Books and materials have been packed, carted across the street to Gary Ransdell Hall and are being unpacked as WKU Libraries Faculty and Staff move in to the new ERC. They have hundreds of boxes to go through as they prepare for the Spring semester.
SGA Records
SGA Elections 1968
The Student Advisory Council of 1956 was the first incarnation of WKU’s Student Government Association. A constitution was written in 1963 and a student council was active in February and of March 1965. In 1966 things finally got underway with a newly written constitution and approval of the Kelly Thompson administration. Since then the group has been active on campus taking on the issues of the day from discrimination to tuition hikes, ice machines to visitation policies.
University Archives holds the existing records of the SGA and these are being digitized. The constitution and amendments; meeting minutes 1969; 1976-1979; 1986-1990; 1994-1999; 2002-2003 and 2005-2007 ; legislation and documents are now available for researchers on TopScholar. These records are also available to researchers in the Kentucky Building’s Harrison-Baird Reading Room, Monday – Saturday 9 – 4.
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Picturing Kentucky and Beyond
Come learn how to research images you can use in your classrooms, publications and work using the KenCat online system and the resources of the Kentucky Library & Museum. Presented by Nancy Richey and Suellyn Lathrop
Date: Jan. 27, 2010
Time: 1:00 – 2:00
Place: VPAL, 2nd Floor Cravens Library
To register: call 745-4793 or email suellyn.lathrop@wku.edu
Filed under Events, Latest News
“Je suis aviateur americain”
World War II blood chit
I am an American aviator. My plane is destroyed. I cannot speak your language. I am an enemy of the Japanese. Be so kind as to protect me, treat me and take me to the closest allied military office. The government of my country will reward you.
They were called “escape flags” or “blood chits.” Made of silk, about the size of a handkerchief, they reproduced the message above in several languages including French, Thai, Korean and Japanese. During World War II, pilots shot down in foreign territory used the flags to identify themselves and obtain help from the local population. If the pilot failed to survive, the serial number on the flag could offer a clue as to his fate.
WKU’s Special Collections Library holds two such escape flags in the collection of Warren County native and U. S. Navy veteran Cecil Murray Elrod (1923-2002). The first is pictured at left, while the second shows the flag of Nationalist China. Issued to pilots in the China-Burma-India theatre, it included a request in Chinese to shelter and protect the bearer, a “foreign person” who has “come to China to help in the war effort.”
A finding aid for the Cecil Murray Elrod Collection can be downloaded here.
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Filed under Manuscripts & Folklife Archives
Library Closing for Holidays
The Helm & Cravens Library will be closed for the Holidays from December 17th until January 2nd. Happy Holidays!
New Land Grant is a Curiosity
Kentucky Land Grant
Land Grant 425, the newest addition to the Kentucky Library & Museum’s Land Grant Collection is a bit of a curiosity. Dating from 1826, the piece looks like many of the other land grants in appearance. For the most part these documents were large printed paper forms with blanks for pertitent information. Many times a wax or embossed seal was attached near the bottom left margin. Land grants were issued for military service or to pioneers willing to settle on theretofore unclaimed land.
Land Grant 425 was issued by Governor Joseph Desha (1768-1842) in 1826 to the Trustees of Augusta College, a Methodist institution located in Bracken County, Kentucky. It was certainly not unusual for educational institutions to receive tracts of land to underwrite their operating costs, but this particular grant included five hundred acres in Sumner County, Tennessee. Why was the state of Kentucky allowed to issue a grant for land in another state’s territory?
This curiosity is acutally one of nearly 4600 grants that Kentucky issued for land in Tennessee between 1820 and 1926. The land, as delineated in Land Grant 425, was located “South of Walker’s line.” This disputed land was part of a large sliver of land at Kentucky’s southern border that was inaccurately surveyed in 1779-80 by Thomas Walker. The dispute was inconclusively settled with a new survey in 1859, but political wrangling over the matter continued for several generations. Because of this boundary dispute, some people located in Cumberland County, Kentucky in the 1810 U.S. census are found in the Tenneessee counties of Jackson or Overton ten years later.
A finding aid and photograph of the land grant can be found here.
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WKU Libraries Celebrates Holiday and Awards Achievers
At noon on December 16, 2010 in Mariah’s Restaurant, Bowling Green, KY, the WKU Libraries celebrated the Holiday and gave annual awards to faculty, staff, students, and a team that excelled in the past year. The Margie Helm Awards are given in memory of Margie Helm, who used to be the Director of WKU’s library services in the 1950s.
This year’s faculty award goes to Christy Spurlock from the Library Special Collections, and the staff award goes to Eric Fisher, Library Facilities Coordinator. The team award goes to the “Far Away Places and Kentucky Live” planning group consisting of Peggy Wright, Brian Coutts, Haiwang Yuan, Bryan Carson, Daniel Peach, and Jason Hatman.
The student awards were given to Cassandra Matthews from the Dean’s Office, Tea Lacic from Library Technical Services, Courtney Hatley from Library Special Collections, and Arthur Petersen from the Library Public Services.
Besides good food, party goers also entertained themselves with intriguing games. The party has been organized by Amy Slowik, Amanda Hardin, Kath Pennavaria, Kathy Fushee, and Brent Fisk.
Photo Album (More are coming)
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And to All a Good Night
Kentucky Library & Museum Christmas collections
WKU’s Special Collections Library has a wealth of material documenting the celebration of Christmas by generations of Kentuckians. Pictured above is a 1901 letter to Santa from young Elizabeth Coombs; a Depression-era greeting card; a card sent from post-World War II Holland to the Grise family of Bowling Green; a postcard greeting to Captain Edward Hines; a 1928 card from “Lola” to her friend Lila; and World War I-era greetings to Ray Howell from his brother.
Our Manuscripts & Folklife Archives include interviews with Kentuckians reminiscing about their childhood Christmas traditions, as well as many letters from soldiers stationed in war zones as they remember their loved ones over the holidays.
To find out more about Christmas in our collections, search TopScholar and KenCat.
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Chester Coleman Travelstead Papers Now Available
Chester Coleman Travelstead, 1911-2006
Over her 40-year teaching career at WKU, Nelle Gooch Travelstead (1888-1974) was known for her energy in the classroom, her civic activism, and her ferocious devotion to her two boys, Will (1909-1981) and Chester (1911-2006). The papers of Chester Coleman Travelstead, now available at WKU’s Special Collections Library, document the lives of this indomitable single mother and her sons.
Comprising more than 4,500 items, the collection includes Chester Travelstead’s personal and professional correspondence and that of his mother, brother, and wife Marita. Travelstead edited his mother’s papers, wrote a reminiscence of his World War II naval service aboard the USS Comet, and kept a journal of Marita’s battle with Alzheimer’s Disease. The collection also documents Chester Travelstead’s distinguished career as an educator. A WKU alumnus, Travelstead received his doctorate from the University of Kentucky in 1950, and for the next 27 years served in faculty and administrative positions at universities in Georgia, South Carolina, and New Mexico. He received four honorary degrees, and in 2004 the University of New Mexico named its College of Education administration building after him.
Prior to his appointment in New Mexico, Travelstead had been ousted from his position as Dean of Education at the University of South Carolina. The trouble arose in 1955, after he spoke to a summer session on the topic “Today’s Decisions for Tomorrow’s Schools.” Delivered in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Brown v. Board of Education, the speech urged the timely integration of the nation’s public schools. Travelstead’s speech and the resulting letter of dismissal are part of the collection, but so too are the accolades he later earned for his forward-looking views. During its bicentennial in 2001, the University of South Carolina honored Dean Travelstead as a man of “uncommon courage in uncommon times.”
A finding aid for the Chester Coleman Travelstead Papers can be downloaded here.
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Library Finals Hours
Helm-Cravens Library will be open until 2am again this finals week from Sunday Dec 12 through Thursday Dec 16. As in past semesters Western’s Student Government Association is helping to underwrite this service to our students. The Student Technology Center on the second floor of the Helm Library will close at its usual time, but all other areas of the library will be open until 2am. Java City will be providing refreshments for students needing a study break.
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