Contents: (Volume 18, number 2 -- Fall 2002)

• Clapp Main Floor : This is a Hard-Hat Area by Sally Blumberg Linden '56, Special Projects Manager
• September 12 : Sherr in Bates's Footsteps by Julia Hanna '88
• From the Co-Chairs by Ruth R. Rogers, Special Collections Librarian, and Polly Gambrill Slavet '67
• Creating an Artist's Book
• On the road : Artists' Books at the Grolier Club by Nancy Pasley '65
• October 12 : Kaufman navigates "complex junctures"
• Getting the word out : Papyrus to Print to Pixel by Ruth R. Rogers, Special Collections Librarian
• Huynh probes ships' registry abuses
• New curriculum signals growing Latin American role
• Kass autographs Midwifery
• Calendar
• Farewell, Seniors : You kept the Library humming !
• Honor with Books
• Steven Smith : Wellesley via Mannheim via Republic of Texas
  
• Time to renew ?
• Notes 'n Totes
• Alumnae tour Clapp
• Friends of the Library Steering Committee 2001-2002

by Sally Blumberg Linden '56, Special Projects Manager

Heads up! Clapp Library's main floor is soon to be renovated. Approved in April, work is already underway and completes a year from the Trustees' green light. Shepley Bulfinch Richardson and Abbott, the Boston architectural firm responsible for the '50s and '70s additions, and whose parent firm designed the original building, listened well. Project architects embraced the Library's goal to provide a setting for contemporary services while honoring the aesthetics and proven functionality of the Library as it is. Phase I of the project - construction within the east wing and Reference Room-began in June and will be finished by the start of fall semester. To reveal the building's inherent beauty, Reference Room walls will evolve into an arcade. One benefit: additional panels on which to mount future presidents' portraits. But the most striking outcome will be more natural light, not only from glass walls, but also from large skylights just outside the room's archways. The existing slender doorway between lobby and Reference Room will be supplemented by two more openings, making the Reference Room visible to all entering the lobby.		During Phase 2, the south wing, whose massive old windows take advantage of the changeful New England light, will be transformed into a large Reading Room. At one end, a new glass door will bring the Sanger Room, v/ith its hand-carved paneling, into view, and a "servary"' will accommodate those who like to snack and read. The plan is to limit food to the Reading Room out of respect for library resources, while providing an amenity students expect. The Reading Room's new size and location will make it ideal for poetry readings as well as for routine activities of reading journals and newspapers. Phase I and Phase 2 add improved lighting, updated air handling, and new furniture throughout the main floor. Custom-designed cases situated away from harmful sunlight and properly secured will enable Special Collections and Archives to install exhibitions of their treasures. This massive renovation combines boldness with an appreciation for what Clapp Library-the heart of the College-already is and represents. Construction Web site : http://www.wellesley.edu/Library/ Renovation/renovationpics.html
	As never before, students need help from librarians and other Information Services staff to find the best electronic and print scholarship from burgeoning online resources. Phase I will subtly enhance staff presence by bringing their activities into public view. Three departments, all in the east wing, will share a glass wall echoing Archives' facade on the fourth floor directly above. The "Help Desk" for computer users, as well as staff work areas in Collections Management and Acquisitions & Cataloging, will be visible through glass.
September 12 : Sherr in Bates's Footsteps by Julia Hanna '88 Like most Wellesley alumnae, Lynn Sherr '63 knew that Katharine Lee Bates, one of the College's earliest graduates, penned the words to "America the Beautiful." She was also aware that one of the College's dormitories was Bates's namesake. That was the extent of Sherr's knowledge of "America the Beautiful," although she says the song always gave her "goose bumps. The making of it-long considered our country's unofficial national anthem-is less well known than its popularity would suggest. Sherr's curiosity brought the award-winning ABC journalist back to Wellesley and Special Collections to research America the Beautiful: The Stirring Story Behind Our Nation's favorite Song (Public Affairs, 2001). On Thursday, September 12, at 4 p.m. in the Margaret Clapp Library Lecture Room, Friends of the Library will sponsor a talk by Lynn Sherr about the making of what she calls "the perfect American song." Bates, who taught English at Wellesley for forty years, had little patience for the customary. One entry in her childhood diary reads, "Sewing is always expected of girls. Why not of boys?" In her introduction to America the Beautiful, Sherr writes of a woman who learned to ride a giant tricycle at the age of thirty-five, admitting she was "some scared." Sherr says she came to appreciate Bates's sharp wit and sense of humor. "I liked her humility, and I loved her irreverence - the idea that she could refer to this unbelievable song as 'A the B,"' Sherr told the Newark Star-Ledger last year. Bates was thirty-three years old in 1893, the year she traveled by train from Boston to teach summer school in Colorado. In America the Beautiful, Sherr traces the journey that inspired the song's much-loved lines. Riding west. Bates stopped for a weekend in Chicago, site of the World's Fair. She saw a model city of the future, a collection of white, brightly illuminated buildings-most likely the "alabaster cities" of the song's final stanza. Near the end of her Colorado summer, Bates climbed Pike's Peak, declaring it "the most glorious scenery I ever beheld." "More significantly," Sherr writes, "she opened her notebook and jotted down some verses that had come to her on the spot: "0 beautiful for..." A prize-winning journalist from the very start of her career and a recipient of Wellesley's Alumnae Achievement Award, Lynn Sherr has won journalism awards for coverage of stories ranging from alternative treatments for anorexia and bulimia to the battle over legal abortion in Ireland. A long-time correspondent for the ABC News show 20/20, Sherr lives in New York and is also the author of failure Is Impossible: Susan B. Anthony in Her Own Words (Random House, 1995) and Tall Blondes: A Book About Giraffes (Andrews McMeel Publishing, 1997).

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From the Co-Chairs

Ruth R. Rogers, Special Collections Librarian, and June M. Stobaugh '66

Coming to a city near you: The 2002-3 Friends of the Library season will include another delightful out-of-town lecture on contemporary artists' books by Special Collections Librarian and FOL Co-Chair Ruth R. Rogers. Steering Committee Member Molly Campbell, researching ways to deliver other unusual Library presentations to Friends and interested
Wellesley alumnae across the country. This fall, Gigi Barnhill and her fabulous Program Committee are offering two exciting FOL programs at the College: journalist Lynn Sherr '63 on September 12 and poet Margaret Kaufman '63 on October 24.

The Student Involvement Committee, directed by Gina Wickwire with help from new SC member Elizabeth Pierre '97, is working to develop closer relationships with current Wellesley students by inviting their participation in FOL programs. Other Steering Committee initiatives are taking shape this fall as a result of our winter 2002 brainstorming session under outgoing Co-Chair June M. Stobaugh. June, whose many productive ideas as Co-Chair include Student Involvement. will continue to inspire new and ongoing subcommittees.

How to use current technology remains in the forefront of our minds. Last year, June, assisted by SC members Kerin Fenster and Julia Hanna, worked with Mac Stewart, Digital Library Specialist, and Deb Carbarnes, now in her second year as FOL's efficient, hard-working administrative assistant, to create a more user-friendly Friends' Web site. Continuing this effort, Janet Si-Ming Lee '98, another new SC member, will chair the first Electronic Access Committee.

Honor with Books, introduced by FOL Founding Member Janice Hunt, continues to flourish as a way to hail loved ones and mentors with an inscribed memorial bookplate in a Library volume. Julia Hanna will direct the program this year.

As Friends of the Library, our goal is to support the College Libraries and their Director, Micheline Jedrey, in every endeavor and goal. Last year, the FOL Steering Committee committed funds to replace the Library's most-used VHS videos with DVD and to underwrite a shrink-wrapping program for the Conservation Facility, protecting deteriorating books while they await diagnosis and treatment. Sounds of construction this summer on Clapp Library's main floor remind us of our ongoing responsibility to help this award-winning library serve the academic community with excellence now and always.

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On the road : Artists' Books at the Grolier Club

Nancy Pasley '65

An illustrated volume-words and pictures-doubles our pleasure. But the artist's book does something more, new and strangely wonderful. It embodies an intimate, three-dimensional communication of words, images, sculpture, and unlimited imagination appealing to both emotions and intellect. The artist selects subject, shape, and format, and often fabricates the book itself. Results can be one-of-kind, a limited edition, or a trade edition in thousands of copies. But each represents a unique sensibility.

Imagine the well-known daguerreotype of Emily Dickinson, with a short quotation, inside metal mesh that is both shield and cage. Or a box that opens up to form the West African building where recently captured slaves were held awaiting ships to America. Or an intricate foldout of multicolored paper ribbons, made in the Wellesley Book Arts seminar, honoring Alumnae Achievement Award winners. Or the story, told without words, of Little Red Riding Dot making her way through green dots and suddenly meeting the Big Bad Dot.

Ruth Rogers, Wellesley's dynamic curator of Special Collections, displayed these and more in an April program for alumnae and friends at New York's elegant Grolier Club. Ruth showed us a dazzling range of artists' books from the College collection she and her predecessors have built into a treasure house. Many focus on women's lives or literary themes, both of particular interest to our College and to a teaching library. Alumnae in attendance ranged from the Class of 1948 to the Class of 2001. In addition to listening to Ruth's far-ranging talk, we looked closely at each book, even picked some up, turned pages, and experienced the one-on-one communication the artist intended. It was a splendid introduction to a fascinating aspect of Clapp Library today.

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October 12 : Kaufman navigates "complex junctures"

During a lifetime of writing poetry, Margaret Kaufman '63 has sought language for human relationships and the natural world that contains them. On Thursday, October 24, at 4:45 p.m. in the Clapp Library Lecture Room, Kaufman will read from Snake at the Wrist (Sixteen Rivers Press, 2001), her newly published, first full collection of poems. Reviewer David St. John has praised the work's "exquisite sense of measure and restraint" in rendering "the complex junctures of our lives."

Margaret Kaufman In Lot's Wife, Kaufman humanizes the symbol of godless disobedience by summoning a life of aching ordinariness blasted by wrath into the elemental:

She couldn't recall if she'd shut the door, turned off the iron; worse guilt, she'd left behind the baby pictures, her mother's ring, her wedding quilt. One arm raised as if to gather her whole life in that embrace, tears blurring the view, without much thought she turned her face, became what she had shed.

Margaret Kaufman leads poetry workshops in Marin County and edits fiction for the Marlboro Review. She was born in St. Louis and majored in English at Wellesley, studying poetry with David Ferry. She holds an M.A. from Berkeley and an M.F.A. from the Warren Wilson M.F.A. Program for Writers. Among Kaufman's honors area Marin County Artists' Grant, the Anna Rosenberg Award from the Judah Magnus Museum, and the Jessamyn West Poetry Award.

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Getting the word out : Papyrus to print to pixel

How did a shift from scroll to codex affect readers in ancient Rome? How did the invention of rnoveable type threaten the authority of the Catholic Church? What are the implications of electronic text and other digital media for authors and publishers?

During fall semester 2002, Raymond Starr, Theodora Stone Sutton Professor of Classical Studies, and I will consider such questions in a new, experimental course. "Papyrus to Print to Pixel" is unique for Wellesley in several ways, notably as a Humanities course with a substantial lab component. Lectures will examine how previous and contemporary revolutions in the technology of written communication affected religion, economy, and politics in their surrounding societies. Labs will include making papyrus sheets, practicing calligraphy on parchment, papermaking, letterpress printing, and Web site design.

Clapp Library is one of only a handful of college libraries able to support such a course under one roof. Using clay tablets, papyrus fragments, and manuscripts in Special Collections, lead type and hand presses in the Book Arts Lab, and the latest electronic media in the Knapp Media and Technology Center, 12 lucky students will travel the entire span of written communication, covering in 14 weeks a period of about 5,500 years!

Huynh probes ships' registry abuses

More than any other phrase in recent memory, "Exxon Valdez" conjures up the environmental impact of crude-oil accidents at the water's edge. But Exxon and its luckless ship head a category of notorious maritime accidents over the last dozen years that throw into relief the tension between commercial and environmental interests.

Davis Scholar Tuyet-Catrina Huynh '03 is conducting research to identify factors influencing ship owners' decisions about where to register their vessels. International standards to protect seafarers and to limit environmental pollution from ships exist, but from state to state regulations vary, with states deciding whether to adopt international rules. Even if a state agrees to regulate, it may not enforce. Huynh hopes to identify ways in which ships and their registering countries can be held responsible for environmental pollution standards.

Tuyet-Catrina Huynh came to the United States with her family from Vietnam in 1975. She began her undergraduate career at Maryland's Montgomery College, where she helped coordinate Montgomery's 1999-2000 Honors Colloquium and won a 2000 English Honors Award. She transferred to Wellesley as a Davis Scholar in 2000. In 1995, Huynh was appointed a U.S. delegate to the International Youth Leadership Program in Tokyo and Osaka, and from 1997-2001 mentored at Washington D.C.'s Indochinese Community Center. She has been elected twice to the National 4-H Council's Board of Trustees.

New curriculum signals growing Latin American role

The 2000 Census found 60% more Hispanics living in the U.S. than in 1990, a growth with economic as well as cultural implications. Above Canada and Japan, Mexico heads the list of this country's top trading partners.

Acknowledging such realities, the History Department this fall begins offering Wellesley undergraduates four courses in Latin American Studies. Taught by Assistant Professor Alejandra B. Osorio, these courses explore the history, nationhood, gender issues, urbanization, and contemporary problems in Mexico, Central and South America, and the Caribbean. Osorio's courses fill in a panoramic canvas. "From Conquest to Revolution: The History of Colonial Latin America" follows indigenous societies during their transformation and interaction with Africans and Europeans under colonial rule, as divergent traditions melded to form new, hybrid cultures and identities. "Gender and Nation in Latin America" examines patriarchal discourses of state and feminized representations of nation, tracing these forward to changing definitions of feminine and masculine in workplace and class structure. A seminar, "The City in Latin America," pursues the development of Latin American cities from Roman principles imposed by the sixteenth-century Spanish conquest through the twentieth-century post-modern megalopolis. Key themes in current Latin American history - uneven national development in dependent economies, richly varied revolutionary, social, ethnic, religious, feminist, literary, and artistic movements, and considerable U.S. influence in the region - characterize "Contemporary Problems in Latin American History."

Osorio looks forward to teaching Wellesley women. "Women's attitudes and behaviors differ when they're among themselves: there's not a tug of war. During my research in Peru, my daughter, Olga, attended an all-girl grammar school. She became a completely different person there, and she's maintained her self-confidence now that she's in school with boys."

Professor Osorio comes to Wellesley from the University of Florida's Center for Latin American Studies, where she was Associate Director of Academic Programs and Student Affairs. Born in Chile and literate in five languages, Osorio obtained a B.A. and M.A. from New York University. She holds a certificate in Women's Studies and Ph.D. in History from SUNY at Stony Brook, where she received the 2001 Fred Weinstein Award for Best History Dissertation. Extensively published, she has conducted Turner- and Fulbright-sponsored research in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, Chile, and Spain and has studied Latino women in New York-area garment and electronic industries. "Clapp Library's Latin American Studies holdings from the major academic publishers are very impressive," Osorio says. "More Spanish-language texts, historical journals, and monographs from the smaller presses would only enhance what already is so usefully here."

Kass Autographs Midwifery

 

Amalie Moses Kass '49 autographed copies of her latest book. Midwifery and Medicine in Boston: Walter Channing, M.D. 1786-1876 (Northeastern, 2001), at the Friends of the Library program April 30. More than 100 alumnae and students attended the lecture/reception at Clapp Library. President Diana Chapman Walsh introduced Amalie as one of the most revered and cherished of Alumnae Trustees.

Visit the author's Web site

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Farewell, Seniors: You Kept the Library Humming

Before graduation. Friends of the Library and Library staff feted 33 graduating seniors who had worked in the Clapp, Art, Science, and Music Libraries during their years at Wellesley. At the open house attended by students and their families, the soon-to-be alumnae received a certificate of appreciation, a bookmark with the hallmark Library lantern, and a free membership for 2002-03 in Friends of the Library.

Book conservationist Sue Leong spoke of the "gifted hands" of Krista Miller; left, and Jessica Hass, right.	Julia Pollock from the Music Library praised Mutsa Karimakwenda.

Karen Jensen gave Molly Evans a big hug for her work in Interlibrary Loan.	Sue Beatty, Collections Management, praised Aparna Ramaswamy, leftl and Maliha Farooq, right, for their work with budgets, statistics, Excel and ChartWizard.	Drs. Nancy and Pierre Kleiber, Honolulu residents, heard daughter Eleanor extolled by Susan Woodrow for Eleanor's work in Circulation. Eleanor plans to study Library Science.

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Steven Smith : Wellesley via Mannheim via Republic of Texas

Preservation librarians protect library holdings from the depredations of time and people. They plan and oversee a collection's preservation treatments, ongoing maintenance, security, and disaster response. They monitor materials in remote storage. And they apply emerging technologies-digital preservation, for example-to current preservation problems.

Steve Smith, Clapp Library's new preservation librarian, has always loved books. Like a grandmother and great aunt before him, he became a librarian. He married one, too - Margaret Warner is a librarian at Boston University. Smith comes to Wellesley from the University of Maryland's Mannheim, Germany campus, where he managed collection development, reference, technical services, and card-to-online catalog conversion. Thoroughly versed in digital imaging, Smith also has extensive experience rehousing and repairing manuscripts, photographs, maps, and bound materials. He has developed and conducted imaging and preservation workshops throughout the Southwest for Dallas's Amigos Bibliographic Council, and chaired a seven-person team that planned and implemented all Amigos imaging activities. Smith has a B.A. from Southwestern University and an M.L.S. from the University of Texas at Austin, where he specialized in preservation and conservation studies.

A fifth-generation Texan born in Connecticut, raised in Houston, Smith likes New England - the cultural density, proximity to Europe, weather - but most of all, his job at Wellesley. "I'm not kidding - this is really a great place to work, with such wonderful people: students, staff, faculty, alumnae." About working in Germany, he says: "Mannheim is an atypical German city - it's a modern city built on a grid, with baroque and jugendstil architecture. My students were all dependents of U.S. military or civilian employees of the military stationed in Europe. Many had an American parent and a German parent, and had attended German schools. Some were ex-soldiers with German spouses. They were a very different demographic- often the first in their families to go to college."

What does he miss about Texas? "Tex-Mex. You really can't get good Tex-Mex outside Texas. I miss being able to order jalapenos on anything."

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	Notes 'n Totes from the Wellesley College Library Collections Proceeds to benefit Friends of the Library
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Alumnae Tour Clapp
	More than 100 alumnae toured the Library during June reunion. Among tour stops were Knapp Media and Technology Center and the newly renovated fourth floor, including Archives, Special Collections, the Conservation Facility, and the Book Arts Lab. Left, alumnae in Knapp; right. Special Collections Librarian Ruth R. Rogers explaining innovative uses of rare books in supplementing class instruction.

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Friends of the Library
Steering Committee 2001-2002

Founding Member
Mary E. Jackson '24

Co-Chairpersons
Ruth R. Rogers
Polly G. Slavet '67

Newsletter Editor
Wanda Lankenner MacDonald '72

Steering Committee
Georgia Brady Barnhill '66
Molly S. Campbell '60
Carol Cross DS '02
Kerin D. Fenster '64
Kathryn K. Flynn, ex officio
Julia Hanna '88
Judith E. Harper '75
Deborah Holman '89
Charlotte L. Isaacs '68
Micheline E. Jedrey
Janet Si-Ming Lee '98
Katherine H. Page '69
Elizabeth Pierre '97
Lia Gelin Poorvu '56
Deborah T. Rempis '68
June M. Stobaugh '66
Elinor Bunn Thompson '37
Diane S. Triant '68
Pamela W Turner '65
Sigrid R. Watson '47
Virginia B. Wickwire DS '81
Dorothea Widmayer '52

Emeritae
Claire M. Broder '61
Janice L. Hunt '52

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This web version was prepared by MacKenzie Stewart, Digital Library Specialist, Wellesley College Library.
All images were reproduced directly from the newsletter, image reproduction quality varies greatly.

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• Wellesley College Library
• Date created: October 22, 2002
• Last modified: October 23, 2002
• Expires: permanent