Library Hours for Finals & Christmas Break

Fri., Dec. 14 & Sat., Dec. 15: 8:00 am - 10:00 pm; Sun., Dec. 16 - Wed., Dec. 19: 8:00 am - 2:00 am; Thurs., Dec. 20 & Fri., Dec. 21: 8:00 am - 4:45 pm; Sat., Dec. 22 - Tues., Jan. 1: Closed. Wed., Jan. 2 - Fri., Jan. 4: 8:00 am-4:45 pm; Sat., Jan. 5 & Sun., Jan. 6: Closed.

New Zine Collection

We now have a cataloged collection of zines that can be browsed by title, shelved on the main floor between the newspapers and the browsing collection. Like browsing books, they can be checked out for a month. We decided to create this collection as an example of alternative DIY publishing. Many of the zines were gifts from the San Francisco Public Library and Barnard College's zine collection.

Though our collection focus will be on gender, diversity, contemporary protest movements, memoir, and Minnesota authors and subjects, there is quite a mix. Check it out! Or see our guide to zines.

Special hat tip to our cataloging and collections management staff for the hard work of making these zines discoverable.

Heitzeg Collection

Heitzeg Collection, 3rd Floor, Library

 Come check out our Heitzeg Collection located on the 3rd floor near our music scores.We are continuing to add new scores and ecoscores as they are made available to us. The collection is a gift from the Emmy Award-winning musician and 1982 Gustavus graduate, Steve Heitzeg. He is best known for his music written in celebration of the natural world. He has amassed a large body of works that address social and ecological issues with vision and compassion.

 An advocate for the “peaceful coexistence of all species through music”, Heitzeg has written compositions for orchestra, chorus, chamber ensemble, ballet and PBS films. His music has been performed by leading orchestras and ensembles.

 An environmentalist, Steve Heitzeg has been writing ecoscores, which are intimate works with inventive musical syntax that seek to honor nature and promote peace, for over a decade.Two of those works include Peace March for Paul and Sheila Wellstone (composed in the shape of a peace sign) and American Symphony (Unfinished)  (ten chords that honor famous American peace activists, superimposed on an unfinished American flag). He also constructs and includes naturally-found instruments in his compositions to symbolize the interconnectedness of humans with nature.

 For more information see Heitzeg's website http://www.steveheitzeg.com/bio.html

Access from Off-Campus

Make sure your record is active by using "My Library Account" from the library website. If you are unable to gain access you will need your patron record updated. Email library@gustavus.edu. We will be able to assist you if you find yourself itching to do research while on break! Happy Thanksgiving!

Model of the Swedish Warship Vasa of 1628 on display

There is now a miniature representation (1:50 scale) of the Vasa built from scratch by Clayton Johnson from Albert Lea, MN on display in the library.  As Clayton made many trips to Sweden conducting research at the Vasa Museum, this model is the most accurate replica of the original.  

The Vasa was one of the large warships built for King Gustav II Adolf (King Gustavus Adolphus). It took over two years to build with an unplanned addition of a second gun deck upon the King’s orders.  It sank on its maiden voyage on August 10^th 1628. When the ship left the shelter of the inner harbor of Stockholm, it approached the island of Beckholmen where it was struck by a powerful gust of wind.  The ship capsized and sank after a voyage of only 1300 meters (.8 mile). The Vasa carried a crew of 200, about 50 drowned.  

In 1961, this ship was salvaged with a largely intact hull and is now housed in the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. 

We are thankful to Clayton Johnson for sharing his model temporarily with us here at Gustavus.   

To learn more about this model visit:

https://sites.google.com/site/clayton707/swedishwarshipwasa

To learn more about the Vasa visit:

http://www.vasamuseet.se/en/The-Ship/

Stellar students!

Congratulations to Josh Syzpulski (AV), Libby Larson (Archives), and Molly Schroeder (Processing/Stacks) for being chosen as Star Students for fall semester!

Star Students are library student employees who have demonstrated superior performance in their departments. The library depends heavily on student workers and wishes to recognize those that go above and beyond the call of duty.

A big round of applause for Josh, Libby & Molly!

Changes on the first floor

Looking for a comfy place to study? Try the first floor of the library!  We have taken out some of the study carrels and replaced them with comfy furniture.  There is also more room for group studying at the tables or if you’re somebody who likes to spread your stuff out then this is a place for you!

Elections at Gustavus

Students are often passionate about political causes and especially so during presidential election years.  In the modern era, as evidenced by results of a student preference survey in the most recent issue of the Gustavian Weekly, Gustavus students prefer more liberal candidates.  In decades and centuries past, Gusties favored the more conservative contenders.  Although the following link will take you to images of electioneering at Gustavus from years past, these few images document only a sampling of political activity and student election activism.  To learn more about former elections at Gustavus, please visit the College and Lutheran Church Archives.

Images: Election Images

Spring Courses @ the Library

Once again, we're offering two courses in the spring, ones small enough to fit into even a fairly busy schedule.


NDL 301: Information Fluency is a .5 credit discussion-based and hands-on course that gives students a chance to dig into the tools for the literature of their major field and discuss the social and ethical dimensions of research. It meets weekly on Tuesday afternoons - but if that schedule doesn't work, we can talk about setting up an alternate time by arrangement. This course was designed for students who are planning to go on to graduate school, but it's also open to anyone interested in learning more about research. Last year's syllabus can be found here.

NDL 201: Reading Workshop is a pass/fail .25 credit course that meets Wednesday afternoons for just the first half of the spring term. We're going to read and discuss a novel by Sherman Alexie, Reservation Blues, and students will also have a chance to read and review a book of their own choosing. Basically, this course is about exploring your personal reading tastes, developing your own reading list, and having a chance to read for fun. Last year's syllabus is here.


Questions about these courses? Contact Barbara Fister - fister @ gustavus.edu.

photo courtesy of juggzy malone

Because My Heart

has always belonged in a library, come find a book
 you just may fall in love with. 

Happy Halloween 2012

The library student organization is hosting a costume contest which ends today! Stop by with your costume, allow us to take a picture, and win something cool! Enjoy beautiful fall day and read up on the history of Halloween!

Open Access Books

Most of the efforts to make research open access has focused on journal articles, but there are a number of interesting efforts afoot to make scholarly books free to all, too. Here are some links.

• Digital Culture Books from the University of Michigan publishes intriguing books about aspects of our digital culture.
• OAPEN is a European effort to publish open access academic books in the humanities and social sciences.
• Unglue It is a project to crowd-fund the cost of open access. One out of print book has already been made available, thanks to small donations.
• The Directory of Open Access Books is a new resource, meant to complement the long-established Directory of Open Access Journals.

We have selected some of these free-to-all books and added them to our catalog, because they seemed like ones that would be of particular interest to our community.

photo courtesy of mueller martin

Introducing our Institutional Repository

The College and Lutheran Church Archives staff have been busy, not just organizing and preserving our history, but making much of it digitally available. You'll find all kinds of things online - from historic photos to civil war-era letters to posters from World War I to photos submitted for the annual Center for International and Cultural Education photo contest. There's a lot of neat stuff there!

But one new collection is just getting started. It's our institutional repository, where faculty can make their published articles and other scholarship available to all, providing they have retained the rights to do so. In some cases, authors can deposit a finished copy of their published articles; in others the publisher will only allow a manuscript copy to be made public, either before or after review. Some publishers assume all the rights and don't allow authors to post any version of their articles online.

If faculty are unsure of a journal's policies on open access, they can see if it's listed in the SHERPA/RoMEO database of publishers' policies. In some cases, authors negotiate rights with a publisher. A model author's addendum is available from SPARC, which has a lot of good information for authors.

Any faculty members who want to deposit their work in our repository are encouraged to do so. Just contact Barbara Fister (fister@gustavus.edu).

photo courtesy of walkinboston

Archives Open House and Free Tour

October is American Archives Month so visit the College and Lutheran Church Archives and take a tour. Tours will feature historical Gustavus treasures and awesome artifacts not usually on public display. Find out what the archives is all about and what it has to offer you.  The archives is located on the library's top floor, directly above the main entrance.

Tours: 

• Wednesday, 17 October, 11:30-noonish
• Thursday, 25 October, 1:30-2:00ish
• Tuesday, 30 October, 3:30-4:00ish

New Faculty Anthology

In honor of Open Access Week, we have published an open access anthology of faculty insights into their teaching, their scholarship, the ways they serve the community, and how their work aligns with the mission of the college. Fifteen faculty members generously volunteered to make statements they originally wrote for tenure and promotion public. We compiled them using a nifty new publishing platform for books developed by Hugh McGuire. Using this platform, based on Wordpress, we were able to make the book available on the web, as a PDF, and as an ePub ebook. To make it simple to load the book on a Kindle, we also created a mobi-format version, using Calibre, a nifty open source ebook converter.

The content of this anthology was too good not to share it beyond its original small audience - the members of the hardworking Personnel Committee. We thought it was a good idea for everyone to have a chance to read these interesting and inspiring statements.

It didn't cost us anything to publish and distribute it online, other than a little time. What a difference from the process described in this 1947 film about "Making Books."

Open Access Week

Happy Open Access Week! We're celebrating the movement to make more knowledge free to all. Philosopher and activist Peter Suber (who has recently written a book on the topic) has defined open access as literature that is "digital, online, free of charge, and free of most copyright and licensing restrictions."

He has written a very brief introduction to open access. Barbara Fister has also written a short overview of the topic. Or if you're looking for inspiration in under 140 characters, you can follow Open Access Hulk on Twitter. This week we will be blogging about some of the ways we support open access here at Gustavus.

It's in the Ether

We enjoyed various chemistry-related chalk messages on campus sidewalks this morning, including this one:

But we also approve this message, and wish everyone a happy chemistry week, with or without lithium (Li), bromine (Br), argon (Ar) or ytrrium (Y).

Jussi Björling Albums Digitized

Swedish opera singer Jussi Björling (1911-1960) was one of the most beloved tenors of the twentieth century. He made his Metropolitan Opera debut in 1938 and went on to become one of the principal singers there during the 1940s and 1950s. He sang many major tenor roles in operas in the French and Italian repertoire, including Il trovatore, Rigoletto, Aida, Pagliacci, Cavalleria rusticana, La bohème, Madama Butterfly and Manon Lescaut.

Gustavus Adolphus College has a strong connection with Jussi Björling.  At the age of nine Jussi Björling presented a recital here.  The prestigious Jussi Björling Music Scholarship was named in his honor, he was awarded an honorary doctorate by Gustavus and in 1970 Jussi Björling Recital Hall in the Fine Arts Building was dedicated. Three generations of Björlings are alumni of Gustavus.  His son Anders Björling is also a retired comptroller of the College.

The Library recognizes Jussi Björling’s importance to the College and we would like to highlight a collection we have of over 100 CDs and LPs with performances by Jussi Björling, which have recently been digitized and are easily accessible to anyone on campus.  In our catalog search “All Fields” for Jussi Bjorling and click on the link to listen.