Category Archives: Press Releases

UT Libraries Welcomes Diversity Librarian Residents

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The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Libraries welcomes two librarians to post-graduate internships this month. Sojourna Cunningham and Ingrid Ruffin will be the UT Libraries’ fifth team of Diversity Librarian Residents, a program initiated in 2002. During a two-year internship, residents have the opportunity to work in several areas of the library and take part in a variety of initiatives and projects.

Sojourna Cunningham has a BA in History and English Literature from the University of Pittsburgh and a Masters in Library Science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. While at UNC, she received the prestigious Carolina Academic Library Associate Award. She has worked in several library settings: academic library, public library, and for-profit technical institute. At UT, she plans to combine her interests in information literacy and emerging technologies to study the benefits of the learning commons.

Ingrid Ruffin has a BA and MA in English, as well as the Master of Library and Information Studies, from the University of North Carolina, Greensboro. While in the MLIS program she was an Academic and Cultural Enrichment Scholar. Her prior position at a small liberal arts college allowed her to sample many aspects of librarianship. She has a particular interest in providing library services to underserved groups, especially veterans (a group that commands her personal affection).

The Diversity Librarian Residency program attracts recent library school graduates to a challenging career in academic librarianship. Residents gain rich and varied work experiences at UT, while advancing the Libraries’ and University’s diversity goals.

Both interns bring prior international and intercultural experience to their new positions. As an undergraduate, Cunningham spent a Semester at Sea, doing community service in ten countries across Asia, Africa, and South America. Ruffin served nine years in the United States Air Force.

Website Helps STEM High School Students

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Librarians at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville are linking STEM students to some useful online resources.

Knoxville’s new STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) high school opened in the fall of 2011 in the former L&N Railroad station on World’s Fair Park. The L&N STEM Academy is committed to using the latest technology to prepare students for STEM careers. It’s a challenging environment in which assignments require critical thinking to solve real-world problems, and teachers of different subjects cross-plan their lessons around a single project. Each student has been given his or her own iPad2 to serve as both computer and notebook. Students even use the iPads to discover their assignments by scanning QR codes posted on classroom doors.

The costly technologies that enable the school’s innovative learning environment translate into fewer dollars for the school media center. UT librarians are stepping in to supplement the research materials available to STEM students.

A website hosted by the UT Libraries provides links to free science and technology resources. SOIL (an acronym for STEM Oriented Information Literacy) is the creation of Thura Mack, UT Libraries coordinator for outreach and community learning services; Peter Fernandez, research services librarian for Agricultural Sciences and Natural Resources; and School of Information Sciences student Lisa Kellerman.

The librarians hope resources on SOIL will enhance skills the STEM students will need when they begin taking dual-credit courses at UT in their junior year. The site includes research tips, guides to citing sources, a tutorial on plagiarism and academic integrity, and directories to STEM internships (a planned capstone experience for L&N STEM Academy students).

The resources on SOIL are freely available at library.utk.edu/outreach/soil.

New Digital Collections: UT Theatre Playbills and a Student Magazine

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The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Libraries announces two new digital collections. Theatre playbills and an early student publication drawn from the University Archives are the newest digital collections available on the UT Libraries’ website at www.lib.utk.edu/digitalcollections.

UT THEATRE PLAYBILLS. The University of Tennessee Theatre Playbills Collection showcases the history of theatre at the University of Tennessee from 1935 productions by the Faculty Players to the current season of the Clarence Brown Theatre Company, an affiliate of the exclusive League of Resident Theatres.

Ephemeral theatre groups were active on UT’s campus as early as the 1830s, but the earliest extant playbills date to productions by the Faculty Players, a club composed of faculty and spouses that brought a new level of seriousness to campus theatre in the 1930s.

UT’s theatre program began as a one-year course within the English department in 1940 and became a full-fledged department of speech and theatre in 1968. A Master of Fine Arts program was added in 1980.

The campus’ first permanent theatre space was the Carousel arena theatre, completed in 1953. The Clarence Brown Theatre opened in 1970 and was dedicated to the legendary filmmaker and UT alum whose generous gifts funded both the proscenium theatre and the professional company.

UT’s theatre program has had an illustrious history, hosting world premier productions and an international exchange of artists. Theatre enthusiasts who browse the online playbill collection will encounter productions starring renowned actors such as Mary Martin, Zoe Caldwell, John Cullum, Dame Judith Anderson, and Sir Anthony Quayle.

MUGWUMP. Mugwump was a University of Tennessee student publication that ran from November 1920 until 1932. A combination of college humor and literary material, Mugwump chronicles student life and highlights student creativity through stories, essays, poetry, as well as student-drawn cartoons and artwork.

The artwork is a jaunt through 1920s fashions, from the short skirts and bobbed hair of the flapper to fellas in knickerbockers or “Oxford Bags.” Stories, cartoons and even the advertisements are a window on students’ concerns, from dating to dance crazes to doing laundry. Some cartoons also reflect the entrenched racist attitudes of the times.

Mugwump rewards even casual browsing, if only to enjoy the often humorous — and sometimes beautifully drawn — cover art.

SOUTHERN MANUSCRIPT SERMONS BEFORE 1800 available in both book and database form

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Scholars of colonial America have a new tool for researching religious thought in the Southern colonies. Southern Manuscript Sermons before 1800: A Bibliography, edited by Michael A. Lofaro, is now available in both book and database form. Newfound Press has published the bibliography as a book, available at newfoundpress.utk.edu for online viewing or for print-on-demand. The University of Tennessee Libraries features a searchable database of the bibliography among its digital collections, available at www.lib.utk.edu/digitalcollections.

Southern Manuscript Sermons before 1800 is the first guide to the study of the manuscript sermon literature of the Southern colonies/states of Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia. The bibliography contains entries for over 1600 sermons by over a hundred ministers affiliated with eight denominations.

Richard Beale Davis began the bibliography in 1946 as part of his research for Intellectual Life in the Colonial South, 1585-1763, which won the National Book Award in history. Michael A. Lofaro, Lindsay Young Professor of American studies and American literature at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, took over the project in 1976, expanded the colonial entries (pre-1764), and added the period of 1764-1799. George M. Barringer contributed entries for Jesuit sermons. Sandra G. Hancock contributed those for Thomas Cradock.

Both the book and database contain in-depth descriptions of the sermons, over 90 percent of which are unknown. The database provides multiple avenues of access. Searches can be constructed and limited by single or combined criteria of author, repository, book of the Bible, date, state, denomination, keyword, and short title.

Scholars can employ both versions of this tool to construct a more complete picture of the Southern mind before 1800 and to reveal how that mind contributes to a national ethos. The bibliography will aid many disciplines — religion, cultural and American studies, history, literature, political science, sociology, psychology, etc. — and all those who wish to interpret the past and its effect upon the present. It will lead to a more balanced appraisal of American intellectual history by encouraging access to a large body of southern sermons to place alongside those of the northern and middle states for critical assessment.

Newfound Press Publishes Multimedia Work on Vietnam Vets

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Newfound Press announces the publication of a new multimedia work on the Vietnam Veterans Against the War.

In Found, Featured, then Forgotten: U.S. Network TV News and the Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Mark Harmon gives an account of the veterans’ protests against the war and their depiction in the American media. Through interviews with early leaders of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) and examination of network television news coverage from the Vietnam era, Harmon rescues the veterans’ story from the inevitable historical revisionism that befalls social movements over time.

The Vietnam War era marks the first time in American history that substantial numbers of veterans returned home to protest a war still in progress. The VVAW were part of a larger GI protest against U.S. involvement in Vietnam that included resistance to the draft, desertions, and an extensive underground GI press. Many resisting GIs were court-martialed and given harsh sentences, sometimes for offenses as trivial as gathering to discuss the morality of the war.

The VVAW were remarkably media savvy, staging compelling media events such as the demonstration dubbed Dewey Canyon III, during which hundreds of soldiers flung away their war medals on the steps of the Capitol. The VVAW wisely distinguished themselves from other anti-war groups, shunning violence and preserving the credibility granted to them as returning veterans.

According to Harmon, the press’s understanding of the VVAW protests followed an almost predictable course. The movement was initially ignored then downplayed, its message first distorted then co-opted, the protests dismissed as no longer needed then, finally, forgotten. Harmon correlates this progression with pivotal events in the VVAW’s protest movement.

The Winter Soldier Investigations in January and February of 1971, at which soldiers testified to their personal experience of war crimes, were largely ignored by the media. But Dewey Canyon in April of 1971, which closely followed the court martial of Lt. William Calley for his actions in the massacre at My Lai, garnered significant network news attention. By the time of the Silent March on the Republican National Convention in August 1972, the media were declaring the wind-down of the war and the last gasp of the protest movement. Network television coverage of the VVAW presence at the Convention was scant to non-existent. The full story of the Silent March and wheelchair-bound veterans interrupting Nixon’s acceptance speech with shouts of “Stop the bombing! Stop the war!” had to be reconstructed from the accounts of participants and the alternative media.

Harmon’s retelling of protests by the Vietnam Veterans Against the War is illustrated with audio and video clips of contemporaneous news reports and statements by participating veterans, making this multimedia work a dynamic and invaluable resource for scholars of the Vietnam War, its veterans, and the news media during the Vietnam era.

Dr. Mark D. Harmon is associate professor in the University of Tennessee’s School of Journalism and Electronic Media. He has authored more than two dozen academic research articles, and more than 50 refereed research presentations. He has been honored with the UT College of Communication’s outstanding research award as well as its outstanding teaching award and a chancellor’s citation for extraordinary community service. The International Radio and Television Society honored him in 2004 as its Frank Stanton fellow for distinguished broadcast education. His career includes stints as a television news producer and reporter, radio news reporter, and radio talk show host. He also has a political resume, having served as Knox County (Tennessee) Commissioner, Congressional candidate (Texas, 13th District), and Democratic Party county chairman.

Newfound Press is an online imprint of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Libraries. The Press publishes peer-reviewed content that merits wide dissemination but is unlikely to be published by a traditional press because of narrow focus or innovative format. Newfound Press titles are freely available online at newfoundpress.utk.edu.

An Online Guide to Cataloging Remote Access Multimedia

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Newfound Press has published an online guide to help librarians provide access to the many forms of information available over the internet.

Librarians follow a complex set of standards to describe and link to remotely available resources. The Streaming Guide to Cataloging Remote Access Multimedia: A How-to Virtual Manual for Catalogers, by Marielle Veve, provides visual guidance in the procedures of cataloging online content that integrates different media formats. The Streaming Guide incorporates instructional multimedia techniques such as animated slides, screen captures, video and audio to guide traditional catalogers through the process and best practices for cataloging digital content. Guides are provided for cataloging streaming video, streaming audio, e-books, web games, and podcasts.

Marielle Veve is assistant professor and interim metadata leader at the University of Tennessee Libraries. She is the recipient of the 2011 Esther J. Piercy Award from the Association for Library Collections and Technical Services for her innovative thinking and leadership in her profession. In announcing the award, ALCTS noted the Streaming Guide, in particular, as an example of Veve’s contributions to the development and application of new methods in technical services librarianship.

Newfound Press is an online imprint of the University of Tennessee, Knoxville Libraries. The Press publishes peer-reviewed content that merits wide dissemination but is unlikely to be published by a traditional press because of narrow focus or innovative format. Newfound Press titles are freely available online at newfoundpress.utk.edu.

UT Library to Digitize Newspapers, Preserve History

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It has been said that newspapers are a “first draft of history” but JoAnne Deeken, head of University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Libraries’ Technical Services and Digital Access, believes — for Tennessee — “newspapers are history.”

This is why she is thrilled UT Knoxville has received $325,165 from the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to work with the Tennessee State Library and Archives (TSLA) for the digitization of 100,000 pages of Tennessee’s microfilmed newspapers, dating from 1836-1922, as part of the NEH’s National Digital Newspaper Program.

“The State of Tennessee was an extremely important and influential state during this time period,” Deeken said. “Our papers, which record actual events as they happened, present a picture of times and places that are unique. By digitizing them, we see them as a time being lived, not as some dry facts in a history book. We essentially live them as the people of the time lived them.”

Historical Tennessee newspapers lend real voices to pivotal events in the history of our state and the nation. Digitizing these newspapers will breathe life into political, commercial, religious and social events of the time.

For instance, more Civil War battles were fought in Tennessee than any other state, with the exception of Virginia. Newspapers chronicled these bloody battles and the emotions and issues that accompany them. In fact, one of the first newspapers devoted to emancipation leading up to the Civil War, The Emancipator, was published in East Tennessee — a region which did not automatically join the Confederacy and thus saw many brothers who joined opposing armies fighting against each other.

Tennessee was also the state to give the 19th Amendment the two-thirds majority necessary for ratification. Newspapers encapsulated the debate over giving women the right to vote. They also captured the culture war over religious fundamentalism, recording the events that led up to the 1925 Scopes “Monkey” Trial, in which John Scopes was convicted of illegally teaching evolution in a Tennessee classroom (despite the fact that he was teaching from lessons included in a state-approved textbook).

The papers also expose what life was like during the era of slavery simply by advertisements and their placements.

“I think seeing an ad for a missing slave under an ad for a missing horse or an ad offering to sell or buy a slave or the open advertisements for manacles and other devices used on slaves make the reality of that institution real. These were not hidden or embarrassing actions; people (the slaves) appear to be treated little better than animals,” Deeken said.

An advisory group of genealogists, educators, researchers and citizens from across the state will select newspapers for the project. The pages will be digitized over the next two years. According to Deeken, they will apply for more grants to complete the digitization of all state newspapers.

The papers will first appear in Chronicling America and later will be available through the UT Library website.

The TSLA collects and preserves books and records of historical, documentary and reference value and promotes library and archival development throughout the state. The NEH is an independent federal agency which supports learning in history, literature, philosophy and other areas of the humanities.

—UT KNOXVILLE MEDIA RELATIONS, June 17, 2010

C O N T A C T :

JoAnne Deeken (865-974-6913, jdeeken@utk.edu)

Jeff Daniel Marion to be Writer in Residence at UT Libraries

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Poet Jeff Daniel Marion will be Jack E. Reese Writer in Residence at the University of Tennessee Libraries for the 2010-2011 academic year. As Writer in Residence, Marion will organize the Writers in the Library series of readings in the John C. Hodges Library.

“I am thrilled that Jeff Daniel Marion will represent the UT Libraries at our literary events this year,” said Dean of Libraries Barbara Dewey. “We are offering UT students the opportunity to interact with a distinguished poet and eloquent Tennessee voice. Furthermore, everyone is invited to our Writers in the Libraries series to meet Jeff Daniel Marion and to hear some of our exceptionally talented regional authors read from their works.”

Marion grew up in Rogersville, Tennessee, and now lives in Knoxville. From 1969 until his retirement in 2002, he taught creative writing at Carson-Newman College, where he was poet-in-residence, director of the Appalachian Center, and editor of Mossy Creek Reader.

Marion has published eight collections of poetry, and his poems have appeared in over 75 journals and anthologies. Ebbing & Flowing Springs: New and Selected Poems and Prose, 1976-2001 was the winner of the 2003 Independent Publishers Award in Poetry and was named Appalachian Book of the Year by the Appalachian Writers Association, as well as being one of three finalists for the Benjamin Franklin Award. His latest collection, Father, was awarded the 2009 Quentin R. Howard Poetry Prize.

Other recognitions include the first Literary Fellowship awarded by the Tennessee Arts Commission in 1978, the Appalachian Writers Association’s Outstanding Contribution to Appalachian Literature Award in 2002, and an Educational Service to Appalachia Award from Carson-Newman College in 2005. He has served as poet-in-the-schools in Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia, was twice poet-in-residence for the Tennessee Governor’s School for the Humanities, and in 1998 was Copenhaver Scholar in Residence at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia.

Marion founded The Small Farm, one of the region’s most distinguished poetry journals, which he edited from 1975 to 1980. For twenty years he operated Mill Springs Press, producing chapbooks and broadsides from handset type on a Vandercook proof press.

As Writer in Residence, Marion will have access to the resources of the UT Libraries and a quiet retreat in the Hodges Library to work on his current projects, new collections of poems and memoir essays. His appointment begins August 1, 2010.

The position of Writer in Residence was established in 1998 and in 2005 was named in honor of the late Jack Reese, a former chancellor of the university, longtime UT English professor, and avid support of the UT Libraries and the local writing community.

For further information contact Jo Anne Deeken, head of technical services and digital access at the UT Libraries at 865-974-6913 or jdeeken@utk.edu.

UT Libraries Adds its 3-Millionth Volume, A Cherokee Spelling Book

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The University of Tennessee Libraries now boasts a collection of 3-million volumes. The university community and Library Friends gathered to celebrate the Libraries’ 3-millionth-volume milestone at an event in the John C. Hodges Library on the evening of March 26.

The volume chosen to represent the 3-millionth-volume benchmark in the Libraries’ history is TSVLVKI SQCLVCLV, A Cherokee Spelling Book, published in Knoxville, Tennessee in 1819. The Libraries’ copy of the Cherokee Spelling Book is one of only three copies known to exist.

During remarks at the March 26 celebration, UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy Cheek and Provost Susan Martin praised the Libraries and its staff for their contributions to scholarship on the Knoxville campus and worldwide. Dean of Libraries Barbara Dewey outlined other notable milestones in the Libraries’ history and reflected on the importance of collecting and preserving historical Tennessee documents. The Cherokee Spelling Book strengthens the Libraries’ exceptional collections of early Knoxville imprints and material documenting the region’s history, including the history of the Cherokee and their removal from this area.

Before guests visited the Libraries’ Special Collections where the rare volume was on display, Vicki Rozema, author of several books on Cherokee history and culture, provided historical context for the Spelling Book.

TSVLVKI SQCLVCLV, A Cherokee Spelling Book, was the work of missionary Daniel Butrick and David Brown, Butrick’s Cherokee student at the Brainerd Mission in Chattanooga. The Brainerd Mission was one of many Christian missions founded in the early 19th century as part of the religious revival in America known as the Second Great Awakening. Butrick and Brown’s slim volume of only 61 pages, which uses the Roman alphabet to transcribe the Cherokee language, predates the well-known syllabary created by Sequoyah.

Daniel Butrick marched with the Cherokees on the “Trail of Tears” to Indian Territory in Oklahoma during the Indian Removals of the 1830s. Rozema told the audience that the journal Butrick kept along the way is one of the most poignant and thorough records we have of that tragic journey.

TSVLVKI SQCLVCLV, A Cherokee Spelling Book is a compelling and important document of the early 19th century in East Tennessee, and a fitting symbol for this milestone in the progression of the University of Tennessee Libraries.

***

• View pages from the Cherokee Spelling Book. (File is large: 1.5 MB)
• Read more historical background, as well as the tale of how the Libraries acquired this rare item, in these pages from our 2008-2009 Library Development Review.

Pictured above:
• TSVLVKI SQCLVCLV, A Cherokee Spelling Book.
• Guests view the “speller” as Special Collections staffer Nick Wyman (left) relates its history.

Welcoming New Librarians

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Rabia10The UT Libraries welcomes three new librarians: Diversity Librarian Residents Rabia Gibbs and Kynita Stringer-Stanback and our new Archivist, Alesha Shumar.

Rabia Gibbs and Kynita Stringer-Stanback will be our fourth team of Diversity Librarian Residents, a program initiated in 2002. During a two-year internship, residents have the opportunity to work in several areas of the library and take part in a variety of initiatives and projects.

Gibbs received her masters of library and information science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2009. While at Pittsburgh she worked with the university archives on the City Photographer digitization project, and participated in outreach to new applicants and student organizations. She has a particular interest in archival and digital initiatives. Gibbs has been a teacher and a frequent library volunteer.

Kynita3Stringer-Stanback is a 2009 graduate in library science from the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. She has worked in academic and public libraries, in both technical and public services. A fluent Spanish speaker, she has taught and studied in Latin America. She arrived in Knoxville with numerous ideas for outreach to underserved communities.

The Diversity Librarian Residency program attracts recent library school graduates to a challenging career in academic librarianship. Residents gain rich and varied work experiences at UT, while advancing the Libraries’ and University’s diversity goals.

shumarOur new Archivist, Alesha Shumar, comes to UT from her position as Helen Clay Frick Foundation Archivist at the University of Pittsburgh. The Frick Foundation Archives contains materials relating to coal and steel magnate Henry Clay Frick, whose fortune funded the Frick Art Museum in Pittsburgh and New York’s famous Frick Collection of art. Shumar earned a masters of library and information science from the University of Pittsburgh in 2008. At UT she will acquire, preserve, and provide research access to the archives that document the history and scholarship of the university.