What's New

Faculty Senate Takes Key Step Toward Open Access

 
At its May 9 meeting, the Faculty Senate of Washington University in St. Louis adopted a resolution that advances the institution’s commitment to free and unfettered access to knowledge. The Open Access Resolution notes that the University “is committed to making its scholarship and creative works freely and easily available to the world community” and that faculty members “are encouraged to seek venues for their works that share this ideal.” For more information about the new resolution and its impact, view the campus Record article. For resources and questions related to scholarly communications, contact Ruth Lewis, biology and math librarian and co-chair of the WU Scholarly Communications Task Force. 

Archive Hosts Middle School Students, Teachers

 
For 30-some students from Brittany Woods Middle School, a visit to Washington University’s Film & Media Archive this spring marked the culmination of an extensive and eye-opening social studies project.

The seventh- and eighth-graders toured the archive, peeked inside the climate-controlled vault, viewed photos and storyboards associated with Henry Hampton’s Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965, and received their own copies of an oral history book created to accompany Hampton’s award-winning documentary. But the May 17 visit was hardly the students’ first glance at the Hampton collection or at the history he captured in his work. They were already familiar with it, thanks to a curriculum unit their teachers developed after spending several days at a workshop held at the Film& Media Archive last fall.

The workshop introduced the four middle school teachers to the many resources housed at the archive and how they might incorporate those resources into lesson plans related to social justice and the civil rights movement. To seventh-grade social studies teacher Astra Alsobrook, it was an exciting discovery.

"To have these [resources] so close and available was really good to know," she says. The Henry Hampton Collection that they explored not only includes Eyes on the Prize and Eyes on the Prize II but also all of Hampton’s documentaries and the many materials used to make them—photographs, scripts, storyboards, producers' notes, interviews, music, narration, posters, study guides, books, and more.

Following last fall’s workshop, Alsobrook and the other teachers returned to the classroom, where they implemented what they learned into hands-on projects introducing students to the art of documentaries. Students watched Eyes on the Prize episodes, explored Hampton’s process, conducted primary research, and even learned to create short documentary presentations of their own. In May, Denise Ward-Brown, associate professor of art, visited the middle school to share video production techniques with the students. A WU donor and professor emeritus of biology, David Kirk, provided support for the purchase of a school set of Flip cameras for student use.

"It was a cool experience looking at the civil rights movement and learning how professional Hampton’s work was, and then making your own," says Maria Polzin, an eighth-grader who aspires to be a film director herself one day.

After the tour of the archive, Polzin and ten other Brittany Woods students presented their projects on the Danforth Campus before their teachers, peers, archive staff, and WU faculty and students. Polzin’s focused on several key events of the civil rights movement, giving a timeline of when events occurred, with the Civil Rights Act as the final one.

"At the end I put in more of my own opinion," she says. "I talked about how racism is still alive today … laws are much more easily changed than attitudes."

The students’ visit was made possible by WU educational outreach, which also sponsored and organized the teachers’ initial visits to the Archive in the fall of 2010 after Jamie Jordan, principal of Brittany Woods, mentioned to Cheryl Adelstein, WU’s director of community relations, that her students could use more context in understanding the importance of African-American history month. Adelstein thought of the Hampton Collection at the archive and got the project rolling, enlisting the help of Rudolph Clay, head of library outreach, Joe Thompson, senior lecturer in African and African-American Studies and educational archivist for the Film & Media Archive, and others.

"I think the main thing we wanted to communicate to them was that we are here and want to be accessible to them," Thompson says. "We wanted to build a relationship with teachers so that if they wanted to use us in the future, they’d feel comfortable calling us and they’d know us personally."

Film & Media Archivist Nadia Ghasedi called the project a great example of the impact Hampton hoped for as he created his documentaries.

"With the initial broadcast of Eyes on the Prize, Henry Hampton set out to inspire a new generation of activists. Washington University’s collaboration with Brittany Woods is continuing to do just that," Ghasedi says. "The project allowed the students not only to explore one of the most important periods of American History, but also encouraged them to continue to tell the stories of past and present civil rights injustices."

For more information about holdings of the Film & Media Archive or about conducting research there, visit the Film & Media Archive’s website.

New History Databases: Sabin and Archives Unbound

The Libraries have purchased Sabin Americana: 1500-1926, a database which 'reaches into all aspects of American history and culture. It touches upon the political and religious life in North America and at times South America and the Caribbean. It features American and European views of the colonization of the Americas, the American Revolution, the days of the early Republic and Jacksonian period, the antebellum period, Civil War, era of Reconstruction and post-Reconstruction, the settlement of the West and the onset of the Gilded Age' (from database homepage).

Also purchased are two Archives Unbound collections: America in Protest: Records of Anti-Vietnam War Organizations, The Vietnam Veterans Against the War and Phyllis Lyon, Del Martin and the Daughters of Bilitis.

If you have any questions about these databases, please contact your subject librarian.

 

New Becker Medical Library Catalog

The WU Becker Medical Library has a new catalog interface, at http://beckercatalog.wustl.edu.   This continues to be entirely separate from the WU Library Catalog, Classic Catalog, and the Mobius Catalog.

Send your questions or comments about this new catalog to askbecker@wustl.edu or call the Becker Library staff at 314-362-7085.

We are updating links on the WU Libraries website where necessitated by this change.  If you find a link that does not work please email the URL and the URL of the page it appears on to library.webmaster@wumail.wustl.edu.  Thanks!

"A Coincidental Cup of Kenyan Coffee" Wins Miles Prize

Graduating history and economics major Howard Benjamin Rudnick has 
been named the recipient of the 2011 William Miles Prize at Washington University in St. Louis.

Sponsored by the University Libraries’ Film & Media Archive and the Arts & Sciences Program in African and African-American Studies, the Miles Prize contest is open each year to WU undergraduates who submit essays making significant use of materials held by the Film & Media Archive. The annual $500 prize is given in honor of the life and work of documentary filmmaker William Miles (born 1931), whose archives now reside here. His films include I Remember Harlem, his best-known work, as well as Men of Bronze, The Different Drummer: Blacks in the Military, and others.

Rudnick’s extensive essay, titled “A Coincidental Cup of Kenyan Coffee: SNCC and Malcolm X Recast the Struggle in Nairobi,” investigates the influence of various African freedom struggles on the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), a major organization in the American civil rights movement. Rudnick, whose research was directed by Jean Allman, the J.H. Hexter Professor in the Humanities, received glowing comments from the contest judges.

"The persuasive analysis of Malcolm X's chance encounter with SNCC leaders in Africa, plus the subsequent philosophical shifts that ensued, is quite insightful,” one judge wrote. “Making very good use of the material available in the Film & Media Archive, the writer articulates the desire to internationalize the black struggle in the period leading to Malcolm X's assassination. Additionally, the article recasts Malcolm X and SNCC leaders as pragmatic individuals willing to accommodate dissenting views for the good of the struggle.”

Among the archived materials Rudnick consulted in writing his essay were five interviews of the many conducted for Henry Hampton’s Eyes on the Prize documentaries about the American civil rights movement. Recently transcribed and made digitally available by the Libraries, the full interviews contain valuable primary source material not included in the finished Eyes on the Prize episodes that were publicly aired.

“When I began my research, the interview transcripts from Eyes on the Prize were not yet digitized, but now that they have all been made available my hope is that more students get a chance to read them and use them in their work,” Rudnick says. “They are a treasure and remarkable resource for anyone trying to better understand the civil rights movement, and I am sure that the digitization will go a long way toward opening the eyes of Wash U undergrads to this and the archive’s other great resources.”

After graduating in May, Rudnick is now working as a research analyst at the Tobin Project, a non-profit, non-partisan public policy think tank in Cambridge, Mass.

  For more information about holdings of the Film & Media Archive or about conducting research there, visit the Film & Media Archive’s website.

WUSTL Key Maintenance Saturday, June 11, 6-10pm

On Saturday, June 11, maintenance will be done on the WUSTL Connect service by the WU Information Services and Technology staff.  WUSTL Connect is the service which lets you use your WUSTL Key to log in to various Library services (as well as WebSTAC and other University services).  From 6pm to 10pm you may reach various login pages, such as for the proxy server, My Catalog, ILLiad, Ares, and Find it!, but not be able to log in.  Our apologies for the inconvenience.

Drawing Lines: Robert Weaver's Innovative Illustration

"In recording the literal image as it already appears in life, what line can you draw between art and illustration?" -Robert Weaver in Esquire, December 1956

In the 1960s, advertisers began to abandon traditional magazines for the allure of television. As a result, illustration experienced a decrease in popularity. In an effort to compete, illustrators were encouraged to become more original and avant-garde in their styles.

  Often referred to as the "godfather of the new illustration," Robert Weaver was among the few  illustrators who continued to innovate throughout this challenging decade. Weaver developed a new approach to visual storytelling that both conveyed information and evoked emotion. Prior to his influence, illustrators were known for using traditional techniques. In contrast, Weaver's visionary style more resembled the expressionist manner of contemporary fine artists.

In addition to his progressive style, Weaver’s work reflects a social awareness lacking in the idealized scenes of earlier popular illustration.  His work depicts the changing social and political climate of the 1960s, explicitly portraying poverty, crime, activism, race, and youth culture.

The original artwork and tear sheets featured in this exhibition not only highlight Weaver’s unique style and social consciousness, but also represent his significant impact on this pivotal period in illustration history. 

Visitors to Olin Library this summer can view Weaver’s work on display in the Ginkgo Reading Room and Grand Staircase Lobby starting Wednesday, June 8, 2011. Titled “Drawing Lines: Robert Weaver’s Innovative Illustration,” the exhibition showcases the Robert Weaver collection held by Washington University’s Modern Graphic History Library. The exhibition is free and open to the public.