Cravens Library will close at 5:00 pm Thursday, Nov. 4, and reopen at 7:00 pm due to a cellular equipment helicopter airlift to the top of that building.
A Champion of Mammoth Cave
Max Brunswick Nahm, 1864-1958
On May 19, 1924, prominent Bowling Green banker Max B. Nahm attended a meeting of citizens interested in the creation of a national park at Mammoth Cave. Within a year, the Mammoth Cave National Park Association had been formed to raise money, lobby the U.S. Congress for enabling legislation, and negotiate purchase options from private owners of the proposed park lands. Max Nahm became the Association’s president.
A collection of Max Nahm’s papers at WKU’s Special Collections Library documents his key executive role, over the next two decades, in the creation of the park. As Association president and chairman of the Kentucky National Park Commission, Nahm was involved in all aspects of the project: assembling land; securing private, state and federal funding (which became increasingly difficult during the Depression); defending the project from public criticism; developing roads and hotels to serve tourists; managing cutthroat competition from private owners of surrounding caves; completing the controversial process of removing residents; and fulfilling all the conditions under which the National Park Service would assume responsibility for the park.
A finding aid for the Max Brunswick Nahm Collection can be downloaded here. For more information on the Nahm family, search TopScholar and KenCat.
Filed under Manuscripts & Folklife Archives
Temporary Closing of Cravens Library
Cravens Library will close at 5:00 pm Thursday, Nov. 4, and reopen at 7:00 pm due to a cellular equipment helicopter airlift to the top of that building. All pedestrian traffic will be prohibited around Cravens during that time and the street closures adjacent to the building will be extended temporarily in both directions. Helm Library will remain open during this event, but the Helm/IEB parking lot may be closed temporarily.
Lauren Cunningham wows crowd at Java City
Well-known local song-stylist, Lauren Cunningham thrilled the crowd today in Java City with her unique voice and musical arrangements. Coming next week, The Steven Baker Band on Wednesday, November 10th. Thanks to our sponsor Independence Bank.
When is a Music Program Not Just a Music Program?
- Iolanthe Program
When it is the program for Gilbert & Sullivan operatta Iolanthe performed at WKU March 29, 1927. This program is chock full of ads for Bowling Green businesses. Some ads tell us where the business was located, especially in the downtown area. It is also a record of how much support the citizens of Bowling Green have given to WKU throughout the years.
And, of course, it is a program of the performance, giving a list of the principle actors, members of the band, orchestra and chorus as well as the officers of the Strahm Music club. Quite the bang for the printing buck for six page program.
This and many other music programs are available to researchers in the Harrison-Baird Reading Room of the Kentucky Library & Museum, 9 – 4 Monday through Saturday. The entire program is available on TopScholar: http://digitalcommons.wku.edu/dlsc_ua_records/82/
Filed under Events, University Archives
WKU Libraries on the Cover of C&RL News
We’re pleased to announce that a painting by Granville Mitchell from the Kentucky African American Art Collection in the Raymond Cravens Library is featured on the front cover of the nation’s leading college and university libraries trade journal. With more than 12,000 personal and institutional subscribers and an international readership many times that number, College & Research Libraries News showcases the work of the Association of College and Research Libraries and its member institutions. Mitchell, who studied commercial art at WKU, works on paper with pen and ink, acrylic, oil, and some airbrush. In his works he seeks to capture movement, the dynamic of life.
“Main Street” is one of two Granville Mitchell paintings in our collection.
Mitchell’s art was showcased in Kentucky Live! Southern Culture At Its Best, an annual series of public talks sponsored by the WKU Libraries, now in its eighth season. He also depicted the Historic Freedom Riders in a collaborative mural honoring the life of Martin Luther King Jr. at the Kentucky Library and Museum.
This marks the third time WKU Libraries has been featured on the front cover of C&RL News.
Click here for a large version of Granville Mitchell’s Main Street.
Filed under Events, Flickr Photos, General, Latest News, People, Stuff
Memorializing the Van Meters
Martha and Jacob Van Meter
Charles J. Van Meter (1826-1913) is remembered in Bowling Green as a pioneer in the development of commerce on the Green and Barren Rivers. His generosity toward the Southern Normal School (now WKU) prompted the naming of Van Meter Hall in his honor.
Charles’s father, Jacob Van Meter, came to Bowling Green in 1818 and grew wealthy as a farmer and merchant. As a state legislator, he also lobbied for public improvements to river navigation and helped build the Bowling Green Portage Railway, a narrow-gauge railroad that carried goods from the boat landing to the center of town.
When 86-year-old Jacob Van Meter died on February 27, 1874, the funeral was planned for March 1 but was delayed for a day when, early that morning, his 82-year-old wife Martha also died. In the florid style so popular with Victorian Americans, the Bowling Green Republican mourned two of the city’s most venerated citizens. How appropriate, declared the paper, that Jacob’s soul “should have been wafted to Paradise with the first breathings of spring.” As a canny businessman, kind neighbor, model father and blameless Christian, Jacob’s character was “solid as marble and unsullied as snow. He has gone down to his grave,” continued the paper, “without stain or blemish, ripe in years and in honors.” Martha Van Meter, similarly, was “a remarkable woman, esteemed and beloved by all who knew her.” And so the tribute when on and on . . . for four long columns of the newspaper’s editorial page, as if emulating Jacob Van Meter’s lifelong motto, never give up.
The obituaries of Jacob and Martha Van Meter are part of the collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library. Click here for a finding aid. For more on Bowling Green’s Van Meter family, search TopScholar and KenCat.
Filed under Manuscripts & Folklife Archives
Kentucky Live presents Nancy Richey
Filed under Events, Flickr Photos, General, Kentucky Live, Latest News, New Stuff, People, Podcasts
Dr. Gordon Emslie speaks on the importance of research in honor of International Open Access Week
Tyranny and Democracy of Knowledge
Gordon Baylis, VP for Research, speaking at the 2nd annual
Open Access Week, Oct. 21, 2010
Dr. Baylis stated that research is essential to teaching. He then traced historical components of teaching formed by content (corpus) and the 7 skill sets of the Trivium and Quadrivium in fascinating highlights of the development of knowledge from breakthroughs of hypertext and connectivity (with LOL being the very first letters ever transmitted) to the fact that data is now stored in exabytes. He characterized the initial corpus of knowledge as that which has been balkanized and sub-balkanized over the decades, if not centuries. The amount of data we are faced with leads to a tyranny of access, as in Wikipedia. That site is openly accessible and highly democratic, but questionable in content at times, particularly during election seasons. Google indexes .04% of available content. As educators, we can focus on 4 elements of knowledge: the body of knowledge (corpus); production of knowledge; assessment; and application (how it bears on society’s issues). Peer review takes care of the assessment; beyond that we have to teach people how to assess. His conclusion paved the way for challenging questions and future conversations.
Filed under Events