What's New

Need an Article? Reach Out to ILLiad!

Interlibrary Loan will retire the ArticleReach interface soon, but speedy delivery remains!  If you need an article not owned by WU Libraries, simply submit your request via ILLiad (http://illiad.wustl.edu/illiad/logon.html).  We’ll get it fast (often within 24-48 hours) and email you when the article can be downloaded.  Same quick delivery of PDFs, email notifications, all your ILL activities in one place – ILLiad.  Contact ILL staff (ill@wumail.wustl.edu) for more information.

Lighting Upgraded in Whispers Café

Olin Library’s Whispers Café is one of the busiest places on campus, popular for eating, studying, and socializing. But users have long noted that the low lighting is less than ideal for reading and studying, especially in the hours after dark. In early February, new lighting was added around the café’s atrium. The upgrade of café lighting is part of the University Libraries’ ongoing effort to respond to user feedback.

Trova collection added to Modern Graphic History Library

The Washington University Libraries have acquired the archives of internationally recognized artist Ernest Trova (1927-2009).

Trova’s archives, which will be housed in WUSTL’s Modern Graphic History Library, provide researchers a glimpse into his life and his art-making process. The Trova Family Collection will be processed and made accessible to researchers and the general public within the next several months, with many of the materials to be digitally accessible as well.

“The collection gives a complete picture of his work,” says Skye Lacerte, curator of the Modern Graphic History Library. “The archival materials document his process, from inspiration, to conception, to planning, to fruition, to its reception, to its evolution into other forms, and finally its impact.”

Of particular interest among the sketches, models, photographs, casting molds, blueprints, correspondence and more that comprise the Trova Family Collection are items linked to Trova’s iconic series of paintings and sculptures known as Falling Man. The series established the self-taught artist as one of the most highly acclaimed sculptors at work in the 1960s and ’70s, and many of those early fine art works are held by prominent institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art and the Guggenheim in New York City and the Tate Modern in London.

Trova’s influence on modern graphic history and devotion to St. Louis make his archival collection a fitting addition to the Department of Special Collections’ Modern Graphic History Library, Lacerte says.

During this period of great success in the New York and European art worlds, Trova, a St. Louis native, continued to live in St. Louis and remained closely connected to the community. In 1975, he donated 40 of his sculptures to Laumeier Sculpture Park in St. Louis County, helping to transform what was at the time a little-known park into a popular tourist attraction.

By the 1980s, Trova’s critical acclaim had waned significantly, although his artistic output had not. When Trova left a well-established New York gallery to sign on with an inexperienced art dealer who turned out to be at odds with the artist, Trova’s reputation suffered. 

“For more than 20 years, the marketing of Trova’s art has been an impediment to the appreciation of the philosophical acuity that informed his most resonant paintings and sculptures,” writes Matthew Strauss, founder of White Flag Projects in St. Louis, in a recent catalog essay accompanying a survey of the artist’s work.

Trova maintained a deep interest in mass market culture and cartoons throughout his life. One of Trova’s first jobs was at the Famous Barr department store in downtown St. Louis, where he attended to mannequins as a window dresser — and where his debut Falling Man exhibition was later held, rather than in an art gallery, during St. Louis’ bicentennial celebration in 1964.

“These aspects of Trova are part of why his collection fits within our scope,” Lacerte says. “He was a fine artist; yet he was also fascinated with, for example, Mickey Mouse.”

For more information about the collections housed at the Modern Graphic History Library, visit library.wustl.edu/units/spec/MGHL or call (314) 935-7741.

In a space next door to the West Campus Library (where the Modern Graphic History Library is located), a selection of original artworks by Trova will be on display and for sale by the Ivey-Selkirk company. Called the Trova Project @ Ivey-Selkirk, the space will open Monday, Feb. 13. The gallery entrance is located immediately to the right of the Ivey-Selkirk space (7447 Forsyth Blvd.). Hours are 11 a.m.-2 p.m. Monday, Wednesday and Friday. For more information, contact Mark Howald at (314) 726-5515.

Rare Books in the Digital Age

Michael F. Suarez, S.J., will give a talk titled "Rare Books in the Digital Age" at 7 p.m. Thursday, February 16, in Steinberg Hall Auditorium. The event is free and open to the public.

Suarez is uniquely qualified to speak on the topic of rare books in the digital world. He directs Rare Book School—an independent, non-profit institute for the study of books, printing, and related subjects—located at the University of Virginia (UVA), where he is University Professor, Honorary Curator of Special Collections, and Professor of English. He is editor-in-chief of Oxford Scholarly Editions Online, perhaps the largest digital humanities project extant today.

His most recent publication is The Oxford Companion to the Book (2010), a million-word reference work on the history of books and manuscripts, from the invention of writing to the present day. The London Telegraph called it “colossal” and “a paradise for book lovers;” and The Wall Street Journal praised it as “a fount of knowledge where the Internet is but a slot machine.” A Jesuit priest, he is co-general editor of The Collected Works of Gerard Manley Hopkins.

RSVP if you plan to attend. Email or call Joy Lowery, director of communications for WU Libraries, at jlowery@wustl.edu or 314-935-5418. Leave your name and the number of people in your party.

ProQuest Databases Outage Saturday, February 4

As announced on October 20 (see this post), ProQuest is having another outage this weekend for system maintenance, for 12 hours beginning at 9pm Saturday, February 4.  All the same databases as on that post are affected: all the databases on the ProQuest interface, and the Chadwyck-Healey databases on chadwyck.com.  We apologize for any inconvenience this outage causes.

Libraries offer new "Twitter 201" series

At first glance, Twitter might appear to be just one of many online attention drains. But tweeting often proves surprisingly practical. A number of WU Libraries staff are among those who think so, and an upcoming series of free workshops will help interested members of the WUSTL community explore why.

Titled Twitter 201, the free miniseries is open to all students, faculty, and staff, with three 40-minute sessions on different topics to be held the last Thursday of the month in February, March, and April (Olin Library, Arc Presentation Room, Level A). Register to attend one, two, or all three of the sessions:

• During the first session (4 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 23), librarians Erin Leach and Brian Vetruba will discuss Twitter as a way to develop professionally and foster meaningful professional connections. Twitter has become a valuable networking tool for professionals in a variety of disciplines. It can be used to start conversations with “the experts,” to get help with a tricky professional problem, and to follow conference activities.

• The second workshop (4 p.m. Thursday, March 29) will focus on how writers and readers can tackle Twitter. Staff members Evie Hemphill and Tim Lepczyk use Twitter to share ideas, find inspiration, engage with authors and editors, and keep their writing sharp. The new salon is a hashtag away and open to everyone.

• The third session (4 p.m. Thursday, April 26) aims to help participants understand the power of the 140-character tweet. Librarians Jaleh Fazelian and Makiba Foster will lead a discussion of Twitter’s instrumental role as an unlikely galvanizing tool in various national and global movements. The revolution will not be televised, but it will be tweeted. From Iran to Wall Street, from Tunisia to Egypt, Twitter was and is a part of these recent revolutions.

In addition to the Twitter 201 series, an introductory Twitter 101 session is scheduled for 3 p.m. Thursday, February 9. Geared for the Twitter novice, this hour-and-a-half session will cover account creation, search features, what it means to follow someone, how to construct a tweet, what hashtags and retweets are, and other Twitter basics.

For more information visit http://wulibraries.doattend.com. And be sure to follow the Libraries on Twitter at http://twitter.com/@WUSTLlibraries.

Change to Olin Library Group Study Room Policy

To help ensure that as many groups as possible have opportunities to use the group study rooms, we now ask that your group’s reservation requests do not exceed 4 hours per day. More policies and information about Olin Library group study rooms are available here: http://library.wustl.edu/units/circ/reservegroupstudy.html.  If you have questions or concerns, please contact Olin Circulation at circ@wumail.wustl.edu, or stop by the Help Desk on Level 1.

Ask Us Service Improved

The Libraries have offered an Ask Us service on the website for a number of years, which offered assistance via email, chat, phone, and more recently via text as well.  The chat, phone, and text services have not changed, but we’ve made an update and improvement to the email version: we’ve subscribed to a service that makes the questions and answers searchable.  So if you have a question about the Libraries or any of our services, you can see if someone else has already asked about it – and see the answer right away, rather than waiting for an emailed response.    Try it out for yourself!

WU Libraries Join HathiTrust

Membership gives WU users access to millions of full-text volumes

As of January 1, 2012, the WU Libraries joined the HathiTrust Digital Library, whose goal is to digitize, preserve, and increase online access to library collections. The trust derives its name from hathi (pronounced "HAH-tee"), the Hindi word for elephant.

HathiTrust began in 2008 and has grown to over 10 million volumes. Content covers subjects and disciplines in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences in more than 425 languages. 

WU faculty, students, and staff can:

• Download 2.7 million+ volumes in the public domain

• Search the full text of 10 million+ volumes

• Create personalized collections of items in HathiTrust

You can search for HathiTrust items directly from the WU Libraries' website using the eBooks tab. To limit to full-text volumes, check "full view only."

You can also search directly from the HathiTrust catalog. For more information and advanced search options, visit the Libraries' guide at http://libguides.wustl.edu/hathitrust.

For questions, contact Brian Vetruba (bvetruba@wustl.edu; 314-935-4824; IM/chat).

Ebooks Tab Added To Search Box

Locating the thousands of ebooks available through Washington University Libraries just got simpler.

By clicking on the “eBooks” tab on the library homepage, users can limit a search to resources accessible in an ebook format. The newly launched search tab also identifies three different search routes—the library’s discovery catalog, Google Books, and HathiTrust—which together encompass the full range of ebook resources available.

As e-resources continue to grow and evolve, so do digital formats and download restrictions and e-reading devices. To help WUSTL users navigate these varying factors, a research guide is available, along with WU librarians happy to discuss any issues and answer questions.