On August 22, 2012, WKU Libraries kicked off the new semester at Helm 100. The kick-off featured our guest speaker Jeff Peden, “The Great Ideas! Guy,” who gave a presentation on how to create a great team to deliver the service customers want. The kick-off concluded with a luncheon. A group photo was made during the recess by the WKU photographer.
Comments Off on WKU Libraries Kicked Off New Semester
Filed under Past Events
As a part of our SOKY Reads! community wide program we are pleased to announce a FREE and fabulous writing workshop with award-winning author, Lee Martin.
Martin will lead participants in a two-hour workshop that will focus on retrieving family memories, crafting them into scenes, and utilizing other techniques common to writing memoir. Martin captivates and inspires writers with his hands-on approach to presenting!
The session will be held Saturday, August 25 from 10 a.m. to 12 p.m. at the Warren County Public Library Main Branch located as 1225 State Street. No registration is neccesary and the workshop is open to the public.
Comments Off on Award-Winning Author, Lee Martin, to present FREE Writing Workshop!
Filed under Uncategorized
On Thursday, August 16, 2012, WKU Libraries’ faculty members participated in WKU’s New Faculty Orientation Program taking place in the Western Room of the Kentucky Building. The program was an annual event sponsored by the Provost’s Office.
Interim Dean Connie Foster addressed the audience of newly hired faculty members that included one of our own—Lisa Miller, Visiting Assistant Professor and Humanities & Social Sciences Librarian. In her address, she highlighted WKU’s institutional repository TopSCHOLAR. Head of Library Public Services Brian Coutts presided over the orientation session and gave the overview presentation of the Libraries. He was followed by WKU Libraries’ faculty members Jack Montgomery, Professor, Collection Services Coordinator, who introduced the liaison/subject librarian system; John Goffried, Assistant Professor, Coordinator of Reference Services/ Business Librarian, who introduced WKU Libraries’ website; Bryan Carson, Professor, Special Assistant to the Dean for Grants & Projects/ Coordinator of Periodical & Instructional Services, who gave a presentation on the Libraries’ literacy and research instruction services; Roxanne Spencer, Associate Professor, Coordinator of Educational Resources Center presented the Libraries’ branches; and Sue Lynn McDaniel, Associate Professor, Special Collections Librarian, familiarized the audience with the Special Collections Library.
WKU Libraries also showcased a booth along with other WKU divisions in the Kentucky Building. Nancy Richey, Assistant Professor, Image Librarian, and Jack Montgomery spent their time receiving visits from the new faculty.
Photos were taken by WKU Libraries’ Marketing Coordinator Jennifer Wilson and Professor and Special Assistant to the Dean for Web & Emerging Technologies Haiwang Yuan.
Comments Off on WKU Libraries Participated in WKU New Faculty Orientation
Filed under Past Events
Federal Hill, Bardstown, Kentucky
When John Rowan (1773-1843) married Ann Lytle (1774-1849), Ann’s father, Revolutionary War veteran William Lytle, made a gift to the couple of a 1,300-acre tract near Bardstown, Kentucky. The Rowan estate at Federal Hill (as it became known) is now famous for inspiring Stephen Foster’s ballad, “My Old Kentucky Home.”
Foster’s song conjures up a bucolic setting enlivened by the Rowans’ nine children, but late in July, 1833 a dark shadow passed over Federal Hill. Since the previous year, cholera had been stalking the residents of Kentucky, and when it finally reached Bardstown it tore through the Rowan family like a scythe. Within a matter of days, John Rowan lost a daughter, Mary Jane, her husband William and their daughter, also named Mary Jane; a son, William Lytle Rowan and his wife, Eliza Boyce Rowan; another son, Atkinson Hill Rowan, just back from a diplomatic post in Spain; a sister, Elizabeth Rowan Kelly, and her husband William, who happened to be visiting; and 26 enslaved plantation workers. Sixteen years later, the disease also claimed Rowan’s widow, Ann.
The Rowans distinguished themselves in law, politics and business, but their correspondence sometimes hinted at the trauma the family had suffered. Orphaned children and the estates of suddenly departed relatives required attention from the survivors. In particular, the losses seemed to haunt John Rowan’s daughter, Anne Rowan Buchanan. “I am very feeble,” she wrote her sister Alice from Covington. “I am so much affraid of cholera that my apetite has failed me.” In the summer of 1848, Ann’s husband, Dr. Joseph Rodes Buchanan, became alarmed at the lack of letters from Alice’s family and feared the worst. “What can it mean — can it be that there is sickness among you which you wish to conceal from us?” he wrote. “Mrs. B. naturally dreads that such may be the case. . . . Let me beg of you to write immediately and say if you are all well or what is the matter.” Perhaps the tragedy in his wife’s family contributed to Dr. Buchanan’s belief in spiritualism, mesmerism and communicating with the dead, described in letters written while pursuing his medical career in New York.
A finding aid for the Rowan Family Papers, available in the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Special Collections Library, can be downloaded by clicking here. For several other collections relating to the Rowan family and Federal Hill, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.
Comments Off on A Family’s Sorrow
Filed under Manuscripts & Folklife Archives
If you haven’t already picked up your copy of this year’s SOKY Reads! book, In the Sanctuary of Outcasts by Neil White, there are still some available. Stop by the Warren County Public Library-Main Branch and ask for a copy, or go to Bowling Green Technical College’s main campus on Thursday, August 16 from 2 to 2:30p.m. They will be giving books away in the Building F Conference Room.
If you have any questions about the SOKY Reads! program, contact Kristie Lowry at kristie.lowry@wku.edu or 270-745-4502. You can also access the program guide at sokybookfest.org.
Comments Off on Free Book Giveaway for SOKY Reads!
Filed under Events
After the storm July 20th caused massive damage and leaking efforts are underway to replace the roof to Cravens Library.
. . . .
Comments Off on Repairs to Cravens Library
Filed under Uncategorized
Reformed Church Minute Book
The Reformed Church/First Christian Church in Danville, Kentucky began meeting in 1843, under the leadership of Reverend Curtis Smith, who presided over the congregation from 1843-1847. During the 1840s, the church had an average enrollment of 125 members. The church’s first brick structure was completed in 1847. Unfortunately, this building was destroyed on February 22, 1860 in the infamous Washington’s Birthday fire. This tragedy almost decimated the town, demolishing 64 buildings and incurring more than $300,000 in damages.
Manuscripts Small Collection 477, found in the Special Collections Library, documents an organization in crisis mode. The collection contains the minute book of the Building Committee of the Reformed Church [Christian] in Danville, Kentucky. The minutes detail the transactions, contributions, and expenses incurred in rebuilding the church after the 1860 fire, planning to erect a new Church edifice as speedily as possible.” To see a finding aid to this collection click here. Use TopSCHOLAR to search for other church records in the Manuscripts Collection.
Construction began on the new church building in 1860, located at 4th and Walnut Street. This structure would not be complete until 1865, after the Civil War. The new building was dedicated in 1867. Dr. Samuel Ayers was the main minister from the 1860s up until 1891. The 1865 was razed after a new building was erected in 1914 at 462 West Main Street. Interestingly, that building burned in 1965.
Comments Off on Burned Out
Filed under Uncategorized
Comments Off on WKU Libraries Receives Grant for “America’s Music” Program!
Filed under Uncategorized
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Information: Monday, February 6, 2012
Contact: Jennifer Wilson, 745.6977 or jennifer.wilson1@wku.edu
Friday, February 24 will mark the grand opening for the Richardson Quilt Gallery–WKU’s latest permanent exhibition. The gallery will include two dozen quilts and historic textile samples collected by Elizabeth Richardson and donated by her daughter June McGuyer. “The acquisition of the Richardson Collection enhances the stature of the Museum as a leading Kentucky institution for the study of quilts and quilt making,” said Sandy Staebell, Museum Collections Curator.
Assembled over two decades, the Elizabeth Richardson Collection is a case study of American quilt collecting from the late 1930s through the late 1950s. In addition to the Richardson Collection, the gallery will also feature sixteen Star pattern quilts that were selected from other donors of the Kentucky Museum Quilt Collection. Dedicated to Richardson’s memory, this permanent gallery will offer a rotating selection of quilts and historic textiles.
Vicki Fitch, Executive Director for the Bowling Green Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, says there is a large following for the quilt industry. “Supporters will drive many miles to view a new collection of quilts. It’s their passion,” said Fitch “We are very pleased that Bowling Green can now offer the Richardson Quilt Gallery as an attraction to the state.”
The grand opening will open with a Chamber Ribbon Cutting on Friday, February 24 at 2 pm. Anyone in the community is welcome to attend this event. For more information regarding the quilt gallery, go to wku.edu/museum.
Comments Off on Grand Opening for New Quilt Gallery at Kentucky Museum
Filed under Uncategorized
Homemade collage with thoughts on evolution, John Scopes scrapbook
It was a lawsuit to test the constitutionality of Tennessee’s Butler Act, a 1925 statute making it a misdemeanor for teachers in state-supported schools “to teach any theory that denies the Story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals.” But when State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes caught the satirical eye of anti-fundamentalist editor H. L. Mencken, he came up with a catchier name: the Scopes “Monkey Trial.”
The defendant was John Scopes, a Dayton, Tennessee high school coach, substitute biology teacher and Paducah, Kentucky native. The attorney “dream teams” included Clarence Darrow for the defense and William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution. After 12 days of testimony, in July 1925 a Dayton court upheld the law and convicted Scopes of violating its provisions. Although the conviction was later overturned on a technicality, the Butler Act was not repealed until 1967.
Part of a scrapbook kept by John Scopes and his wife Mildred containing material relating to the Scopes Trial has been recently donated to the Manuscripts & Folklife Archives section of WKU’s Special Collections Library. Included in its pages are letters from international divorce lawyer Dudley Field Malone offering his services as co-counsel, and from Clarence and Ruby Darrow commenting on press reaction to the trial in the South.
Much of the material documents the years after the trial during which Scopes, who left teaching for a career as a geologist, found himself a reluctant celebrity. When Inherit the Wind, a movie based on the trial, was released in 1960, however, he appeared at its premiere in Dayton and at the accompanying “Scopes Trial Day” festivities. Other correspondence relates to his 1967 memoir, Center of the Storm. Also included are hand-crafted anti-evolution religious tracts and letters from both friends and strangers offering thoughts and reflections on the “Monkey Trial.”
Click here to download a finding aid for the John T. Scopes Collection. For more of our collections, search TopSCHOLAR and KenCat.
Comments Off on The Scopes Monkey Trial
Filed under Manuscripts & Folklife Archives
