Hank Zipzer: The World’s Greatest Under-Achiever. Inspired by Winkler’s struggle throughout his education due to his learning challenges, the books have appeared on several bestseller lists including The New York Times and The Los Angeles Times. In 2011, Winkler published I Never Met an Idiot on the River, a collection of anecdotes and heartfelt observations he gathered while fly fishing in Montana. Earlier this year, he released the first installment of a new children’s Ghost Buddy series.

“We couldn’t be happier to have the talented Henry Winkler be a part of our upcoming SOKY Book Fest,” said Kristie Lowry, Literary Outreach Coordinator. “From his long running TV series and cinema exposure to his highly successful children’s book series, Winkler will attract a large fan base from a wide range of ages.”

Bestselling children’s author Obert Skye will headline Children’s Day on Friday, April 19. Best known for the Leven Thumps and Pillagy series, Skye is also the author of the comic novels The Creature from My Closet. Other children and youth authors attending include Amy Ignatow with The Popularity Papers series and Jarrett Krosoczka, author of the Lunch Lady series. Krosoczka will also lead a writing workshop on the afternoon of Book Fest for children in upper elementary and middle school grades.

Mary McDonough, the actress best known for her role as Erin Walton from The Waltons, will be in attendance with her book Lessons from the Mountain, What I Learned from Erin Walton. Mary is a public speaker and workshop leader who focuses on personal change, creating a balanced life, and returning to a sense of self. McDonough will give a presentation on body image during a breakfast on Saturday, April 20.

More than 125 authors for adults and children will be in attendance at the 2013 SOKY Book Fest, one of the largest, most successful book festivals in the state. All Book Fest events, including the Kentucky Writers Conference, will take place at the Knicely Conference Center in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Friday’s Kentucky Writers Conference will appeal to new and experienced writers, educators, and high school and college students. At the conference, a dozen authors attending the Book Fest will offer workshops on various writing topics from 9am to 3:30pm. Children’s Day will also be on Friday, April 19 from 9 am to 2 pm and is a day devoted to children in kindergarten through middle school, teachers, and librarians. The main Book Fest event with all participating authors will be from 9 am to 3 pm on Saturday. All events are free and open to the public except for the breakfast with Mary McDonough and Friday night’s “Meet the Authors” reception.

SOKY Book Fest is a partnership project of WKU Libraries, Warren County Public Library, and Barnes and Noble Booksellers. For more information, visit the website at sokybookfest.org or contact Book Fest organizer Kristie Lowry at WKU Libraries at (270) 745-4502 or kristie.lowry@wku.edu.

This month’s encore presentation in our Kentucky Live! series, taking place in Morgantown Public Library, Kentucky on October 25, 2012, focused on the history of neighboring Butler County published in the Images of America series in September by Arcadia Press. The speakers were Roger Givens and Nancy Richey, co-authors of the book in the series.

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WKU Libraries featured Taryn Rice from its Special Collections Library in its monthly “We’ve Been Everywhere” program in Helm Library room 100 on the morning of October 24, 2012. Taryn talked about her visit to the historic sites of royal palaces and towers in Britain in light of its history.

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Dr. Patrick Pranke was our speaker for Far Away Places with Strange Sounding Names Series on October 18, 2012 at Barnes & Noble Booksellers, Bowling Green, KY. He spoke about “Paths to Liberation in Burmese Buddhism.”

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The Manuscripts & Folklife Archives division of the WKU Special Collections Library recently made its inaugural entry to the Kentucky Oral History Commission’s (KOHC) Pass the Word project; the first of more than 500 collections containing thousands of individual interviews that the library intends to contribute to the project.  The first entry, Donald A. Beisswenger’s folk studies project titled “White Gospel Music in Logan County, Kentucky”, includes five interviews with Jeff and Gwen McKinney and Chester Whitescarver, detailing their memories of “singing schools” in and around Logan County.  The schools usually lasted ten days and were most often sponsored by and held in churches in the rural south, including Kentucky, and culminated in day long gospel singing events, sermons, and dinner-on-the-grounds.  Amateur singing groups often resulted from the schools, and participated in competitions at the community, state and national level; however, the typical result was the personal satisfaction of learning to read music and sing during church services.  People of all ages participated in the singing schools which were usually held in the fall after the harvest and served as both an opportunity for entertainmnet as well as instruction in the basics of reading music and voice.

“Older people such as my parents told me how everybody used to go to singing schools, anxious to go.  It was like that when I was growing up; no entertainment at home.  There was usually a singing school somewhere about every month when I was young.”  Chester Whitescarver

Since 1976, the HOHC has supported the creation of oral history recordings throughout Kentucky.  In an effort to facilitate greater access to Kentucky’s ever expanding oral history colections, the Commission published The Guide to Kentucky Oral History in 1991.  The Guide, which identified 25,000 interviews held at 41 repositories across the Commonwealth, became a searchable online database in 2001.  The latest effort by KOHC to enhance public access to Kentucky’s oral histories has been made possible with the generous support of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Kentucky Historical Foundation.  “Pass the Word”, http://passtheword.ky.gov/, is an interactive, searchable oral history resource containing information about oral history collections and highlights projects which have grown out of these collections, such as books, documentaions, and school programs.

Whether researching a specific topic for an academic project of researching your family genealogy, Pass the Word, with its collection level and item level search ability, will be a valuable resource.  Other recent WKU additions to the data base include the Robert Penn Warren Oral History Collecton and the African American Heritage in Bowling Green and Warren County project;  upcoming entries will include the Kentucky River Project and the Downtown Henderson Project.

To see finding aids for other oral history collections at WKU click here.

St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral, Bardstown, Kentucky.

An interesting 1827 letter written by Benedict Joseph Flaget to then U.S. Secretary of State Henry Clay was recently discovered while processing the papers of Francis J. Whitaker, a monk who lived at St. Maur’s Priory (South Union, Kentucky) from 1954 to 1988.  Flaget was the first Roman Catholic bishop of Bardstown; his authority stretched from Michigan south to Tennessee and from the Allegheny Mountains to the Mississippi River.  Among his numerous responsibilities, Flaget planned and oversaw construction of the St. Joseph Proto-Cathedral in Bardstown.  Actually, the 1827 letter relates to that building’s construction.

In the letter Flaget asks Clay to use his power to waive the duty fees on a number of items being sent from Europe to adorn the new cathedral, since they “are not and cannot be objects of commerce.”  The items in question were chiefly gifts of the Prince of Naples and consisted of five “large candlesticks the whole of brass sumptously gilt, & executed by the Artists in his kingdom” as well as “fine paintings and many other vestments & ornaments for divine service.”  Flaget appealed to Clay’s friendship and his local attachments, pleading:  “For God’s sake, give me another proof of your generous friendship, & in favour of a town where I have been told, you have partly trained up.”  The bishop ends the epistle by stating his tender feelings for the United States:  “My zeal for the country which I have freely and deliberately adopted is unrelenting; & thanks be to God the good effects of it are sensibly felt not only in Kentucky, but in all the Western country.”

This fascinating letter’s route to St. Maur’s makes it even more unusual.  In letters to a number of Catholic historians, Brother Whitaker noted that the missive had been used as a bookmark in a tome which had been donated to St. Maur’s library.  Several scholars who corresponded with Whitaker mentioned that Flaget had several instances of “difficulty with the government in reference to exemption from duty on imports of a religious and education nature.”

To see a finding aid for the Whitaker collection click here.  Click TopSCHOLAR to search for other church and religious records housed in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives division of WKU’s Special Collections Library.

New York Times bestselling author Joe Drape spoke to a group at Barnes & Noble on Tuesday, September 25 about his book Soldiers First: Duty, Honor, Country, and Football at West Point. Drape offered insight to the challenges of being cadet at West Point as well as a member of the football team. The book spotlights five of the Army football players, including former Bowling Green High gridiron star and West Point quarterback Trent Steelman. Trent’s parents attended the program, which was made possible by the Southern Kentucky Book Fest partnership.

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A family visiting the original Mammoth Cave Hotel in 1895.

Many researchers over the years have asked to examine the Mammoth Cave Hotel registers housed in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives division of WKU’s Special Collections Library.  The folio-sized, bound volumes contain tangible evidence of the popularity of Kentucky’s biggest tourist destination:  Mammoth Cave.  These original registers capture the signatures of visitors to the attraction from 1858-1866.  The original Mammoth Cave Hotel was built in 1835 and housed visitors from around the world, including Great Britain, France, Germany, India, Peru, and Canada.  Within the United States, visitors came from every state.  The registers detail the visitor’s name, arrival date, residence, and destination.  The majority of the visitors list their destination as “the cave,” but a few unique comments include: “hole in the ground”, “I don’t know”, “all parts of the U.S.A.”, “Dixie”, or “heaven.”  Occasionally, the hotel clerk would comment on the weather for that day, or provide additional information about particular groups at the hotel.  Some interesting groups that passed through the cave and stayed at the hotel included the Associated Press, Orpheus Members, and Union soldiers during the Civil War.  One brave wag actually signed in as Abraham Lincoln on March 12, 1863.  The 1835 hotel was replaced in 1925; the current Mammoth Cave Hotel was erected in 1965 and the 1925-era structure was razed in 1979 after a vociferous effort was made to preserve the venerable building.

A small poem found in the register, memorializes the cave’s dark beauty, stating that “caverns dig as deep as Hell…and from his boat old Charon kicks And builds a bridge on river Styx.”

A finding aid to this collection can be found by clicking here.  To see other matericals related to Mammoth Cave or the Mammoth Cave National Park, search TopSCHOLAR or KenCat.

WKU Libraries Interim Dean Connie Foster (front and center) holds the Certificate of Commendation surrounded by members of the WKU Library Advisory Council. Front row L to R: Pat Porter Miller, Nancy English, Nancy Baird, Connie Foster, Laura Eason, and Christine Sowders; Middle row L to R: Nancy Priest, Howard Margolis, John Fitts, Pam Kielty, Joann Jones; Third row L to R: Carl Dobson, Cindy Gaffney, Kristie Lowry, Gretchen Niva.

On Monday, September 24, Tara Griffith presented Lisa Rice, Director of Warren County Public Libraries, Connie Foster, Interim Dean of WKU Libraries, and Kristie Lowry, WKU Libraries Literary Outreach Coordinator, with a Certificate of Commendation for the Southern Kentucky Book Fest for an event that empowers school librarians as knowledgeable educators.

This formal commendation from the American  Association of School Librarians, a division of the American Library Association, was offered by Griffith from the Kentucky School Media Association and librarian at McNeil Elementary School.  “The Book Fest has an impact on the lives of children throughout the region and provides a shared responsibility among educators to promote the love of learning,” says Connie Foster, Interim Dean of WKU Libraries.

The Southern Kentucky Book Fest, a two-day community event, is one of the largest in the Commonwealth and represents a key partnership by WKU Libraries, Warren County Public Library and Barnes and Noble Booksellers for promoting reading, writing, and lifelong learning. The Kentucky Writers Conference is a project of the Book Fest partners and provides free workshops as part of the overall event. The next Book Fest is April 19-20, 2013.