WKU Libraries Blog

The Greyhound Bus Company is celebrating its 100th anniversary with a “Cross Country Centennial Tour” that offers a tour of some vintage buses like the Hupmobile (1914) and Silversides (1947), along with an interactive museum, in different cities / states across America.  For more information about the Greyhound Centennial Anniversary Tour or the Greyhound Bus Company, please visit www.greyhound.com.

Greyhound began in 1914 in a small mining town of Hibbing, Minnesota by two Swedish immigrants named Andrew “Bus Andy” Anderson and Carl Eric Wickman.  Detailed information about the Greyhound history, company, timelines, and founders can be located at www.greyhoundhistory.com.

Library Special Collections is now featuring a display with Greyhound Bus memorabilia from Kentucky in recognition of Greyhound’s 100th anniversary celebration.  The display contains books about Greyhound and also the periodical, Backfire, by the Southeastern Greyhound Bus Lines that can be found at Kentucky Library Research Collections.  Other interesting items contained in the display are bus schedules, tickets, toy buses, and photographs of vintage buses or old stations.

WKU Libraries got the word out about the benefits and importance of Open Access during the annual week of awareness. “It was our goal to inform students, especially, what Open Access means and why freedom of scholarly information is so critical in this day,” said Deana Groves, Department Head of Technical Services in WKU Libraries. A committee of Library faculty and staff organized a display to educate students, along with other faculty and staff, about WKU’s open access platform, TopSCHOLAR. Large posters illustrated how far WKU’s scholarly research reaches across the globe. Faculty member Laura DeLancey handed out cookies with the universal Open Access symbol of the open lock to patrons in the Commons along with free waters that showed short facts about Open Access in an effort to further educate the public.

Associate Dean of Special Collections UK and Co-Director of the Wendell H. Ford Public Policy Research Center, Deirdre A. Scaggs spoke for the WKU Libraries’ “Kentucky Live!” speaker series at Barnes & Noble, Bowling Green, KY.

Associate Dean of Special Collections UK and Co-Director of the Wendell H. Ford Public Policy Research Center, Deirdre A. Scaggs discussed her book written with co-author Andrew W. McGraw titled The Historic Kentucky Kitchen: Traditional Recipes for Today’s Cook. The discussion was part of the WKU Libraries’ “Kentucky Live!” speaker series partnered with Barnes & Noble Booksellers in Bowling Green, KY, where the event took place on the evening of November 13, 2014.

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Mammoth Cave was and continues to be one of the outstanding scenic attractions in America. It was Kentucky’s first tourist attraction and visitors have been coming since 1816. Many guests stayed in rustic cabins or at the Mammoth Cave Hotel, which was at one time, considered a fine hotel. It was destroyed by fire on December 9, 1916. A newspaper article from the Louisville Times reported:  “Mammoth Cave Hotel Destroyed By Fire, Historic Structure Caught Fire From an Unknown Source Early Saturday Morning. The original Mammoth Cave Hotel, a part of which was built in 1811, was entirely destroyed by fire, of unknown origin, which started at three o’clock this morning, consuming the hotel in two hours. All the registers of the hotel and cave, which contained perhaps the greatest collection in existence of the autograph signatures of famous men and women of this country and other parts of the world, were destroyed. The registers of the Mammoth Cave and the Mammoth Cave Hotel, which in part were more than a century old, contained the names of such famous personages as the late King Edward of England, Jenny Lind, Edwin Booth, the Grand Duke Alexis of Russia, and Don Pedro of Brazil.”

The Hotel and cabins were also the background for many photographs. James Davis Rodes is shown posed on the infamous and also well photographed donkey. In our photographic collections, a donkey shows up many times with many different people. James was the son of Judge John Barret Rodes and Elizabeth Hines Rodes. Sadly, he died at an early age in 1914. (Note that some of the Mammoth Cave Hotel registers were not destroyed and are in the Manuscripts Division of the Department of Special Collections.)

To access finding aids for these Mammoth Cave collections, a part of the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives holdings of WKU’s Department of Library Special Collections search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat or email spcol@wku.edu for more information about photographic holdings.