Join us for the second annual celebration of Open Access Week, an international week that recognizes the value of research with the theme: “Learn. Share. Advance.” Open Access is the principle that research should be accessible online, for free, immediately after publication and at any time. TopSCHOLAR® offers such a platform for publications and other content. WKU Libraries invites everyone to attend the key event at 2:00 Thursday, Oct. 21, in Helm 100 and to hear Dr. Gordon Baylis speak about the value of research. Reception follows.
WKU duo “Sixteen” entertains at Java City yesterday
Java City rang today with the alt-rock sounds of Sixteen. Sixteen is a duo consisting of WKU sophomores Wyatt Dunning and Justin Swindle from Simpson County.
Filed under Events
New Website Documents Work of Ruth Hines Temple

Ruth Hines Temple
The life and career of Ruth Hines Temple, long-time Head of the Art Department at Western Kentucky University, is documented in a new website created and maintained by the Kentucky Library & Museum. Born in Warren County in 1899, Temple lived to be 101. At an early age, she exhibited a penchant for art. After graduation from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, she taught for one year at Leitchfield, Kentucky. Afterwards, she worked in her father’s store, the Busy Bee at 136 Main Street in Bowling Green, and did freelance graphic work.
After her father died in 1929, Temple and her mother operated the family store for five years prior to selling it as the Great Depression deepened. With money from the sale, Ruth completed her Master’s degree at Peabody College in Nashville. She also spent a summer at the Chicago Academy of Fine Art and traveled throughout the American South on a fellowship from Peabody.
Filed under Events
Kevin Renick impresses crowd at Java City
Singer/songwriter Kevin Renick for St. Louis, best known for his hit song “Up in the Air” thrilled the crowd today at Java City with his mellow and thoughtful music.
Filed under Events, Java City Concert
An Ohio Soldier in Bowling Green

Lewis Gray Bowker, 1840-1863
WKU’s Special Collections Library continues to acquire Civil War manuscripts that relate to Bowling Green. Among recent additions are five letters written by Lewis Gray Bowker, a wagon maker who enlisted with the 111th Ohio Volunteer Infantry.
After seeing action near Covington, Kentucky, the 111th arrived in Bowling Green in mid-October, 1862 to protect the railroad line to Nashville. In a letter to his father, Bowker’s thoughts focused on home and what he was missing, including the birth of a child. “I hear from several sources and reliable ones too that we have a nice little girl,” he wrote. “She may be three years old before I see her again but I cannot think otherwise than that this terrible and unnatural rebellion will be closed before spring.”
A month later, Bowker wrote his wife Emily in a noticeably shakier hand. In hospital suffering from headache and fever, he encouraged her to keep replying to his letters even though “the Rebbles have … tore up the track between here and Louisville,” making mail delivery uncertain.
Like so many of his fellow soldiers who came through Bowling Green, Bowker died not of wounds but of disease in January, 1863, and a comrade sent his possessions home to Ohio. He wrote apologetically that the cold weather had made it difficult to wash and dress Bowker’s body properly, but gave assurances that his death had been peaceful.
A finding aid for Lewis Gray Bowker’s letters can be downloaded here. For more Civil War materials, search TopScholar and KenCat.
Filed under Manuscripts & Folklife Archives
Far Away Places presents John Hale
Filed under Events, Far Away Places, Flickr Photos, General, Java City Concert, Kentucky Live, Latest News, New Stuff, People, Stuff
Kentucky Live! presents Chef Albert Schmid
More photos on Flickr : Podcast | Audio File
Click through for more on Chef Albert Schmid.
Filed under Events, Far Away Places, Flickr Photos, General, Kentucky Live, Latest News, New Stuff, People, Podcasts, Stuff
Kevin Renick at Java City today
Don’t let the clouds keep you away from our Noon concert today at Java City. St. Louis based singer/songwriter Kevin Renick will entertain with his moving, authentic style. He turned his personal experience of job loss into a song that became the title track for the movie “Up in the Air.”
Filed under Events
An Illinois Soldier in Western Kentucky

William J. Green’s Union letterhead
In January 1862, Private William J. Green, encamped with an Illinois regiment near Paducah, Kentucky, wrote letters to his brothers, 16-year-old Samuel and 10-year-old John. He and the “boys in my Mess” had enjoyed the “Turkeys Pies and Bread” and the “Butter and Cake” his family had sent and were pleasantly settled, notwithstanding the rain and mud, in plank-floored tents with stoves.
Although none of the local civilians “claimed to be Secesh,” William knew there were many secessionists in the area. As a farmer’s son, he even had some favorable comments about their crops and orchards. William told Samuel of his 11-day march through McCracken, Graves and Calloway Counties, and of the Confederate sympathizers he encountered near the town of Murray. The people there were stubbornly convinced, he wrote, that “we will never Conquer the South” and, lacking newspapers to tell them otherwise, “say that the Rebels have thrashed us every battle.”
Although William and his brother Samuel, who also served, made it through the war, they would both die within two months of each other in 1867.
Private William J. Green’s letters are part of the collections of WKU’s Special Collections Library. Click here to download a finding aid. For more Civil War collections, search TopScholar and KenCat.
Filed under Manuscripts & Folklife Archives
American Association of Petroleum Geologists
WKU alum William Drost has generously donated to WKU Libraries perpetual use of the databases of the American Association of Petroleum Geologists (AAPG). Users can search the following subcollections:
AAPG Bulletin | |
AAPG Special Volumes | |
Canada Group | |
Eastern USA | |
Gulf Coast Group (USA) | |
Journal of Petroleum Geology | |
Journal of Sedimentary Research | |
Midcontinent Group (USA) | |
Pacific & Asia Group | |
Rocky Mountain Group (USA) | |
Search and Discovery | |
South & Central America | |
Southwestern Group (USA) | |
The Society for Organic Petrology | |
West Coast Group (USA) |
The collection can be accessed directly or through our databases page. If off campus, be sure to log in through our databases page.
Thank you, William Drost, for making this resource available to the WKU community.
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Filed under Acquisitions, Latest News