by | June 10, 2010 · 6:29 am

Duncan Hines Objects on Loan to National Inventors Hall of Fame

Duncan Hines Yellow Cake Mix Box

Duncan Hines Yellow Cake Mix Box

What do containers that advertise Duncan Hines’ yellow cake mix, double-fudge brownie mix, and chocolate ice cream have in common with a “Recommended by Duncan Hines/Adventures in Good Eating” sign from 1951? Selected from the Duncan Hines Collection at the Kentucky Library & Museum, they are part of the “Inventive Eats: Incredible Food Innovations” exhibit mounted by the National Inventors Hall of Fame.From what it takes to fry an egg, have a bowl of breakfast cereal, or enjoy a bag of potato chips, innovations abound in the food world, and Inventive Eats presents the fascinating stories behind many of these food innovations.

Recommended by Duncan Hines sign

Recommended by Duncan Hines sign

Interested in knowing more about Duncan Hines?  Come visit the “Recommended by Duncan Hines” exhibit at the Kentucky Library & Museum which features photographs and postcards as well as pots and pans, barbecue tools, canned goods, china, and other objects associated with this nationally recognized food icon.  The “Inventive Eats: Incredible Food Innovations” exhibit is currently running at the National Inventors Hall of Fame in Alexandria, Virginia and will move to its sister institution in Akron, Ohio in 2011.

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by | June 9, 2010 · 2:53 pm

Kentucky Library & Museum Quilt Currently on View in Lexington

Henry Clay Presentation Quilt

Henry Clay Presentation Quilt

The Henry Clay Presentation Quilt is featured in the exhibit, “Cherished Ornaments of our House: Important Personal Artifacts of Henry Clay” at Ashland, the Henry Clay Estate. One of more than 165 quilts in the KYLM collection, this unique textile features a needlework portrait of our most famous Kentucky statesman as well as pastoral scenes done in crewelwork. The quilt is attributed to Clay’s wife, Lucretia.

Mounted to commemorate the completion of the book, “Henry Clay: The Essential American” by David and Jeanne Heidler, the exhibit includes numerous artifacts never before displayed at Ashland. The Henry Clay Quilt will be on exhibit at this historic Lexington home until July 9, 2010. Exhibit hours are 10 am to 4 pm Tuesday-Saturday and 1 pm-4 pm on Friday with tours occurring on the hour. More information.

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by | June 8, 2010 · 9:17 am

TopScholar exceeds 100,000 downloads

Though it may seem quiet in the WKU libraries now that most of the students are gone for the summer, exciting work is still going on.  As evidence, TopSCHOLAR® the University-wide, centralized digital repository dedicated to scholarly research, creative activity and other full-text learning resources that merit enduring and archival value and permanent access crossed a significant milestone.  As of June 1st, 2010, there had been 100,247 full text downloads  from the site.  There are over 3,000 items housed there.  WKU faculty, staff, and faculty-sponsored students are encouraged to publish in TopSCHOLAR®.

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by | June 4, 2010 · 1:07 pm

A Young Rebel from Breckinridge County

Bevie W. Cain, 1844-1883

Bevie W. Cain, 1844-1883

Bevie Cain was only sixteen when the Civil War broke out.  Over the next few years, however, the Breckinridge County, Kentucky schoolgirl took time from her studies and social life to express her increasingly partisan opinions about the conflict.

In a remarkable series of letters to her friend James M. Davis, Bevie warned him not to be too open about his Unionist sympathies.  “Not one word would I write to an abolitionist knowingly.  I would consider it an everlasting disgrace to myself,” warned the self-described rebel.  After the Emancipation Proclamation freed Southern slaves, Bevie asked James “how you can still be for Lincoln.”  The President’s acts as commander-in-chief drew further scorn.  “Lincoln does a great deal of mischief under cover of ‘military necessity,'” she observed.

But Bevie Cain could also turn an unsentimental eye on herself and her society.  She thought marriage a rather curious institution, often contracted for convenience above all else, and sometimes found the courtship strategies of her male friends tiresome.  In one of her more petulant moments, Bevie expected “to be a school marm, if my education is ever sufficient — if not I will live and die a happy ‘old maid’ hated by all and loving none in return.”  Clearly, Bevie was a rebel in other matters besides the Civil War.

A finding aid for Bevie Cain’s letters, available at WKU’s Special Collections Library, can be downloaded here.

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by | May 26, 2010 · 8:46 am

Settling Schweizer: Scenes of an Immigrant Community

Oswald Kummer and Fido

Oswald Kummer sits in a haystack with the faithful family dog, Fido.

Schweizer, located in southwest Simpson County, Kentucky, was chiefly settled by German immigrants in the mid-1890s. Christian and Friederike Kummer emigrated from Germany to Minnesota in 1882, and permanently settled in Schweizer in 1889. The families of the area were particularly close, bound by language, religion, and customs.

Oswald Kummer, the son of Christian and Friederike, was two years old when his family immigrated to the United States. Only nine when his family settled in Schweizer, Oswald remained there until his death. In 1906, Oswald, then 24, acquired a camera and unofficially became the community chronicler. His glass plate negatives became part of the Kentucky Library & Museum collection in 1989.

An exhibit of 87 photographs and artifacts from the Kummer collection will be on display in the Kentucky Library and Museum from May 26 through August 31, 2010.

Photo Album

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by | · 7:10 am

The Southern Educator

Before there was WKU, there was the Southern Normal. A school that evolved from the Glasgow Normal, which moved to Bowling Green and changed hands several times before the Cherry brothers took over. The Southern Normal existed between 1893 and 1906 when it split into WKU and the Bowling Green Business University.

The Southern Educator serves as a journal of pedagogy, alumni magazine, advertisement for the Southern Normal, course listings and gives an overall look into the daily life of the Southern Normal.  Published more or less quarterly from 1897 to 1906, the newspaper is being digitized and made available online to researchers.  A name index available at: http://www.wku.edu/Library/dlsc/ua/bgbu-a.htm.

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by | May 25, 2010 · 5:37 am

KHQS Annual Quilt Show Now on View

Community Bookshelf Wall Hanging

Community Bookshelf Wall Hanging

The 2010 Kentucky Heritage Society’s annual quilt show is now on display in the Kentucky Museum & Library’s third floor gallery. Quilts inspired by books is the theme of this year’s show. Quilters have stitched a wide variety of subjects including the popular tween book “Twilight”, the classic children’s story “Where the Wild Things Are” and the “Book of Genesis” from the Bible. The exhibit is on display through June 6th.

Photo album from exhibit.

More information …

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by | May 14, 2010 · 12:07 pm

Finding Family in City and Telephone Directories

The Kentucky Library and Museum (KLM) holdings include many city and telephone directories. There are similarities between the two and if used skillfully, they can reveal a great deal of personal and family history information such as occupational data, relationships, home ownership and locations. They also can help with identifying persons with the same names or initials. City directories in particular list items such as asylums, cemeteries, fraternal organizations, newspapers, railroads and schools. They also have city maps with defined boundaries and can, through the years, include the changes of street names. Even in the addenda, there is pertinent information that was “too late for insertion” or and in some select directories, there were lists of deaths in an epidemic year. City directories were often compiled through door-to-door surveys and so had the benefit of verified information from the householder. The library has city directories from Bowling Green starting in the late 1880s and telephone directories starting in the 1920s.
February, 1958 Telephone Directory

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by | · 10:32 am

Mail Call !

Bert J. "Jay" Borrone, WKU Class of 1941

Bert J. “Jay” Borrone, WKU Class of 1941

In the extensive collections of war letters in WKU’s Special Collections Library, no expression is more common than the joy of a soldier who has received mail from home.  In April 1943, Corporal B. J. “Jay” Borrone, stationed in North Africa, wrote to Dorthie Hall, his former classmate at Western Kentucky State College, and vividly described the whirlwind of anticipation, exhilaration, and sometimes disappointment, known as “mail call”:

“The truck driver is pestered all day to go into regimental headquarters for the mail even tho all know that it is not finished being sorted until 4 p.m. . . .  Usually it is about 7 before they get back and no lynching mob in all its fury ever went after a victim like we go after that driver. . . . [F]inally someone grabs the bunch of letters and starts yelling off names.”  Those lucky enough to receive mail, Borrone continued, “go off into a corner and get that beatific look for hours while the other poor guys that didn’t get anything pretend (very poor pretending by the way) that they didn’t expect any anyhow.  Pretty soon the score is tabulated on just how many letter[s] each fellow got and the winner comes in for a lot of kidding.  Then the discarded envelopes are looked at and sniffed at for evidences of female traits and more kidding follows.”

It was 3 a.m. as Borrone wrote these words, but even at such a late hour and so far from home, he was looking forward to “the promise of a grand sunrise and a perfect day” — and, no doubt, the next mail call.

A finding aid for the Dorthie A. Hall collection of World War II letters can be downloaded here.

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by | May 13, 2010 · 4:38 pm

Selden Society Publications

Through our new HeinOnline digital collection, patrons of WKU Libraries now have access to the Selden Society Publications.  Founded in 1887, the Selden Society is one of the premier publishers of research on early English law. The collection also includes publications from the Ames Foundation, a leading provider of early English historical legal documents. Many of the resources found in the Selden Society Publications cannot be found anywhere in print.

From on campus, you can follow the links above or connect through our database page. Go to the HeinOnline collection, then click on the Selden Society Publications link. To access this resource from off campus, don’t forget to log into our proxy server.

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